Meeting Notes: Governance, Sep 25 2018

lehnberg · September 26, 2018, 4:30pm

Meeting notes

Governance meeting held Sep 25 @ 3PM UTC in grin/Lobby on Gitter, full chat transcript here.

Community attendance:
0xb100d
antioch
Catheryne_N_twitter
etherminor
hashmap
igno.peverell
jaspervdm
jackrack
lehnberg
RiskyMan1
tromp
quentinlesceller
yeastplume
(apologies if I missed someone - write below and we can add!)

Agenda points & Actions

1. Agenda review

Proposed agenda accepted, but moving PoW discussion to last.

2. Previous follow ups

2.1 Mu-sig wallet for donations

Igno investigated, Electrum works.
Action: @igno.peverell to set up wallet with key generation ceremony with the relevant people by next meeting.

2.2 Security Policy

Policy has been well received.
Audit of sorts should happen post T4: Both academic institutions on the “research paper”-level as well as a security company for proper code audit.
For reference: https://blog.z.cash/audit-results/ and https://blog.z.cash/2018-zcash-security-audit-details/.
Security companies mentioned: NCC group, Coinspect, Least Authority, Kudelski Security, Mary Maller, Commonwealth Crypto.
@Catheryne_N_twitter to reach out to MIT & Stanford to enquire about academic interest, as well as Security companies to obtain code audit quotes.
@lehnberg to create GitHub issue to track.

2.3 Vision / Mission / Values

First draft has been produced that’s still a wip.
@igno.peverell to publish to the forum and invite community to iterate on.

3. Risk management

RiskyMan1 has experience with Risk Management and has put together two general docs, still in draft mode
https://github.com/mimblewimble/docs/wiki/Risky-Man’s-RM-for-Grin
And then, following that, some info on Risk Identification: https://github.com/mimblewimble/docs/wiki/Risk-Identification
Meaningful progress requires project Vision / Mission / Values document.
Objectives like liveness, decentralization, no loss of funds, etc needs to be prioritised.
@RiskyMan and @lehnberg to put togehter a brainstorming page where anyone can submit grin risks, and we include those already identified. And put a post on the forum.
Once established, core developers are polled about them based on the best practices.

4. Website

No appetite to kick off a project for a second website at this stage.
A lot will be dependent on Vision / Mission / Values statement, so may be premature.

5. Logo

This is the logo for the project: https://github.com/mimblewimble/site/blob/master/assets/images/logos/mw_smiley_face.svg
It will also require typesetting (Grin spelled out) at some point.

6. Emissions

6.1 Miner controlled emissions proposal

OP @InflationsNotBad / etherminor attended to debate the proposal. “I feel like I have made a very compelling argument in the forum. And no one yet has been able to give a reason MCE would be harmful.”
@igno.peverell: “I think the argument for MCEs is very well put forward and makes intuitive sense but other than that I have no particular reasons to trust it more than any other argument until econ and game theories are addressed, which right now is a moving target.” … “even if your idea is great I’m not sure we’d be mature enough as a project to accept it / there’s just too much on our plate at the moment.”
Judging by the meeting and the forum thread, the general community preference is to keep existing 1 grin/sec emission rate.
Suggestion for OP to approach the Ethereum research lab with a well constructed argument to see what happens. They have more researchers that would be able to look into the game theoretic / mechanism design aspects. OP agreed.

6.2 Whether benefits of grin emission rate should be explicit in philosophy

@lehnberg: “I think it might be too solution-oriented for it to be in “our philosophy”. Instead we should think of the rationale for why the emission rate is there, what are the values/beliefs that are driving that approach, and if anything seek to incorporate those things into the philosophy, vision / mission / values.”
No disagreements.
@tromp: “our emission makes grin more adoption friendly long term, which could be in our vision”

7. PoW

7.1 Scheduled PoW upgrades proposal

Proposal for ASIC Friendly Cuckatoo Cycle to have growing memory requirements.
Gives any cuckatoo32 single-chip ASIC a limited lifetime of about 1.5 year and limits impact of stealth mining, which would also leave evidence as a size gets phased out.
DECISION: After some discussion the meeting adopted the proposal as is.

7.2. General Proof of Work update

Dual PoW, one that’s ASIC Friendly (AF), one that’s ASIC Resistant (AR). “Resistant” and “friendly” being non-binary words in this context.
AF PoW is Cuckatoo32+ at mainnet launch with a gradual phase out of lower sizes (so Cuckatoo33+, 34+, etc. after a while, per 7.1 above).
Placeholder AR PoW for T4 is Cuckatoo29.
Mainnet AR PoW is still to be defined, work will start post T4 launch. Details to be released long enough in advance for optimized code to get written.

General advice to ASIC manufacturers remains for them to build the best cuckatoo32+ ASICs they can.

–END–

Feel free to raise suggestions / thoughts / comments and requests for future meeting agenda topics below!

monkyyy · September 26, 2018, 6:12pm

2.3 Vision / Mission / Values
First draft

In what should be a shock to no one I’d like a link and I’ll disagree about things you believe are non-contentious

Emissions

I’ve been staying out of that debate, because my hardline the perfect currency would have zero inflation and deflation position isn’t on the table here.

The infationisgod proposal, I share the game theory worry’s that others bring up, that mining is weird and you can’t necessarily trust the whipping boys of the system; mining is what makes everything work but that doesn’t mean we trust them or make any part of their life easy. Making a stateless currency is to important to be “fair” in my opinion

The other side of the debate is tromps simplicity position, and well… can we not have 10% inflation at year 10?

I’m going to suggest that have a well defined halfing curve thats aggressive, very aggressive, I’m not a fan of satoshis 100 year plan either, its been to slow. So get to the 2% that modern politics likes for its stupid reasons quickly, then have a 2% inflation plan. The dollar manages to make the world trade run at “2%”(if you trust its bullshit numbers) so it will not be a disaster, its a comprise with statist politics that could be made.