Thanks for chiming in, Scott.
1/ On this point, I agree that there is a relatively high barrier of entry for grassroots teams to attract votes from the community as you touched on. However, this is something that was openly encouraged for several months - for P-Rep candidates to market and differentiate themselves in a competitive atmosphere. In fact, it was one of the main themes of ICONSENSUS. This is a direct function of the system ICON designed and marketed openly for several months.
Additionally, competition is not necessarily a bad thing, at least I don’t think. It brings out the best in people and I’m not sure how this would be accomplished in a system where there is virtually none. There will also not be that large of an economic incentive to run a node as rewards would be disproportionate to a P-Rep’s votes, nearly identical across the board. So, in terms of attracting more P-Reps, I think this would have a negative impact on current and future ones. Current ones will have to scale down their teams and they are likely already amidst financial uncertainty as this proposal is being discussed.
Under your new proposed system, you also mention the issuance of "Contribution Proposals". Will this not overlap with EEP/DBP’s?
Under the current system, P-Reps are incentivized to contribute to the network in ways outside of the minimum requirement of running a node. While running a P-Rep node is undoubtedly the most important requirement, it feels like the design of the system has been skewed and we’re attempting to "gut" the very thing that sets P-Reps apart from other DPoS based networks - Contribution. In fact, under DPoC, ICON’s consensus model variant it places vast importance on "contribution" outside of being strictly a validator as opposed to other DPoS based blockchain networks (Lisk, Bitshares, EOS, etc).
The central philosophy of the ICON Network reward distribution is fair compensation based on relative contribution. Each participant can demonstrate their contribution through the ICON Network’s unique contribution evaluation system. In the end, contribution is the most important value shared within the ICON Network, and therefore will be the sole standard in the network. Delegated Proof of Contribution (DPoC), as described herein, is the sole justification for electing representatives.
The above quotation was taken from Ricky Dodds medium post earlier this year going in-depth on DPoC.
To move from this initial conception and propose major changes to the roles and responsibilities of P-Reps seems a bit misleading for all the teams who were heavily involved in marketing themselves, engaging with the community, and even being apart of the ambassador program - spreading these same initial ideals across several different content mediums and audiences.
I’m not sure if that’s the best way to go.
2/ I feel providing the means for P-Reps to set up more nodes is attempting to solve a problem of scarcity of the number of P-Reps by diluting currently existing ones. This can have some negative impacts as @thelionshire pointed out, including but not limited to heavy centralization.
We are already facing a problem of centralization as the top 3 main P-Reps all have ICON affiliations and/or partnerships. The number of votes proportionate to these entities accounts for roughly 37% of all votes. Additionally, the top-ranked team (ICON Foundation) has nearly double the amount of votes as the 3rd ranked team - ICX_Station.
Without intending on sounding like a broken record, this is hurting decentralization at the moment and a few solutions have been proposed to combat this problem and aid decentralization of our network. For the most part, I haven’t seen any discussion on the solutions proposed outside of yourself in ICON related social channels.
I would like to hear more discussion on this from the Foundation.
Additionally, a "protocol level solution" could be considered to combat the problem of vote disparity and incentivize ICONists to not delegate towards larger P-Reps. This has been a topic of relevance recently in networks like Cosmos and Ethereum. "Proportional Slashing" could very well encourage distribution of votes to lower-ranking teams who will not suffer as high of a penalty as those higher ranking. While the "burn" is not currently active for main P-Reps, it could be something to consider as it will hurt larger P-Reps more and incentivize ICONists to distribute their votes to teams who would not suffer as high of "slash" under various circumstances.
These penalties will likely not be very often but I believe it is something of equal consideration to take into account.
Links:
https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/rkhCgQteN?type=view#Slashing-and-anti-correlation-penalties
3/ I just suggested a protocol level adjustment above but, @thelionshire’s point holds here, in my opinion.
I don’t think we have appropriate technology to fully self govern. Some areas can, but many cannot be written into code. That is why p reps are needed and trusted by the people to make appropriate decisions. Some can be automated, but much cannot. I believe we need written rules and associated penalties, and then it makes the voting much simpler. Perhaps some automation could occur, but I believe p reps main duty is governance.
Proof-of-Stake is still new, this is further evident by PoS based blockchain networks accounting for roughly 5% of overall market capitalization. Many are experimental models.
Money can pay for development of any project that sits in a repo. To foster collaboration is difficult though, which makes experimentation important. The P-Rep system in ICON seeks to encourage validators to lead on these community-oriented projects.
Furthermore, as @thelionshire pointed out, the technology is just not there for a fully autonomous Digital Nation. AI is based on rules, you can have self-learning networks, but at the end of the day, behaviors need to be defined by an algorithm.
As you yourself have stated in the past @BennyOptions_LL, P-Reps should focus on price and short-term solutions to grow the network. I’m unsure how this can be followed if the P-Reps are “stripped” of their duties in governance and contribution.