Modification: Recommendation for removal of notaries for abusing Filecoin Plus

[raghavrmadya]

Issue Description

Certain notaries have been found to have abused the Filecoin plus program by awarding DataCap without conducting thorough due diligence and raising flags for collusion

Impact

Proposed Solution(s)

Remove the following notaries from the Filecoin Plus program:

1. ND Labs
2. Newwebgroup
3. Gate.io
4. ipfscan
5. STCloud
6. Tom - Origin storage

Timeline

1. Proposal discussed in Jan 17th, 2023 Governance calls.
2. All notaries in question will pause signing completely
3. Community Discussion until Jan 20th 2023 at 12 noon PST
4. Action taken by RKH based on community consensus

Technical dependencies

RKH singing to remove notaries from multisig

End of POC checkpoint (if applicable)

Risks and mitigations

Related Issues

[raghavrmadya]

Applications in question - https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/852 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/908 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/931 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/947 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/956 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/1085 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/1111 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/1195 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/1205 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/1440

[raghavrmadya]

Further evidence received from community in relation to this proposal -

"Based on the recent analysis over the past few weeks, it has come to light that many of the notaries involved in these applications have been suspended for not adhering to the guidelines of the Filecoin+ program. This further strengthens the suspicion that the miners we are investigating are likely fraudulent.

MinerID's of potential fraud: f01852325 f01852023 f01851482 f01852664 f01852677 f01966534 f01969202 f01964073 f01965334 f01964002 f01938721 f01938718 f01938717 f01938665 f01938714 Here is some information about the interfaces on the locations in question. All of these miners ( f0196***) are located at Zenlayer, but in different geographical locations. However, if you check the IP addresses of these miners, you'll find they all lead to a MikroTik login page. This could just be a firewall for the miner, it's nothing unusual. However, the graphics page is not shielded, so if you visit the IP address 129.227.221.202 (f01965334) at the URL http://129.227.221.202/graphs/, you will find a list of all the interfaces on the Mikrotik router. Additionally, in your browser's tab, you will notice the hostname of the device, which is "hk-ros1." Additionally, if we take a look at a different IP, such as 98.98.147.210 (f01969202) by visiting the URL http://98.98.147.210/graphs/, we see the same hostname in the browser tab and the same interface names. The interface names are: 2818-法兰克福 2819-伦敦 2820-吉隆坡 2821-雅加达 2822-孟买 2823-曼谷 If we translate these we get; 2818-Frankfurt 2819-London 2820-Kuala Lumpur 2821-Jakarta 2822-Mumbai 2823-Bangkok Furthermore, if we examine the locations mentioned in the CID reports of these LDN applications and put the pieces together, it raises some heavy suspicions. It appears that we are not looking at multiple locations, but rather one physical location with multiple VPNs being used to conceal the true location and comply with FIL+ regulations."

[NDLABS-Leo]

Hello RG. @raghavrmadya ND has been actively active in the community as a notary. I often receive signature applications from SLACK through DM me. Besides the LDNs you listed, ND has also left comments for many LDNs, some of which are supported and some are not able to sign for them. Following is the fact and why I was signed for those LDNs: 852: Sign twice. The second time I left a comment and checked the onboarding situation for the client. Before that, the chock bot has not been enabled, so I cannot see more information without any technical tools. 908: No Signature 931: Signed once, and signed in the second round, because the client has done the authentication, the data onboarding situation was compliant before signing, and the chock bot has not been activated at this time. 947: Signed once, for the first round. because RG has asked the questions and the official released the quota, at this time the chock bot has not been activated, we can only review the basic information of the client. 956: No Signature 1085: Signed once, for the first round. because the chock bot is enabled at this time, the chock bot shows the client's onboarding status and all three items meet the standard before signing. 1111: Signed once: In the third round of signing, the chock bot was not enabled at that time, and the user's node ratio is compliant. 1195: No Signature 1205: Signed once: in the second round of signing, because the chock bot is enabled at this time, and the chock bot shows the client's status and all three items meet the standard before signing 1440: No Signature When ND is currently reviewing LDN, it will mainly based on the following rules:

1. In the absence of a check bot, ND mainly reviews the basic information of users (user KYC, subject authenticity, data samples), and the encapsulation ratio of nodes does not exceed 25%
2. In the case of check bot, ND will mainly refer to the information of check bot.

Regarding the fact that these LDNs have a common IP forgery, ND is not aware of it. It is difficult for us to know that these LDNs are all IP forgery without investing a lot of technical inspections. And, if only one notary signs more LDNs, it will be deleted by the Filecoin Plus program, Whether this decision is too arbitrary. Because active notaries are bound to have a higher risk of being deleted.

Also, of all the LDNs you listed, there are many other notaries who did more signatures but weren't affected, and gate.io we don't seem to see its signatures yet are listed (if anyone can sort it out in full It would be great to come out with all the signatures), Please tell us the detailed logic of making this list.

Once again, RKH is requested to carefully consider this situation.

[newwebgroup]

Hi RG, @raghavrmadya First of all, we are surprised and saddened to be on the above list. We don't know what the specific reasons are in this list of violations?

I reviewed and organized the LDN mentioned above and documented the time period and reasons for my signature. The document is as follows: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1esT0hHy7RmHFQhflFOvn1IWyCt0GfSAvqFgnD7I0zt8/edit?usp=sharing

We signed on to five of the 10 issue LDNS raised by the community. The total number of signatures is 10. We signed many of these LDNS in the first round, and after doing the basic KYC, we were willing to support them going forward. I have carefully reviewed each of these signatures again, and we think we did the right thing under the circumstances. If we were to go back in time again, we would still be in favor. I believe the vast majority of other notary public would have made the same decision.

Notary public is a public welfare post, there has been no incentive system. So even though we have about 50 notary public in V3, only about 20 are actually active. There are more than 1,000 applications for LDN. As an active notary public, in addition to signing the above LDNS, we also check and sign many LDNS from the Slack #fil-plus-application-review channel. We've always been active notaries, and we think we've helped a lot of clients move forward.

Since the entry of V3 notary, we have made progress step by step. In the earliest days, the notary public team did almost no KYC work. With the introduction of T&T, notaries are obligated to do KYC work, but most notaries can only do simple KYC verification through the Filplus website checking SP allocation ratio and email verification. With the CID Checker, the granularity of KYC goes even further. We can check with the CID Checker if there is CID sharing, if SP locations are evenly distributed, and so on. But CW practices and mentioned more difficult KYC checks are difficult for most notary public. (For example: CID test whether the SP search channel is normal, whether the SP uses VPN, etc.) This includes me. Since the entry of V3, we have been constantly learning. A few days ago, Cw pointed out our mistake in signing #1085, and we corrected it immediately. At that time, we flagged it to RG and tried to contact Cw through Slcak, hoping to learn more skills about KYC from him.

All in all, our notary may not do a very good job, but we have paid a lot of energy to work here, and have been learning and making progress, and have been active in the community to help more people.

If we judge whether a notary cheats only by the number and time interval of signing a certain LDN, this is not agreed by us. Looking at all the LDNS, there are many cases where one notary has signed multiple times, or two notary have signed within a short period of time, which does not mean cheating. We think the key question is "What is KYC? How?"

How to do a good job of KYC? Further help notary public without too many concerns about the work We believe that T&T needs to set up a standard of inspection when the LDN meets certain conditions before the notary can sign for support. If there is no inspection standard, it is a very dangerous thing for these active notary public. Because everyone uses KYC differently, everyone has different KYC abilities. If Notary public A considers the LDN compliant and signs it, Notary Public B may consider it inadmissible after checking it. If notary A signs a lot of fraudulent LDN when he thinks the KYC work has been completed, and eventually leads to the cancellation of his notary. This, for the vast majority of notary public like Notary A, will only be more inactive.

We hope the T&T team will think again

[stcloudlisa]

Hey, I am Lisa, I am from the STCould, STCould focus and layout Filecoin in 2017, in the first test, second test, space race and the main network have good results, we also have been concerned about the development of the community, took out 10 million to set up the IPFS investment fund.

Among the 10 LDNs you mentioned, 3 of them we did not sign, 5 were signed only once and 2 were signed twice, 80% of which were signed before the bot was developed. Only 2 LDNs were signed even after bot was developed because bot showed everything was fine, no CID sharing, reasonable SP allocation, almost no duplicate data, and reasonable backups.

Here are our statistics.

852: signed 1 time, signed before bot came out

908: No signature

956: Signed twice, both times before the bot was developed

1085: signed once, before the bot came out

1111: signed once, chock bot not enabled

1195: not signed

1205: signed once, bot showed normal before signing

1440：No signature

931：Signed twice, respectively the first and fourth round of signatures, the bot was not yet out when signing

947：Signed once, bot check no problem before signing

RG, here, I want to say sorry, I am a copywriter, I am not technical. I am in charge of ledger because I joined STCould in 2019, I started writing articles for IPFS and Filecoin, it was still in development testing, first, many people don't understand what is the decentralized storage ? Second, more people wanted to know about the development progress of Filecoin, including the content of the network upgrade, when the main web will be online, etc. Third, in order to get faster content about IPFS and Filecoin, I joined slack, read community discussions, read github proposals, and then write articles. Since I wrote the content of the company's notary application, I have been responsible for ledger from my side.

Here are some links to my articles. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/jA0sDjP2FxFPvCaJr3LqFw https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/hso4uTZFG0VRV_ZqvLkz1Q https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/5zv7T-pWgwxavD7NRWRqkg https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/26YCBV0EzHdxlRfda7cNxw https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/hYqMtNK6EbbDDVOIk_Ye_w https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/URqLTz2dbtSV-7xYLFuPAQ

I am sorry that I did not identify the VPN. In order to prevent similar things from happening again, stcould set up a 3-5 person notary team, all signatures need to be discussed by the team and approved by multiple levels before they can be signed, at the same time, I will actively study and improve my ability, I hope you can carry out relevant training work.

[ipfscn]

Hello RG. @raghavrmadya Founded in 2017, IPFSCN is an IPFS-based metaverse community. We focus on IPFS and Filecoin. We have sponsored hackathons before. We hold various events, AMAs, and output articles and videos almost every quarter around the world.

We have carefully checked the LDN you have listed, among them, we have only signed for three LDNs, and only once,

1085: In the first round of signing, I asked the customer to send a domain name email to confirm the identity, and at the same time, asked the customer about the SP situation.

947: In the second round of signing, I checked the distribution of sp. Before I signed, the bot was not activated.

852: The third round of signing, the bot is not enabled, I checked the sp and its allocation, I think it is reasonable, so I helped the customer.

Our team's signature has very strict restrictions and is reviewed by multiple people. The ledger manager and the github manager are not the same person. Therefore, the signature must reach a consensus of at least 2 people.

Generally speaking, we are more supportive of helping customers in the first round, just like you choose to pass the application for customers, this is the first step of trust, but we will pay close attention to the distribution of customers for all signatures, once there is a problem, We will stop distribution immediately.

[Tom-OriginStorage]

Hi RG, @raghavrmadya OriginStorage is a dedicated participant of the Filecoin project, having played an active role in both the testing phase and the space race. Our team made significant contributions to the project, including a sector detection tool program, which greatly assisted others in performing sector detection. We successfully applied for and were approved as a notary in the third round of applications, and have remained a dedicated member of the notary community, committed to supporting the continued development of the Filecoin ecosystem. We have maintained open lines of communication with various departments and have been regular attendees at meetings, offering internal presentations to keep our team informed and engaged.

The following is our official merged PR filecoin-project/lotus/pull/7844 filecoin-project/lotus/pull/6635

Regarding our signing cases: 852: Signed five times, this LDN time is relatively early, before the check bot was enabled. Each time the signature was also communicated with the applicant and then signed. 908: No signature was made. 931: Signed three times, all before the check bot was enabled. 947: Signed three times, the first two signatures were before the check bot was enabled, and the third signature was after the check bot was enabled. According to the results of the check bot inspection, it met the rules and there was no duplicate CID. 956: Signed three times, all before the check bot was enabled. 1085: Signed once, which was in the first round, and the rest of the notaries had asked questions and completed KYC. 1111: Signed four times, all before the check bot was enabled. 1195: Signed once, which was in the first round, and the rest of the notaries had asked questions and completed KYC. 1205: Signed once, which was in the first round, and the rest of the notaries had asked questions and completed KYC. 1440: Signed once, which was in the first round, and let the applicant send a KYC email to assist in KYC.

We have been putting in a lot of effort for the Filecoin community and were more active before the check bot was enabled. However, after its implementation, we found that some LDN packages did not comply with the rules, so we set a standard for our own signatures and rejected many signatures afterwards.

Regarding the VPN problem in the project, we do not think it is appropriate for the notary to take responsibility for this and conduct inspections in this area, as it requires a lot of resources and most notaries do not have this ability. We believe that the rules of the check bot need to be gradually improved, similar to a firewall. We suggest holding similar hackathons in the future to search for problems and improve the rules, and we will also improve our signature rules in the future.

Lastly, many of the above nodes are located in the United States, Singapore, Korea, and Hong Kong and are not listed in the VPN proxy list. We are committed to investigating and rectifying these cases by first halting the signing of these LDNs, in addition to continuing to provide the utmost assistance to the Trust & Transparency team in investigating the service providers involved.

[cryptowhizzard]

Hi RG, @raghavrmadya First of all, we are surprised and saddened to be on the above list. We don't know what the specific reasons are in this list of violations?

I reviewed and organized the LDN mentioned above and documented the time period and reasons for my signature. The document is as follows: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1esT0hHy7RmHFQhflFOvn1IWyCt0GfSAvqFgnD7I0zt8/edit?usp=sharing

We signed on to five of the 10 issue LDNS raised by the community. The total number of signatures is 10. We signed many of these LDNS in the first round, and after doing the basic KYC, we were willing to support them going forward. I have carefully reviewed each of these signatures again, and we think we did the right thing under the circumstances. If we were to go back in time again, we would still be in favor. I believe the vast majority of other notary public would have made the same decision.

Notary public is a public welfare post, there has been no incentive system. So even though we have about 50 notary public in V3, only about 20 are actually active. There are more than 1,000 applications for LDN. As an active notary public, in addition to signing the above LDNS, we also check and sign many LDNS from the Slack #fil-plus-application-review channel. We've always been active notaries, and we think we've helped a lot of clients move forward.

Since the entry of V3 notary, we have made progress step by step. In the earliest days, the notary public team did almost no KYC work. With the introduction of T&T, notaries are obligated to do KYC work, but most notaries can only do simple KYC verification through the Filplus website checking SP allocation ratio and email verification. With the CID Checker, the granularity of KYC goes even further. We can check with the CID Checker if there is CID sharing, if SP locations are evenly distributed, and so on. But CW practices and mentioned more difficult KYC checks are difficult for most notary public. (For example: CID test whether the SP search channel is normal, whether the SP uses VPN, etc.) This includes me. Since the entry of V3, we have been constantly learning. A few days ago, Cw pointed out our mistake in signing #1085, and we corrected it immediately. At that time, we flagged it to RG and tried to contact Cw through Slcak, hoping to learn more skills about KYC from him.

All in all, our notary may not do a very good job, but we have paid a lot of energy to work here, and have been learning and making progress, and have been active in the community to help more people.

If we judge whether a notary cheats only by the number and time interval of signing a certain LDN, this is not agreed by us. Looking at all the LDNS, there are many cases where one notary has signed multiple times, or two notary have signed within a short period of time, which does not mean cheating. We think the key question is "What is KYC? How?"

How to do a good job of KYC? Further help notary public without too many concerns about the work We believe that T&T needs to set up a standard of inspection when the LDN meets certain conditions before the notary can sign for support. If there is no inspection standard, it is a very dangerous thing for these active notary public. Because everyone uses KYC differently, everyone has different KYC abilities. If Notary public A considers the LDN compliant and signs it, Notary Public B may consider it inadmissible after checking it. If notary A signs a lot of fraudulent LDN when he thinks the KYC work has been completed, and eventually leads to the cancellation of his notary. This, for the vast majority of notary public like Notary A, will only be more inactive.

We hope the T&T team will think again

Hello,

I have given this some time and thought before writing my response here. Last week a lot of turbulence was on the community and the FIL+ program.

Reading the answer it comes down to "We did not know/We were not aware". However this is not totally true. There are a few critical things i want to highlight here.

For example: https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/960 For example: https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/1028 For example: https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/793

This application (and some others) show that ND Labs has been involved in CID sharing and has been involved in the group of people who had wrong intentions when they applied for the datacap and as notary. This alone should be enough to remove a notary if the evidence support this.* A notary has to uphold the reputation of the community. It has been said multiple times when you applied as notary-> In case of any doubt, be restrictive. As notary the room to make errors is very limited, let alone involvement in CID sharing. If we allow this as community I can call a dozen of people for elections round 5, get them onboarded and sign on any of the applications we want.... And we all know that this is not the way to go and we all know the red lines have been passed.

Besides the LDNs you listed, ND has also left comments for many LDNs, some of which are supported and some are not able to sign for them.

I have not read other comments then "We are supportive" , "Everything looks beautifull", "Willing to support" but not once a comment of doubt and that you were withholding on signing.

Now, i have repeated this a few times but i will repeat it again. https://filecoinproject.slack.com/archives/C01DLAPKDGX/p1654626559136159

It has been repeated that everything is ok there and that this was all a mistake. NDlabs , Ipollo, NFTstar, Bitrise etc. All these notary's would not be signing on their own applications and would be "good" for the community but looking at #960 / #1028 Now the evidence tells us he situation is just different.

Edit: I made a* for evidence. CID sharing ( using someone else his data while you say that your are going to store different data in your LDN ) is offcourse wrong. However there is a small chance that this data can be legit if the the dataCID was the first one to appear on chain and was on / in the original LDN.

[lamborghiniandy]

Hi, I have invested in mining filecoin. I think I need to speak something from the perspective of a common filecoin mining investor.

First of all, mayber you don't know, mining cc sector is no longer profitable, given the coin price and output every year right now, mining cc sectors will be a loss for investors. Can you imagine the influence of 100 million collateral filecoin being released from cc sectors and being dumped? That is also the reason why the QAP gradually decrease in these days, and it will continuously decrease if miners cannot survive. My machine was forced to leave outside of China, which also means high migration fee and higher hosting fee. Miner ecosystem is the basic ecosystem of the entire filecoin network, if no miners can survive how do you expect filecoin can survice in the bear market? Idealistic is good but operating such a big project cannot only count on idealistic. Without 10 times QAP, all investors of mining will be dead.

Secondly, PL should make an executable standard to make miners and notaries can work with the same criterion to guarantee maximum fairness. If there is no standard or the standard is vague, there must be weakness of entire notory system. Right now the standard is far from perfect. And in my sense, it is always difficult to tell whether a LDN is real or not essentially, all of the current rules can be avoided. In the real world, Amazon does not care whether your data is real or not, he only cares whether do you pay for the storage. So how can filecoin storage can attract users pay for their data is the point. But now many people even buy data from otc market, I know the situation also happen in Europe and North America and all over the world. Because no people want to pay for the storage right now. In this sense, 99% of the current LDN does not make sense. The right definition of real data should be paid storage, but now 99% of the data is the opposite. So if PL want the ecosystem be fair, you should perfect your definition of "real data" and make it executable by everyone, rather than punish the notaries for the misunderstaning of the vague rules. Since you are the rule maker, you need to guarantee procedure fairness rather than substantive fairness just like how federal constitution rule the United States. Otherwise in the future, 200 notaries will have 200 criterions, and how will you justify which one is correct or real? In one word, as long as you make a rule, even if the ldn is shit, it should be "real data" in the system. Then what you need to do is to continuously perfect the executable rules rather than punish who find the loophole of the rules. Right?

So we can draw an easy conclusion that the if filecoin network lack a clear rule of real data for notaries, the quarrel will not be ceased forever. At the same time, cc sectors is no longer profitable, meaning that if investors can not turn to dc mining, all of the investors will turn to other projects, like eth, aleo or some more attractive projects. If you cannot retain the existing investor, how can you attract outside potential investor?

[kernelogic]

Agree with lambo-boy above regarding the price point, if CC is profitable, there won't be much FIL+ demand (to abuse) to begin with. That's probably why we are seeing a spike of LDN applications in recent months even though the program already exists for 1.5 years.

[herrehesse]

https://filecoinproject.slack.com/archives/C01DLAPKDGX/p1674206285725749

[herrehesse]

@lamborghiniandy " Without 10 times QAP, all investors of mining will be dead."

Let them, this is how a fair protocol should work. My background is mining since 2013, you do not think I haven't seen my fair share of bankruptcies and miners struggling? This is how it game works. Trying to cheat the system to survive, and allowing that to happen is the destruction of everyone, the whole community.

Letting the miners who did not take a price drop or their operational costs into account go bankrupt, is actually healthy for the ecosystem in the long run. Keeping them alive, by accepting bad behavior, hurts every single one inside the ecosystem.

[cryptowhizzard]

@lamborghiniandy " Without 10 times QAP, all investors of mining will be dead."

The reason our investors here believed in Filecoin is that this coin could actually make a difference because of the use case. Instead of having to fight against ASIC's and Cheap polluting energy that is bad for our environment, there is a use case for real data. This is where we (As Europeans) can be competitive with fast internet connections and with storage that is real and compliant.

What happens now is that we (Europeans) have to pay up ( FIP-36 fe. ) for those who maximized their profits with CC mining ( Doing custom source code and other things got get that done as fast as possible ) and cheating the FIL+ system. The choice of words you use is tale telling (I do appreciate your honesty!!!)

Datacap mining is happening where people store data without actual content (fake). Thus this means that the good players who actually do download real data, pack it and distribute it, where costs are involved, get scrutinized by the DC-Miners and will go bankrupt with them. And this is where the notary's come in. They should check LDN's and be the safeguard for FIL+ to stop this from happening. And this is what #811 is about. Because on all LDN's the above notary's did not hit the breaks on one single application.

For my 2 cents.... i am in favor of getting real data on the network (where-ever that is in this world / planet) and i am going to continue keep doing my due diligence for as long as it takes for the benefit of the community and a healthy Filecoin ecosystem.

[cryptowhizzard]

Hello,

I have commented here on NDlabs yesterday Doing further due dilligence today i stumbled on #377 and #356.

Same thing, same response.

[Dominic92]

Hello,

I have commented here on NDlabs yesterday Doing further due dilligence today i stumbled on #377 and #356.

Same thing, same response.

First of all, thanks @cryptowhizzard for doing so much real work and spending so much time cleaning up the community and the Filecoin network.

Secondly, I have also done research on ND's applications. Unfortunately, as you said, a lot of fraud and duplicate CID are there. This can only show that ND Group is an SP, he/she is using different identities or the company grabs DC and makes profits from it. https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/960 https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-plus-large-datasets/issues/1048

Last, don't forget the old friends of ND Groups, these are the upcoming V4 notaries, I don't think they can continue to be notaries. At the same time, I also hope that the T&T Team @raghavrmadya @Kevin-FF-USA can clean up the community through this time, and return the network to a healthy status in 2023

https://github.com/filecoin-project/notary-governance/issues/765 https://github.com/filecoin-project/notary-governance/issues/721 https://github.com/filecoin-project/notary-governance/issues/693 https://github.com/filecoin-project/notary-governance/issues/716

[hover0630]

@lamborghiniandy“没有10倍QAP，挖矿的投资者都死定了。”

让他们吧，这就是公平协议的运作方式。我的背景是从 2013 年开始挖矿，你认为我没有看到我公平份额的破产和矿工挣扎吗？这就是游戏的运作方式。试图欺骗系统以求生存，并允许这种情况发生是对每个人、整个社区的毁灭。

让没有考虑价格下跌或运营成本的矿工破产，从长远来看实际上对生态系统是健康的。通过接受不良行为让他们活着，会伤害生态系统中的每一个人。

I believe that miners not only want to make a profit, but also want to make some contributions to the filecoin community, but the current problem is that miners were at a loss and could't survive. Now PL and the community should unite to help miners survive. The biggest cost of miners is machine purchase and IDC expenditure. I am a miner. I hope you or PL can give me advice on how to reduce IDC costs?

[lamborghiniandy]

@lamborghiniandy " Without 10 times QAP, all investors of mining will be dead."

Let them, this is how a fair protocol should work. My background is mining since 2013, you do not think I haven't seen my fair share of bankruptcies and miners struggling? This is how it game works. Trying to cheat the system to survive, and allowing that to happen is the destruction of everyone, the whole community.

Letting the miners who did not take a price drop or their operational costs into account go bankrupt, is actually healthy for the ecosystem in the long run. Keeping them alive, by accepting bad behavior, hurts every single one inside the ecosystem.

Filecoin mining is very different from bitcoin mining. Have you imagined the impact of all the collateral of cc sectors being realeased and dumped in the market? When Bitcoin miners are struggling, there could not be such high selling pressure in the secondary market. I know you will say that price does not matter, it will recover automaticlly. But the reality is many coin went to zero in the past cycles. The consensus of filecoin cannot be compared with Bitcoin, and the ecosystem robustness of filecoin can not be compared with ETH. So have can you guarantee that filecoin won't die if so many filecoins be dumped? Afterall, this is the first time that Filecoin enduring a bear market.

[Dominic92]

@lamborghiniandy“没有10倍QAP，挖矿的投资者都死定了。” 让他们吧，这就是公平协议的运作方式。我的背景是从 2013 年开始挖矿，你认为我没有看到我公平份额的破产和矿工挣扎吗？这就是游戏的运作方式。试图欺骗系统以求生存，并允许这种情况发生是对每个人、整个社区的毁灭。 让没有考虑价格下跌或运营成本的矿工破产，从长远来看实际上对生态系统是健康的。通过接受不良行为让他们活着，会伤害生态系统中的每一个人。

I believe that miners not only want to make a profit, but also want to make some contributions to the filecoin community, but the current problem is that miners were at a loss and could't survive. Now PL and the community should unite to help miners survive. The biggest cost of miners is machine purchase and IDC expenditure. I am a miner. I hope you or PL can give me advice on how to reduce IDC costs?

Come on man, go check with your datacenter salesman, not PL not FIL+ team

[Dominic92]

Filecoin mining is very different from bitcoin mining. Have you imagined the impact of all the collateral of cc sectors being realeased and dumped in the market? When Bitcoin miners are struggling, there could not be such high selling pressure in the secondary market. I know you will say that price does not matter, it will recover automaticlly. But the reality is many coin went to zero in the past cycles. The consensus of filecoin cannot be compared with Bitcoin, and the ecosystem robustness of filecoin can not be compared with ETH. So have can you guarantee that filecoin won't die if so many filecoins be dumped? Afterall, this is the first time that Filecoin enduring a bear market.

What you are talking about is market value management. I don’t think this is what the FIL+ team is going to do. You should ask the CEL team, they are the core people.

Data cannot be faked. If fake data is allowed to flood now, then I believe Filecoin will die faster

I think it is inappropriate for you to use FIL to compare BTC and ETH. The Filecoin network is a young child and needs more participants to love her and accompany her to grow up instead of consuming her and profiting from it like ND Labs, Newebgroup,Tom - Origin storage etc.

If you are also a SP, please join me and @cryptowhizzard to make the network purer, cleaner and useful.

As for the mass selling in the secondary market you mentioned, who can stop this ? As an SP, didn't you sell your FIL in the past time?

[herrehesse]

There is actually no selling “threat” at all when you look at the price. You need to watch the volume. The bad actors have lost their “ace” with threats of selling a long time ago and can now dump their holdings without the price moving too much. A billion in market volume can absorb a few millions of filecoin being sold.

Let them.

[lamborghiniandy]

@lamborghiniandy " Without 10 times QAP, all investors of mining will be dead."

The reason our investors here believed in Filecoin is that this coin could actually make a difference because of the use case. Instead of having to fight against ASIC's and Cheap polluting energy that is bad for our environment, there is a use case for real data. This is where we (As Europeans) can be competitive with fast internet connections and with storage that is real and compliant.

What happens now is that we (Europeans) have to pay up ( FIP-36 fe. ) for those who maximized their profits with CC mining ( Doing custom source code and other things got get that done as fast as possible ) and cheating the FIL+ system. The choice of words you use is tale telling (I do appreciate your honesty!!!)

Datacap mining is happening where people store data without actual content (fake). Thus this means that the good players who actually do download real data, pack it and distribute it, where costs are involved, get scrutinized by the DC-Miners and will go bankrupt with them. And this is where the notary's come in. They should check LDN's and be the safeguard for FIL+ to stop this from happening. And this is what #811 is about. Because on all LDN's the above notary's did not hit the breaks on one single application.

For my 2 cents.... i am in favor of getting real data on the network (where-ever that is in this world / planet) and i am going to continue keep doing my due diligence for as long as it takes for the benefit of the community and a healthy Filecoin ecosystem.

Hi Cryptowhizzard, I highly appreciate your good job in finding real data. But it seems that you are avoiding my argument that how can you tell the data is "real".

As a filecoin believer and investor, I definitely wish it can grow better and beat Amazon sometime. And I totally agree with you that notary should not abuse the dc distribution. But my point is that the rule or guideline for notary is very ambiguous. I worked in a venture capital before and came to due diligence quite often. A thorough due diligence takes one month to three months usually. Even though we take 3 months reviewing the business, we cannot guarentee all the things being reviewed is real. If notary A take 1 week conducting due diligence investigate for an application, can he blame the other notories who just use 3 days in doing the dd irresponsible ? In a real world, it is very difficult to find out the truth, but what they can do is to follow a thoroughly designed rules which can improve the fraud cost. Now the guideline is very ambiguous, so what we need to do is to improve the rules. Unless the notary is violating the rules with obvious evidence, notaries should not be punished. Who should be blamed for the ambiguous rules? I think every community member like you who have a deep participance and wide influence in filecoin ecosytem should be blamed for the imperfect rule. The situation also happens in the United States. If criminal use a loophole of the law, he won't be punished. But it will drive the Legislative Council to perfect their laws. Only guarenteeing procedure justice can protect the society justice at best.

In one word, blaming people using the loophole of the rule is acctually avoiding the responsibility of not setting the rule clearly.

[Dominic92]

@lamborghiniandy " Without 10 times QAP, all investors of mining will be dead." The reason our investors here believed in Filecoin is that this coin could actually make a difference because of the use case. Instead of having to fight against ASIC's and Cheap polluting energy that is bad for our environment, there is a use case for real data. This is where we (As Europeans) can be competitive with fast internet connections and with storage that is real and compliant. What happens now is that we (Europeans) have to pay up ( FIP-36 fe. ) for those who maximized their profits with CC mining ( Doing custom source code and other things got get that done as fast as possible ) and cheating the FIL+ system. The choice of words you use is tale telling (I do appreciate your honesty!!!) Datacap mining is happening where people store data without actual content (fake). Thus this means that the good players who actually do download real data, pack it and distribute it, where costs are involved, get scrutinized by the DC-Miners and will go bankrupt with them. And this is where the notary's come in. They should check LDN's and be the safeguard for FIL+ to stop this from happening. And this is what #811 is about. Because on all LDN's the above notary's did not hit the breaks on one single application. For my 2 cents.... i am in favor of getting real data on the network (where-ever that is in this world / planet) and i am going to continue keep doing my due diligence for as long as it takes for the benefit of the community and a healthy Filecoin ecosystem.

Hi Cryptowhizzard, I highly appreciate your good job in finding real data. But it seems that you are avoiding my argument that how can you tell the data is "real".

As a filecoin believer and investor, I definitely wish it can grow better and beat Amazon sometime. And I totally agree with you that notary should not abuse the dc distribution. But my point is that the rule or guideline for notary is very ambiguous. I worked in a venture capital before and came to due diligence quite often. A thorough due diligence takes one month to three months usually. Even though we take 3 months reviewing the business, we cannot guarentee all the things being reviewed is real. If notary A take 1 week conducting due diligence investigate for an application, can he blame the other notories who just use 3 days in doing the dd irresponsible ? In a real world, it is very difficult to find out the truth, but what they can do is to follow a thoroughly designed rules which can improve the fraud cost. Now the guideline is very ambiguous, so what we need to do is to improve the rules. Unless the notary is violating the rules with obvious evidence, notaries should not be punished. Who should be blamed for the ambiguous rules? I think every community member like you who have a deep participance and wide influence in filecoin ecosytem should be blamed for the imperfect rule. The situation also happens in the United States. If criminal use a loophole of the law, he won't be punished. But it will drive the Legislative Council to perfect their laws. Only guarenteeing procedure justice can protect the society justice at best.

In one word, blaming people using the loophole of the rule is acctually avoiding the responsibility of not setting the rule clearly.

@lamborghiniandy What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

What would you do if you were FIL+ team or RG?

[Dominic92]

Take the long view, not the short one, gentlemen. The bear market is just around the corner~

[lamborghiniandy]

ke the network purer,

I didn't sell filecoin really. That is why I still want to discuss here. There is a Chinese proverb saying" Fish does not live in pure water". Wish the water to be pure just relying on notary's integrity is too idealistic. What we need to do is making a clear rule which can be executable and can increase the cost of fraud. Blockchain is attractive because we can input game theory and many token economics into the code right? Now the tokeneconomics is far from perfect, but we are trying to live with the broken rule, is that correct?

[lamborghiniandy]

blaming people using the loophole of the rule is acctually avoiding the responsibility of not setting the rule clearly.

@lamborghiniandy What you do not want

I admit I have not done much to the perfecting the notary rule. But at least I am not ignoring the problem and leading the discussion to the right direction. If I was RG of PL people, I will grant or incentivize ppl with better notary governing rule, and I won't wasting my time using the outdated rule governing the fast developing community.

[cryptowhizzard]

I didn't sell filecoin really. That is why I still want to discuss here. There is a Chinese proverb saying" Fish does not live in pure water". Wish the water to be pure just relying on notary's integrity is too idealistic. What we need to do is making a clear rule which can be executable and can increase the cost of fraud. Blockchain is attractive because we can input game theory and many token economics into the code right? Now the tokeneconomics is far from perfect, but we are trying to live with the broken rule, is that correct?

———

No that is not correct. The rules are in fact clear, hence thats why these notary’s are up for removal.

The debate is about what the sanctions should be. As notary one needs to be a person with status, carefull, restrictive and free from things that should not be done (CID Sharing). Whatever the reason is, it shall not change the outcome.

[lamborghiniandy]

When the price was 20 I thought as same as you, so I bought more. When price drop to 10 I still thought the same as you. Who can guarentee filecoin cannot go to zero? The private equity price was less than 1 usd. And many policemen confiscated a lot of filecoin without any cost. I had invested more than 50 million usd in filecoin as well as filecoin miner, that is why I am more worried about the price than you. And if the CC sectors cannot retain, then 100 million of the coin might be dumped. I believe they will not be happy to sell the coin at such a low price, but they have no choice because they need to survive.

[lamborghiniandy]

I didn't sell filecoin really. That is why I still want to discuss here. There is a Chinese proverb saying" Fish does not live in pure water". Wish the water to be pure just relying on notary's integrity is too idealistic. What we need to do is making a clear rule which can be executable and can increase the cost of fraud. Blockchain is attractive because we can input game theory and many token economics into the code right? Now the tokeneconomics is far from perfect, but we are trying to live with the broken rule, is that correct?

———

No that is not correct. The rules are in fact clear, hence thats why these notary’s are up for removal.

The debate is about what the sanctions should be. As notary one needs to be a person with status, carefull, restrictive and free from things that should not be done (CID Sharing). Whatever the reason is, it shall not change the outcome.

I am sorry but you are wrong. The rule is ambiguous. You can view some discussion here.(https://github.com/filecoin-project/notary-governance/issues/813). @herrehesse propose some better rules but still not clear enough for hundreds of notaries to follow. I admire his deep thinking in the rules. And that is the reason why I want to share my thoughts with him. The rules should be easy to follow regradless of notary's experience just as ethereum validators.

[cryptowhizzard]

I didn't sell filecoin really. That is why I still want to discuss here. There is a Chinese proverb saying" Fish does not live in pure water". Wish the water to be pure just relying on notary's integrity is too idealistic. What we need to do is making a clear rule which can be executable and can increase the cost of fraud. Blockchain is attractive because we can input game theory and many token economics into the code right? Now the tokeneconomics is far from perfect, but we are trying to live with the broken rule, is that correct?

——— No that is not correct. The rules are in fact clear, hence thats why these notary’s are up for removal. The debate is about what the sanctions should be. As notary one needs to be a person with status, carefull, restrictive and free from things that should not be done (CID Sharing). Whatever the reason is, it shall not change the outcome.

I am sorry but you are wrong. The rule is ambiguous. You can view some discussion here.(#813). @herrehesse propose some better rules but still not clear enough for hundreds of notaries to follow. I admire his deep thinking in the rules. And that is the reason why I want to share my thoughts with him. The rules should be easy to follow regradless of notary's experience just as ethereum validators.

I am sorry, but what herrehesse proposed were rules for SP’s and FIL+, not rules for notary’s how they should behave.

We are talking about notary’s here and notary’s have been well informed and well instructed by the governance team. Apart from what i wrote above there is another quote from Kevin you can verify yourself when you watch back the notary call video’s … i will state it here “In case of ANY doubt, do not sign”. It is litteraly stated over and over again

[lamborghiniandy]

As I said before, only if ppl who are willing to pay for theri data storage, that is the real data and real use case. But now, more than 90% of the data are being stored for free, and in many cases, sp even needs to buy data from everywhere, which means sp rather than the client pays for the data storage. How valuable can we expect for this kind of data? Clients are not willing to pay for their data, meanwhile we are saying the data are valuable. It is ridiculous!!! In this sense, even the data provided by reputable institutions cannot be called real data. So we need to find the different use scenario other than Amazon and compete with them in this dimension, maybe sexy video or sensitive data. But go back to our discuss, under the current fram, the free data cannot be called real data. What is the use of storing free data? How valuable can you expect if the client is not willing to pay for their data?

[cryptowhizzard]

When the price was 20 I thought as same as you, so I bought more. When price drop to 10 I still thought the same as you. Who can guarentee filecoin cannot go to zero? The private equity price was less than 1 usd. And many policemen confiscated a lot of filecoin without any cost. I had invested more than 50 million usd in filecoin as well as filecoin miner, that is why I am more worried about the price than you. And if the CC sectors cannot retain, then 100 million of the coin might be dumped. I believe they will not be happy to sell the coin at such a low price, but they have no choice because they need to survive.

That’s something not relevant in this discussion for the removal of a notary. Economics might cause notary’s to be bribed by SP’s who are in dispair, however even if someone has no money, stealing it from others is no option

[cryptowhizzard]

As I said before, only if ppl who are willing to pay for theri data storage, that is the real data and real use case. But now, more than 90% of the data are being stored for free, and in many cases, sp even needs to buy data from everywhere, which means sp rather than the client pays for the data storage. How valuable can we expect for this kind of data?

Very! Real data, Real retrieval, Real showcases make investors consider our ecosystem. This is why FIL+ was designed.

Clients are not willing to pay for their data, meanwhile we are saying the data are valuable. It is ridiculous!!!

In fact i have been talking to a client last week who told me that he was happy that finally someone was stepping in and stop the destruction of FIL by the bad actors in our ecosystem. He will invest and store his data now that he knows these things are beeing dealt with.

In this sense, even the data provided by reputable institutions cannot be called real data. So we need to find the different use scenario other than Amazon and compete with them in this dimension, maybe sexy video or sensitive data. But go back to our discuss, under the current fram, the free data cannot be called real data. What is the use of storing free data? How valuable can you expect if the client is not willing to pay for their data?

[lamborghiniandy]

When the price was 20 I thought as same as you, so I bought more. When price drop to 10 I still thought the same as you. Who can guarentee filecoin cannot go to zero? The private equity price was less than 1 usd. And many policemen confiscated a lot of filecoin without any cost. I had invested more than 50 million usd in filecoin as well as filecoin miner, that is why I am more worried about the price than you. And if the CC sectors cannot retain, then 100 million of the coin might be dumped. I believe they will not be happy to sell the coin at such a low price, but they have no choice because they need to survive.

That’s something not relevant in this discussion for the removal of a notary. Economics might cause notary’s to be bribed by SP’s who are in dispair, however even if someone has no money, stealing it from others is no option

My point is quite simple. Removal should be conducted under a clear rule made before. If you can find sufficient evidence they violate the rule, it is ok to remove them. Two premises are "sufficient evidence" and "clear rule". If notary use the loophole, you can call it cheat maybe, but you cannot remove them. What you need to blame is the unclear rule.

[lamborghiniandy]

If sp can earn from storage, then there will not be so fierce quarrel. The percentage of paid storage is very limited, it is very likely to be less than 10%. Shall we remove all of these free data? Since they are not real data in real sense.

[cryptowhizzard]

When the price was 20 I thought as same as you, so I bought more. When price drop to 10 I still thought the same as you. Who can guarentee filecoin cannot go to zero? The private equity price was less than 1 usd. And many policemen confiscated a lot of filecoin without any cost. I had invested more than 50 million usd in filecoin as well as filecoin miner, that is why I am more worried about the price than you. And if the CC sectors cannot retain, then 100 million of the coin might be dumped. I believe they will not be happy to sell the coin at such a low price, but they have no choice because they need to survive.

That’s something not relevant in this discussion for the removal of a notary. Economics might cause notary’s to be bribed by SP’s who are in dispair, however even if someone has no money, stealing it from others is no option

My point is quite simple. Removal should be conducted under a clear rule made before. If you can find sufficient evidence they violate the rule, it is ok to remove them.

We did.

Two premises are "sufficient evidence" and "clear rule". If notary use the loophole, you can call it cheat maybe, but you cannot remove them. What you need to blame is the unclear rule.

There was no loophole. CID sharing ( storing someone else his data while you applied your LDN to store data of another kind) for the benefit of getting datacap and revenue is just what it is.

Notary’s should be of impeccable conduct. Above are not anymore

[cryptowhizzard]

If sp can earn from storage, then there will not be so fierce quarrel. The percentage of paid storage is very limited, it is very likely to be less than 10%. Shall we remove all of these free data? Since they are not real data in real sense.

I am sorry, but this is not relevant to this discussion for removal of notary’s

[lamborghiniandy]

There was no loophole. CID sharing ( storing someone else his data while you applied your LDN to store data of another kind) for the benefit of getting datacap and revenue is just what it is.

Notary’s should be of impeccable conduct. Above are not anymore

I mean seldom ppl pay for storing data on filecoin network now. In the perspective of Amazon, the goal we want to beat down, all of the data are not real since nobody pays for it. And they must think funny that one group fil ppl criticize the other group for the fake data storage. Because in the real business, unless you pay for the data storage, data cannot be called real data.

[Tim-Yong]

I mean seldom ppl pay for storing data on filecoin network now. In the perspective of Amazon, the goal we want to beat down, all of the data are not real since nobody pays for it. And they must think funny that one group fil ppl criticize the other group for the fake data storage. Because in the real business, unless you pay for the data storage, data cannot be called real data.

Not the primary topic of discussion here, but just to put this idea to bed:

Just because someone is getting free storage from an SP, it doesn't mean their data isn't real or valuable. It just means they're getting a great deal on the price. Low cost is their incentive to store on Filecoin which has inherent risks as a relatively new, not-well-understood technology that is changing rapidly. Because keep in mind, customers won't necessarily just go for the cheapest option. They might value functionality (like verifiability and retrievability), usability/simplicity, and risk. Filecoin is improving on all those fronts rapidly, but it's still early. So even if an SP can undercut Amazon slightly on price, the customer might prefer Amazon.

However, if SP's can offer storage for free because they receive paid block rewards to subsidize the cost of their operation and even potentially turn a profit, then the customer might go for that instead. So we need this competitive advantage to compete with Amazon, which has been around for much longer.

I hope that sufficiently explains why the data we store isn't any less real or valuable than if a customer paid for it!

[Tom-zhang987]

Hi everyone, I looked at github and slack, I have a few questions 1: The company canceled this time Is the witness list triggered because of these LDN signatures below? If yes, but gate.io did not sign these LDNs 2: These LDNs are listed because they are suspected of using a VPN, but it seems that the evidence is not comprehensive. Which screenshot analysis does not explain anything? Secondly, the IP area in the list may only match 5 nodes, but why are 15 nodes listed? I hope that more evidence can be released to convince everyone.

If these notaries are wronged because of this matter, it will be a great loss to the community, These notaries are active in the notary community, and promote a lot of community work and community governance. They are also very influential in the Filecoin ecology. We can't let the ecological participants of Filecoin feel cold, so we hope that this matter can be thoroughly investigated.

Secondly, these LDNs did not see the CID duplicate data, except for some doubts about using VPN, all the rest of the encapsulation seems to comply with the FIL+ rules (according to the robot inspection results) 1: If similar IP is a suspicion, we can also find many similar LDNs, but he is not in the list 2: There are still many CID repetitions and other LDNs that do not conform to the rules, why this has not been raised;

[fillove]

RG, as a community member who has been following Filecoin for more than 5 years, watching Filecoin move forward one step after another, I would like to say that each step forward is not easy:

1, Filecoin main online on the eve of the community about whether Filecoin miners need to use the GPU has been debated for a long time. From the perspective of Filecoin's vision, Filecoin's miners should be able to go into thousands of homes without the need for a GPU. But GPU is more in line with the status quo of the Filecoin network. On the eve of the launch, the proposed configuration of Filecoin's mining machines was finally announced, and GPU was listed among them, which allowed the Filecoin community to reach a consensus on the machine configuration.

2. On the eve of the main Filecoin network going online, PL members such as Juan and ZX, introduced us to the new Filecoin economic model through a meeting. A few days later, PL released the English version and Chinese version of the Filecoin white paper on its blog, officially announcing the introduction of a 180-day linear release mechanism, to which the community reacted strongly, and then, in a broader discussion The economic model was modified somewhat, and soon after, Filecoin's arithmetic power surged.

3. A few months ago, FIP-0036 sparked a heated discussion, and in a vociferous vote, FIP-0036 eventually came to an end, and although the community did not reach a consensus on 0036, #554 reopened the discussion, and in #554, more options were offered.

In fact, the Filecoin network has had many controversial moments, but in each case, it has not caused a split in the community, as PL has been kind, tolerant, and listened to the community.

As Juan said: Filecoin belongs to the community. But the community is very large, and everyone has their own ideas and standards.

So the Filecoin network needs to be more inclusive, especially in the matter of penalizing or even eliminating notaries, and I don't think the final answer should be the subjective opinion of one or a few people. what Filecoin needs is more consensus, more cohesion, more tolerance, to listen to what the community has to say, not what one interest group has to say.

The long history of FIL+ moving forward needs more justice, goodwill, inclusion, and time.

[lamborghiniandy]

I mean seldom ppl pay for storing data on filecoin network now. In the perspective of Amazon, the goal we want to beat down, all of the data are not real since nobody pays for it. And they must think funny that one group fil ppl criticize the other group for the fake data storage. Because in the real business, unless you pay for the data storage, data cannot be called real data.

Not the primary topic of discussion here, but just to put this idea to bed:

Just because someone is getting free storage from an SP, it doesn't mean their data isn't real or valuable. It just means they're getting a great deal on the price. Low cost is their incentive to store on Filecoin which has inherent risks as a relatively new, not-well-understood technology that is changing rapidly. Because keep in mind, customers won't necessarily just go for the cheapest option. They might value functionality (like verifiability and retrievability), usability/simplicity, and risk. Filecoin is improving on all those fronts rapidly, but it's still early. So even if an SP can undercut Amazon slightly on price, the customer might prefer Amazon.

However, if SP's can offer storage for free because they receive paid block rewards to subsidize the cost of their operation and even potentially turn a profit, then the customer might go for that instead. So we need this competitive advantage to compete with Amazon, which has been around for much longer.

I hope that sufficiently explains why the data we store isn't any less real or valuable than if a customer paid for it!

I understand your point and partially agree with you. But how do you think of the fact that sp pays for data? Don't you think it is ridiculous and opposite? However, the phenomenon is widely seen in nowadays fil+.What a pity!

[Jefferson111]

I feel that this discussion is spiral-ing into some other discussion, so I would like to bring it back on track.

First and foremost, I would like to established some facts. We have 6 notaries here accused of fraudulently signing these potentially "botched" LDNs based on some IP address investigation (I'm not a networking expert here so I cannot comment on the legitimacy).

So I took a look into the LDNs, and I realized that there were in fact much more notaries involved than the stated 6. Why were all these other notaries not mentioned, and why were only these 6 notaries singled out? So I went to take a deeper look and realized that there were some disagreements in the approval of these LDNs between these 6 notaries and a particular individual. In fact, @cryptowhizzard has done due diligence himself and failed to identified any suspicious activities from the SPs in these "botched" LDNs. It is clear as day that not all notaries are networking wizards and able to perfectly identify well-prepared malicious actors in the ecosystem.

So I strongly believe & suspect this is a personal disagreement between a particular individual against these 6 particular notaries. I proposed these group of people sort it out between themselves rather than getting the governance team involved in their personal squabbles.

But back to the issue of these fraudulent-looking SPs, it is clear that the notaries & governance team failed to identify them quickly. A thorough lookup & investigation by the Trust & Transparency team only managed to came up with potential, but not definitive evidence of fraud. So I believe this is a wakeup call from the Trust & Transparency team to all notaries and the Filecoin community itself that we need a better process.

[Tom-OriginStorage]

When the price was 20 I thought as same as you, so I bought more. When price drop to 10 I still thought the same as you. Who can guarentee filecoin cannot go to zero? The private equity price was less than 1 usd. And many policemen confiscated a lot of filecoin without any cost. I had invested more than 50 million usd in filecoin as well as filecoin miner, that is why I am more worried about the price than you. And if the CC sectors cannot retain, then 100 million of the coin might be dumped. I believe they will not be happy to sell the coin at such a low price, but they have no choice because they need to survive.

That’s something not relevant in this discussion for the removal of a notary. Economics might cause notary’s to be bribed by SP’s who are in dispair, however even if someone has no money, stealing it from others is no option

My point is quite simple. Removal should be conducted under a clear rule made before. If you can find sufficient evidence they violate the rule, it is ok to remove them.

We did.

Two premises are "sufficient evidence" and "clear rule". If notary use the loophole, you can call it cheat maybe, but you cannot remove them. What you need to blame is the unclear rule.

There was no loophole. CID sharing ( storing someone else his data while you applied your LDN to store data of another kind) for the benefit of getting datacap and revenue is just what it is.

Notary’s should be of impeccable conduct. Above are not anymore

Please take a careful look. For the CID share you mentioned, the LDN listed above does not have this problem.

[JennieCai]

Issue Description

Certain notaries have been found to have abused the Filecoin plus program by awarding DataCap without conducting thorough due diligence and raising flags for collusion

Impact

Proposed Solution(s)

Remove the following notaries from the Filecoin Plus program:

1. ND Labs
2. Newwebgroup
3. Gate.io
4. ipfscan
5. STCloud
6. Tom - Origin storage

Timeline

1. Proposal discussed in Jan 17th, 2023 Governance calls.
2. All notaries in question will pause signing completely
3. Community Discussion until Jan 20th 2023 at 12 noon PST
4. Action taken by RKH based on community consensus

Technical dependencies

RKH singing to remove notaries from multisig

End of POC checkpoint (if applicable)

Risks and mitigations

Related Issues

The real data encapsulation can consume ten times the pledged coin, it is definitely good for the price of the coin, but the large increase in computing power brought by it dilutes the income that "real real data" mining should have, this standard is very subtle, the official does not have clear rules, and there is no scale to measure, all notaries are for ecological development, but the thinking angle and the method standard of reviewing real data are different. I think the official should first issue clear review rules so that all notaries can abide by them. Instead of disqualifying a notary public according to his own judgment when the judgment criteria are not clear. If after the official has clearly reviewed the rules, there are still notaries who violate the certification, and then the qualification will be canceled.

[gruipeng999]

Compared with these 15 nodes, more CID duplicate data in the whole network seems to be a more important problem. Fortunately, there are bots that can detect shared CID issues, which can give the notary enough reason to refuse to sign.

But for the question of skeptical VPN，Maybe not all notaries have a sufficient level of expertise，What we need is to introduce better rules and detection tools, such as traceroute, etc. I think the compliance should be judged accurately through technical means, not artificially, and the notary's judgment also needs to have an accurate basis,

If it is only investigated by the notaries themselves, The notary may interfere with the signature for some reason, It's unfair to some people who really want to store data

[kernelogic]

It's not all VPN, and it's not always bad, sometimes it's a firewall, sometimes it's a CDN.

[fillove]

RG and the Filecoin community, I would like to express a few things, nothing against anyone, just stating the basic rule, which is equality and equal treatment of.

1. gate, as a top 20 global exchange, supported Filecoin before the main Filecoin website went live, but of those 10 LDNs you listed, gate never signed up, so what did they do wrong? We all know that early support is very valuable to anyone or anything, and we probably shouldn't go out of our way to hurt gate.

2, the biggest downside to gate is that it is essentially unsigned. I agree that the community classifies non-signing notaries as unqualified and gate should be punished. Shouldn't we thoroughly investigate all non-signing notaries and shouldn't all such notaries be removed?

3, now that the VPN incident is found out, if you want to remove, please remove all notaries who sign for LDN. I have also found other LDNs using VPNs, so if necessary I will create a new proposal to list both LDNs and notaries who have signed them, and remove them together.

[fillove]

I have nothing against anyone, I'm just talking about fairness

[herrehesse]

@fillove I appreciate the valid points you made. I am excited to see your revised proposal with additional research. We have also discovered more instances of VPN and CID misuse, which we will present at next week's T&T meeting.

[fillove]

@herrehessecc I still hope to be more tolerant, but if everyone is so harsh, then we only create a new proposal, and all the notaries who have signed for the LDN of the VPN, who have signed for the CID share, and the suspected collusion Notaries are listed. I just want to express fairness, and I am not targeting anyone. If be removed, I think everyone who signed should be removed.

However, I still want to express tolerance, tolerance, and long-term vision. Only with unity can FIL return to 200U as soon as possible.

If this is a community that attacks and divides each other, FIL may only hover in 5U forever. After all, the total amount of FIL is 2 billion, which is too much.