[Proposal ##][DRAFT] {After the Big Bang: A constitutional process the Cosmos Hub}

After the big bang: A constitutional process for the Cosmos ecosystem Change log • 2022-12-14 Created initial post • 2022-12-21 Changed name of first step, fixed links (previously not possible to enter links), Added summary for budget) Summary Cosmos is at a crucial moment in time. Following the discussion launched by the Atom 2.0 paper and the related on-chain propositions (78,80,81,82,83,86) the community has entered a very lively debate on its future. The rejection of prop82 has created a divide that needs to be settled for the Cosmos to move forward strong and united. Many community members are actively discussing a process to facilitate a healthy and constructive discussion. As a recognized neutral third party, we propose to support that process by designing and facilitating a deliberative constitutional process. We understand “constitutional” as a process to find the rules for organizing a community: it must not end with a proper constitution even if this would be a world’s first and would represent a revolutionary precedent for Cosmos and its ecosystem, the Blockchain world itself, and even further for the future of governance. Imagine the day of the 14th…

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Since nobody is responding I’ll throw in my feedback. Citizen’s assemblies are interesting and potentially effective in the right context. I’ve participated in them locally to some benefit. That being said, I’m not sure they are right for Cosmos nor that this proposal is beneficial to the ecosystem. My comments might seem harsh, but I’m just laying out my visceral reaction while reading through your post. I’d never heard of your group before, so it was new territory looking into it. “As a recognized neutral third party” — are you tho? Recognized by who? I looked into it a bit, but there wasn’t a lot of information about group not published by yourself. “it must not end with a proper constitution even if this would be a world’s first and would represent a revolutionary precedent for Cosmos and its ecosystem, the Blockchain world itself, and even further for the future of governance” — really? Not one single blockchain project in history has had a constitution? Not to nitpick, but this just seemed strange thing to say! “We will survey Cosmos members on their current views, who shares those views, and who has different views through the means of short interviews and…

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Hello, @Trigs thanks a lot for your comments. Let me try to address them. Recognized third party: I see that it seems strange when posed like that and indeed it seems performative when not in context. I wuold say taht the recognition comes from all the partners we ahve worked with since over 20 years of running such deliberative processes and as many of our parnters worked again and agina with us, we can derivate from this that we are indeed recognized as neutral: same goes for the coalition we have built. If you look at we the internet for example, we had a very broad coalition of actors from gov, civil society, international institutions but also private esectortrusting us. Apart from that I think you are right in the need there is to get recognition within the Cosmos ecosystem. For this my proposal is to gather supports of recognized members of the community? At the same time this would open another biais: if some people in the community trust us but not other, we risk to be seen as not neutral. What do you think? On the ocnstitution: Ok I can rephrase but indeed there is no blockchain I know that had produced a constitution through a deliberative process. And even in the…

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Most of what you said makes sense, thanks. I think you have an interesting dilemma transitioning your process to a web3 environment, however. Antoine_Vergne: This would allow people to register and we would monitor key demographics for example age, geography, language, may be gende. This right here is going to be a big issue, as it inherently limits your pool of willing participants. Forcing KYC is a hot topic in crypto! Antoine_Vergne: On manipulation: Good point, I have no solution to ensure this now. Happy to hear if there are experiences on this. We normally publish the form we use and the results. But we also need to ensure some level of privacy. This issue speaks to the ethos components of most web3 communities around transparent, anonymous, and immutable data. Essentially you are providing a web2 solution to build a better web3 community. While I’m sure you get excellent results and are trustworthy enough to accomplish this task… Cosmos is one of the last blockchains to go that direction, in my experience. I would suggest addressing this first and foremost. I think there are web3 solutions to your unanswered questions, as well as web3…

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why not just reduce validator’s overweight voting power by making it √delegations + self-stake and have everyone vote? the skin in the game required to vote in governance would incentivize all voters to vote in the chain’s best interest. use a 6month average to assign default abstain votes for quorum.

So many saviors for our ecosystem…!
So many researches that could save us…!

We are tired of reading from all of you, proposals with many benefits for you and few or nothing for our community and our ecosystem. I’m sorry but, nobody knows you, you weren’t here during our tough times, and it’s insulting to think we need your help now, in exchange for a few thousand ATOMs of course!!

After the rejection of prop 82 our community did the one and only right thing to do, increase the pool tax to empower our developer teams to expand the ecosystem even further.
We, as a community, have survived much worse… and come out stronger each time…
You -and all like you- as “self-invited saviors”… please, take your copy - paste proposals and keep searching…

Hello and thanks a lot for all the comments, I try to answer all. • Onchain reputation: This is a very good point. I follow this closely because I agree with you that this will be the long term version of KYC. I am in the top 100 of the Degenscore on EVM and this is a fantastic CV and identity card. It’s pseudonimous and at the same time does reflect my identity. I think developing such tools is indeed both an important and useful tools. • Decentralized tools: I love that you address the infrastructure question: It’s something I am trying to push for “traditional” deliberation. There is no good public infrastructure for random selection in any country of the world. There is no real infrastructure for capacity building of civil servant, and politicians on the topic. And this is one of the reason why I find the Blockchain space as a perfect place to push forward: There we could build that infra as public good and let everyone use it. I am not a developper so I would no be able to do it. But I think it’s key. My experience from “traditional” spaces is that the best way to start building this infra is to “do stuff” and show it works and then scale. This is why I think it’s…

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Hello, thanks for the message. I try to respond to a couple of things: • Nobody knows you: I’m ok with that if it were the case. I think it’s not completely true. I have been exchanging with as much people as possible since June or so. I am happy to exchange on this bilaterally as I am not sure it’s good to dox here without asking those people. But I could to the list and ask and publish. I have been there since 2017, read the initial paper, felt in love with the Internet of Chains, staked my first Atoms as soon as it became possible through Cosmosstation. I voted on most of the 90 proposals. But I sure am not a whale. • On prop 82 and the following: I also think it has been a really interesting process. I am not sure the “stronger each time” holds for everyone in the community. There also has been a lot of exit. On empowering the developpers I think it’s important but it does negates the fact that developpers are only one part of a project which if - I get it right - aims at also involving non technical people. How do you create ownership of the Cosmos for those people and how do you create trust in it. The strength of Web3 is that fork and exit are easier than in the…

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Hello,

On this I think there are 2 levels:

Algo for voting: Which is a good way to do it. There are hundreds of possibilities to aggregate votes, and the tendency to fall back to simple majority is sometimes depressing. Cosmos is already ahead with the 4 options. But What you propose is also very interesting. The real discussion is the one on power and power balance. In the proposal we make, this could be addressed in session 2 or 3 of the Assembly.

Voting VS other ways of aggregation of preferences: Voting is only one of many ways of taking collective decisions. On this: Our approach is to connect this way with a deliberative process based on sorition.

algo for voting doesnt solve for incentive alignment. risk of loosing your money if you vote contrary to what is best for the chain aligns all voters (assuming skin in the game=voting power) to some extent, it is understandable that validators had so much voting power in the beginning, but as chains mature the voting power must be given back to investors. if not, it makes the chain too risky for larger investors. they risk having their liquidity seized by validators voting in their own self interests and at the expense of delegators (which i would argue is currently being attempted with the original 2.0 proposal) perhaps an assembly of some sort, as a backstop, would be useful to veto implementation in the case a malicious proposal passes with articulated dangers not recognized during the vote, but more power in fewer hands is moving backwards. the power is already concentrated in the hands of less than 50 validators and is proving problematic. DAOs and subdaos will be used to streamline funding within narrow scopes assigned by governance, but major changes to the framework and function of the chain should be quite difficult to pass. protracted discussion related to changes…

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An interesting step in between is to see how we can mitigate the voting power per validator.

A part of the issue is caused by the huge difference in voting power and centralisation of voting power, making governance proposals sensitive to being dominated by a few validators. If we would have perfect decentralisation the story would be completely different already.

you can do that pretty easily by forcing the top 10 or even top 25 validators to vote abstain by default, or significant portion. this accomplishes much of the same thing but maintains the validator control that makes the ecosystem unattractive.

Not so sure if auto-forcing to Abstain is really a good move…

It makes reaching quorum easy and it gives smaller validators are better voice in governance.
However, if you have a big validator which cares about governance you immediately sideline these… The cure might be worse of than the reason for doing this on the long run imo…

It also only masks the fact that some validators don’t care about governance and that voting power is not decentralized enough

If you are a large validator and care about governance you should increase your stake in the chain. I dont understand what a centralized stake under a validators control has to do with validators concern over governance. I do understand that it reduces centralized control over the chain, however, there are workarounds like penumbra that will make it so DAOs can use other people’s votes controlled by validators. LeonoorsCryptoman: However, if you have a big validator which cares about governance you immediately sideline these… The cure might be worse of than the reason for doing this on the long run imo… It also only masks the fact that some validators don’t care about governance and that voting power is not decentralized enough I actually find it confusing as to why it matters if validators care about governance. validators tend to care about governance because they can rig the game to their benefit. when you say validators who care about governance do you mean validators actively changing the rules to benefit themselves? I dont view sifchain as an outlier within the cosmos, but more of a sacrifice for validators to plunder. Validator cohorts controlling…

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I am a bit afraid that with these comments you make all the validators look-alike, while some of the validators in the ecosystem really care about governance (including me).

I seriously don’t care if a proposal is in my own benefit, as long as I believe that the chain which I validate and vote for benefits from it. Because that is on the long run better for my own interest than short term gains imo. And with me there are other validators who do exactly the same thing…

Are there also bad examples? Yes, ofcourse! But then to say that all validators are bad, that is a bridge too far imo.