I am aware of that post. Particularly this part:
I would like to see more separation of power. I see three powers here:
- Power of the Purse (control of the grin donation funds)
- Power of the Repo (control of what gets merged in the mimblewimble repos)
- Power of Direction (control of what projects / features will be developed)
I vote that no person can hold more than one of those powers at a time.
The members of âDirectionâ decide which projects/features to work on.
The members of âPurseâ decide which of those to fund
The members of âRepoâ decide when something is ready to merge.
A 4th power could exist in the community where direction and funding can be bypassed by somebody not seeking funding.
Canât see a strong difference between those 3 powers.
âDirectionâ needs money to fund development, so has no real power unless developers work for free. But if developers work for free, theyâll probably work only on what they want/like and not what the âDirectionâ wants.
âRepoâ is defintely not a power as implementations and repositories are infinitely forkable. If âRepoâ wants to forbid merging of a âDirectionâ decided code development, âDirectionâ will probably just fork the code to a new repository. Same if âRepoâ merges code not decided/validated by âDirectionâ.
âPurseâ might be a power, as money can buy anything. But âPurseâ should definitely be subordinated to âDirectionâ unless we want to subsidized projects totally unrelated to Grin. And that will definitely scare donors away.
So we are left with âDirectionâ power only.
What could be done is ask for donations once projects have been validated by the âDirectionâ power.
But it could slow down development and requires donors to have some good technical understanding.
I like this proposal, very actionable and brings immediate progress. Iâm not sure we can separate #2 and #3 though.
I do believe itâd be beneficial to reduce power centralization by separating some of the fund control from those who also lead the general direction of the project. But it would have to be done very safely, thereâs a lot of trust required for that.
I actually think the core team should be disbanded. The only reason for it to exist is for distribution of donation funds, and the multisig controllers should be labelled differently. All other decisions should be made by rough community and dev consensus, similar to bitcoin.
How do you quantify what the market indicates?
I think some are aiming to some kind of âBitcoin Foundationâ / âBitcoin Coreâ separation.
We all know how it ended.
Why would it work better for Grin? Real question.
I donât think there should be any foundation or core team.
Also Iâm not familiar with the details of that story, would love to hear it.
It ended with the dissolution of the foundation. A victory, if you ask me.
Agree with David that we need to look more broadly what has gotten us here. Is there consensus that restructuring governance will broadly make things better for GrinâŚ? Meaning, do we expect more volunteer developers to take active partâŚ? Iâd think thatâs the first order of business - how do we attract volunteer developers to the project. Might be by prioritizing and solving (w/ existing resources) the big, visible problems or could be through more public association with projects like LTC. A âbetter bitcoinâ as a tagline itself will put off bitcoin developer base in wanting to contribute to Grin. Need 3 efforts in parallel - (1) solve big visible technical challenges (2) consider allocating resources to increase awareness of Grin through association (3) a better governance structure to help support 1 and 2.
Hereâs my concrete proposal:
- Dismantle âofficialâ core team and remove it from grin.mw/governance.
- Form a new council of 5 members which control the multisig keys for the fund. The current core team picks them; They must be very trusted people but preferably not core developers (note the distinction between core team and core developers).
- Going forward, major decisions (accepting RFCs and funding requests) are made by consensus of community members and contributors. No rules are set for veto power. The decision process is based upon a technical and social hierarchy that is unclear to outsiders, where regular contributors and long-time users hold more social & technical significance and therefore their voice is more appreciated.
This may sound quite radical but in fact it will hardly be felt unless thereâs a truly major division, in which case a hardfork split will occur.
All for the sake of making Grin feel more open.
Make Alice Great Again.
One drawback, and it was pointed out by some members of the core team before, is that it makes sense that the owners of the multi-sigs are unknown, for their security, and the security of the funds.
Iâm sorry, is there something wrong with the current meritocracy? I think the current devs are doing more than a great job. Grin works, we get updates, there have been improvements to grin. So it seems like your asking, âHow do we disassemble our awesome team of devsâ to me. I think the answer is, we donât. New devs can join if they want, if they donât then they donât. Just BLB (be like bitcoin).
At any given point you could say the dev team is centralized, because they only have so many devs. The only way theyâd be truly centralized is if they didnât allow other devs to join the project, ever.
The price curve looks like what iâd expect to see when the ratio of new buyers entering the market is = sellers. Relatively Flat.
The only thing iâd like to see is more community participation on this forum. There are too many lurkers!
Edit: I just wanted to add, there is some degree of trust we give to the devs for any given crypto project, and thatâs ok. I, like the major donor, feel like grin is in the right hands.
The problem is we are nothing like bitcoin. There are no softforks, there is no miner signaling, we have a small group that holds all the funds for a project that offers practically no other way to get funded, and even worse, the same group also has full control over what consensus changes are approved and declined while simultaneously admitting they are not representatives of the Grin community.
While I agree they are awesome devs, and they so far have acted in a reasonably trustworthy manner, putting all trust in them is dangerous, made especially worse by the fact that thereâs tons of evidence that their desires for Grin are very different than the ones most of the users have (see: the endless minimalism vs usability debate).
Weâre not talking about getting rid of the existing devs, weâre talking about empowering more of the community.
Ok, is it impossible for there to be a soft fork? Maybe a consensus change that is backwards compatable hasnât needed to happen yet. Grin is young, give it time.
Ok, so say they have 150 âż, thatâs 1.5 million USD. Now devide 1.5 million by the number of devs. It might be a great exit scam if we only had 1 dev. Say we have 4 devs, now theyâd get a whopping $375k each, for arguably the most complex exit scam ever. An exit scam which also happened to give birth to a really good idea for a cryptocurreny.
Ok so suppose the problem is how to distribute the funds. I have confidence that the devs will discuss and come to an agreement in regards to funding proposals. I trust their judgement. After all, no matter how you set up governance, we (the users, investors, and fans) have to trust someones judgement. There is no avoiding that. Like i said, i think grin is in good hands. I think the donation is in good hands.
Minimalism vs usability argument boils down to devs and hardcore grin fans vs people who want to make a quick buck, so of course thereâs gonna be that argument. Light weightness is a product of minimalism, keeping grin light weight has always been a priority. Besides bitcoinâs usability was not all that great in the beginning either. Plus, people probably didnât complain about usability in 2010 as much because there werenât as many people interested in the project, and they werenât drawing many people from the crowd of âget rich quick folksâ who complain about things like block size lmao.
Edit: (I am not referring to david in the following, had to add this or else i sound like an asshole) To me, these âproblemsâ seem like theyâre by design. As far as divisive problems go, these are like rookie tier. If you donât like grin the way it is, then you can sell your grin, turn off your node, and f&^% off. Go gripe about things somewhere else, because youâre wasting your time here.
Off-topic about what to build
Oh shit, my bad, when i say âyouâ in the edit part, iâm referring to a hypothetical troll entity and people who want usability THIS INSTANT OR GRIN IS DOOMED. I wasnât using the word âyouâ to actually mean you david, and itâs my fault because when I read it again it clearly sounds like iâm being an asshole to you. Iâm sorry about that.
I am a big proponent of usability too, but i can understand from an engineering prospective that the foundation is absolutely critical. Like someone said you can have a cool flashy great ux, but if the foundation isnât there then itâs basically something i wouldnât consider a reliable financial network.
as far as the complain about things like block size, that was a joke that you sort of had to be there for to get the joke. Some people wanted huge blocks right now that also werenât very worried about bitcoinâs long term health.
mod: off-topic, hiding
Off-topic about what to build + a picture of a house
No worries, Iâm over it.
Iâm also totally in favor of building a strong, minimal foundation. But it has been taken to an absolute extreme to where we are willing to add all kinds of hacks on top of the base layer, rather than simple tweaks to strengthen the base (see: play/replay attack debate - wallet solutions vs expiring txs). We consider our tiny foundation complete, despite wanting to grow our use-cases, resulting in something that looks like this:
mod: off-topic, hiding
Off-topic about what to build
Okey dokey. Iâll look into the play/replay thing, thanks.
Could there be any good reason for the prioritization of adding of these hacks on top of the base layer?
mod: off-topic, hiding
Off-topic about what to build and about who understands bulletproofs
Yes, of course. The idea is to keep the base layer as simple as possible to make it easy to audit. This leads to stronger security. But something like a tx expiration height is seen as a threat to the whole foundation of Grin (I exaggerate, but only slightly), whereas we donât seem bothered at all by the fact that, until Jasper returned today, not one single active Grin dev really understood how bulletproofs work.
mod: off-topic, hiding
Moaning
Lol.
No fâŚking way.
Sound nice , comunity consensus", but in reality âŚ
mod: Moaning
Off-topic: tx expiration height
TBH something like tx expiration height gives me a âthreat to the whole foundationâ sort of vibe, if not added carefully.
mod: off-topic, hiding