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Ethereum Classic Treasury Roadmap Call: Initial Discussions #332

Closed YazzyYaz closed 4 years ago

YazzyYaz commented 4 years ago

ETC Core Devs Call - Treasury Roadmap Discussions

When: Thursday, August 13, 2020, 3pm UTC, 60 minutes max.

Where: Ethereum Classic Discord https://discord.gg/dwxb6nf #ecips channel. Will use/create a voice channel ad hoc.

Voice Channel Used will be: #Treasury-Call-2020-08-13 Chat Channel on Discord to ask Questions is #treasury-call-2020-08-13

Note: This is a call only about the treasury roadmap. Any proposals for dealing with 51% attacks have to be on a separate call. See here

Agenda

Audio recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EOz79tU_xo

YazzyYaz commented 4 years ago

Note: this is a call only about the treasury roadmap. Any proposals for dealing with 51% attacks have to be on a separate call. Any questions related to the treasury can be asked here and I will ask them in the call if needed.

pezzullig commented 4 years ago

Really hope you go for IOHK, especially after watching Charles proposed solution video. Could be a fantastic roadmap for ETC. 🙏

gitr0n1n commented 4 years ago

Topic discussion references:

Dexaran commented 4 years ago

@bobsummerwill expressed that "there is broad consensus that changing the block rewards to add treasury model is unacceptable. This runs counter to ETC philosophy and principles and should be rejected." here https://github.com/ethereumclassic/ECIPs/pull/229

What event changed this consensus and at what point in time so that we are discussing an already rejected dozen of times proposal again? Personally, I would like to hear Bob Summewill's opinion on his own position.

Dexaran commented 4 years ago

Also it is worth to reference my Security Auditing DAO proposal that was rejected because it required Treasury: https://github.com/ethereumclassic/ECIPs/pull/231

I would like to correct @bobsummerwill and @meowsbits comments.

Auditing is a good idea, but should not be centralized into the block rewards.

Agree to Reject on grounds of centralized system services. Don't want to spend any time on it at any meeting.

The proposed auditing system is intended to be a DAO governed by a smart-contract. The proposed system must allow security auditors to enter, leave, pick tasks and get paid based on the quality of work done at any time.

This is not centralized as it is not tied to any trusted authority that can not be removed. Not really more centralized than McAfeeDEX that is a smart-contract or ENS that also relies on a smart-contract.

In presence of the Treasury system proposal I would like to notice that I'm still capable of building such a decentralized security auditing core system in any project that has built-in governance/funding mechanic.

Here is ECIP-1052: https://github.com/ethereumclassic/ECIPs/blob/master/_specs/ecip-1052.md

It should be noted that the proposed system is abstracted from Treasury implementation so it can be used alongside IOHK Treasury model. I would like to hear any feedbacks on this.

gitr0n1n commented 4 years ago

TL;DR: I am open and supportive of a treasury system for development. I am not sold on ALL of the mechanics and think those details need to be ironed out in a more collaborative way in a follow up discussion. My vote is greenlight on an embedded treasury system.

Adding my opinions on wax due to the likely scenereo that I don't have adequate service to attend the meeting live (I'll be in the woods, a trip scheduled far in advance of this meeting). I want to stress that I have voluntarily been exploring this specific topic since January 2020 when I first dug in deeply and saw the state of development in ETC. I also want to stress that I am not a protocol level developer.

Correct me if I'm wrong please. I believe Charles' "1 week timeframe" was related to garnering community support for an embedded treasury system. It appeared that his primary concern was that there would be funding for his developers if he committed resources to the ETC network.

As we see with inactive dev teams coming back into the ETC ecosystem, a Treasury system can bring in more development talent due to funding assurance to teams that want to assemble Long Term Support outfits. Our current funding mechanics are HIGHLY centralized and lack transparency (although ETC Coop is doing great work to try to be as transparent as possible). There are huge security risks in the current funding models that simply can not be ignored as ETC moves forward down its own, unique roadmap.

Some posts I made when digging into the inactive CommunityFund and exploring appetite for revenue stream capture to reduce network development dependency on these centralized funding sources:

Security Perspective: There is currently NO decentralized long term solution for protocol level development support, this is a huge security risk as we lean more heavily on ETC specific developers after the Phoenix parity goal was accomplished in June 2020.

Treasury System: I am a fan of a treasury system to support decentralized development on ETC. Having a treasury has the potential to attract dev talent that we don't even know about. We will likely see many more ECIPs with innovative tech for this specific application of blockchain; be it L1 or L2 proposals. I personally see a lot more pros than cons.

I am a fan of a funding system that's sole purpose is to advance the network itself. The Developers funding pool would be replenished by their ability to produce products that fill blocks (increased user usage). This appreciates the value prop of the network and aligns Developers and Miners incentives.

A L1 example, there is a community desire for Account Versioning and no present development talent to champion this idea. A treasury would incentivize developers to meet the unanswered needs of the non-developer community. Currently, the active development teams have no signaled intent to work on this highly requested feature that will add backwards compatibility to the network.

I agree with @Dexaran that L2 Smart Contracts can fund a majority of these funding mechs. But since ETC is still at that L1 focus, I'm not opposed to a baseline L1 portion of the inflation going to the developer. This will ensure that if blocks are being mined, development will be funded in a way that is solely reliant on the network (until the emission is 0); a big move away from third-party dependency (ETC Coop & ETC Labs models of funding development) which I view as a step in the right direction for decentralization of powers and segregation of duties in the ecosystem. Current material development funding comes from James Wo and Barry Silbert's private businesses. Let's add "the public ETC Network" to that list with a built in treasury system and remove third-party dependency for ETC development.

A L2 example, there is an entire DeFi ecosystem that can be ported over to ETC with a dev funding mech built into its foundation. Currently ETH DeFi teams are extorting the third-party ETC money to "Add ETC Support". Heresay: I believe Uniswap wanted something like a million dollars to add ETC, this is not a feasibly approach. Also it is not logical to pay extortion fees when this network can fund this development and link into existing networks due to the permissionless nature of blockchains.

Deeper discussions to be had:

q9f commented 4 years ago

I would emphasize that this call is for treasury only and created two other calls for technical discussion, especially mining algorithm and other protective measures: #333

ghost commented 4 years ago

The idea of a treasury system sounds very appealing, tempting even for others. Once Charles from IOHK joined the conversation the hopes of everyone rose sky high and I welcome that warmly. The drive in his speech is motivating and what he says about innovating and diversification is key towards the way out of this blind alley. Unfortunately that's where the euphoria ends, because the treasury system goes against all principles where open source community stands for. Money solves the solution in your head, projected into the future. Once reality kicks in you will see that money will create more problems than it solves. People who don't have any money will say I'm wrong, they who have money will understand what I'm talking about. Anyways then there's the price and content. As of now I haven't heard a price for the product, implementation, nor for continuous support. Remember that Charles mentioned at least ten times he spent 1.5 million on the solution, he also left this decentralized project to start a governed centralized project of its own and that spirit is rooted in all of his proposals. There's no denying that he likes money and control. The fact there's a miners reward is that they have to invest (meaning risking a return in the future) in physical hardware and pay the bills to keep it running. Yes, developers also need a computer and that also needs juice but doesn't come near the amount invested by miners. I'm not saying here that developers must work for free and they cannot accept any money for the important and sometimes brilliant work they deliver. But saying we try a funding campaign and it didn't work is like saying I tried to wash the car but my arm isn't long enough to get around, try harder! Get creative, just like the innovation that is needed to boost the possibilities for the $etc road map. You will see once tipping becomes effortless and you create value there will be individuals or even groups that will fund your project. Only disbelief can block that reality and if you deliver decent work than the reward will be greater that the meager fund you would've received from the treasury system but therefore you have to earn it. There's also the need for creating a community with more respect towards each other, encouragement, creating a vision and designing a clear path towards that goal without losing the principles that makes the heart of Ethereum Classic pump. Let the Phoenix spread its wings and rise from the ashes! <3

meowsbits commented 4 years ago

In review of the document at A Proposal for An Ethereum Classic Treasury System (PDF here)...

I'm not sure I see an alignment of the interests (and necessary mechanisms) of democracy and the interests of stakeholder rewards in the proposed specification. And if they are not aligned, then what keeps miners from staking only their own votes to garner disproportional and undemocratic marginal rewards on their own stake?... "indirect" supposed externalities, like the fiat price of ETC falling because the Treasury wasn't working?

Have I got something wrong here?

q9f commented 4 years ago

My protocol. I'm sorry for missing some questions and answers, if you have anything to fill in the gaps, please comment below.

attendees (83):

teams check in:

intro by yaz:

proposal by charles:

q&a:

ecip discussion:

yaz closes the call.

appendix - unanswered chat questions:

more questions: https://app.sli.do/event/fxvuq4xl/live/questions

TheEnthusiasticAs commented 4 years ago

The audio record of the call provided by @developerkevin from ETC Cooperative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EOz79tU_xo

jackispm commented 4 years ago

First of all, I am in favor of Treasury, but I don't agree with this preliminary draft( put forwards byt charles )

1.Treasury is used to fund future teams. Don't tell ETC what you did in the past or when you started to support ETC, it is not the reason why you should get funding.

2.Treasury should not provide equal funding for several specific teams. Each team has different contributions, there are also high and low levels of competence among developers, why should Treasury divide the funding equally? That doesn't make sense. Team A works really hard, and team B just writes A few docs and copies A few lines of code, why do they have the same fund?

3.It's ok to build Treasury with smart contracts, but don't expect it to be able to evaluate the contributions of different teams.

"Talk is cheap, show me the code".

4.Why are these teams getting funding? Who are these teams (A legitimate enterprise or an unregistered organization)? How can we trust their financial disclosure? How many developers do they have? Do they have a public resume? Why can't funding support individual developers or non-development teams? Why doesn't the fund go directly to commercial enterprises to pay for development?

5.Charles used tax to compare Treasury, thinking that it was miners' expense for security. I think it's ridiculous. The Internet promises safety first, then miners participate in it, if it is a tax for security, the Treasury should tax exchanges and users, not miner.

6.If Treasury is designed to motivate developers, are non-developers in ETC lab or etc-cope eligible for funding? For example, secretaries, clerks, accountants, bloggers. If they are eligible for funding, and the ETC community has a large number of individual contributors, why can't they get funding?

To sum up, I believe that to achieve a fair Treasury system, there must be committees and voting rights, and mining pools and exchanges should be involved to prevent fraud in the name of development.

DON’T DON’T DON’T Don't try to use Treasury as an opportunity to cash out, no matter what you've paid in the past.

q9f commented 4 years ago

Closing till we have a proposal.