Seed compensation must be stopped right now.
This will ruin the icon. Iconists want true decentralization.
I hope you read my writings"Let’s work together to make ecosystem for user" and step by step to grow into a true blockchain for users
This problem shouldn’t last long. It’s a matter of trust
Let’s retreat one step and go ten steps.
At first I was not that concerned as rewards incentive is not something new and is used commonly on other blockchains.
But after reading about the ban history of such practices on Icon and seeing the rise of Sesameseed in the rankings I have to say this is something that can kill all the achieved and ongoing efforts to put the light on contributing P reps.
I agree with the concerns of @IconPilipinas that a fair playing field for all P reps must be maintened.
I also just read plans for other P Reps to launch incentive tokens too so if this becomes the norm the Icon P rep meritocratic ethos is truly at stake here.
Damage should not occur to p-reps that greatly contribute to the icon ecosystem. To continue seed compensation
We need a way to promote the motivation of p-reps contributing to the Icon ecosystem. If there is no alternative, the seed compensation must be discarded.
It’s an interesting conundrum. At the end of the day, someone will get hurt (if not already), but I do hope we don’t see Pocket situation again.
It can’t be a coincidence that Seed started gaining votes as soon as the SEED token incentives started. Otherwise, they would have gained votes well before. It will be interesting to see some of its effect in ICON in Numbers report in the coming days.
@ICON.Yesss, first of all, those are my own opinions and not “ICONPLUS Team” so stop referring to it that way. You are clearly upset about the situation to the point that you even created an account to express your opinion. Its good that you did but instead of moaning about something why dont you suggest a solution?
@thelionshire - we all know that the crypto space evolves quickly and things change over time. I understand your frustration with the level of fairness but have you actually re-proposed your idea lately? maybe things have changed.
Bottom line, we all want whats best for ICON so working together and coming up solutions is where time should be invested, not just moaning about it.
Thank you everybody for your thoughts. I understand the confusion and frustration from the Korean community as well as the concerns raised by @IconPilipinas.
@bwhli hit the nail on the head here. Decentralization and creating proper incentive mechanisms is an ever-evolving process. Looking back at our history, all the in-fighting, debating over what’s vote buying and what isn’t, social media arguing, boxing out certain teams, etc. has been a net negative for our network. It has caused people to feel uncomfortable, in some cases leave our community, not work together and often causes our community to lose focus on what’s really important (working together to grow the ICON Network and utility).
As opposed to social media pressure and off-chain mechanisms, there has been focus on systematically making vote buying less beneficial through protocol changes, such as the bond requirement and generally lowered rewards, while also reserving a large amount of block rewards specifically for contributions through the CPS. Yes, there may always be some benefit to trying to earn more votes in this way, but it will not be nearly as extreme as it once was. The CPS ensures the network will always have resources used specifically for growth initiatives regardless of vote-buying or other similar concepts.
Blockchain network governance is about the protocol, not pressuring people or forcing people to do certain things or behave in a certain way. Manually policing is not scalable and not a good use of everybody’s time. Instead let’s focus on making enhancements to protocol economics and promoting/supporting the teams that we believe add tangible value. @IconPilipinas that includes your team. Your efforts to foster a passionate community in your geographic region have been impressive to say the least. I can say that ICX Station would likely support your initiatives through the CPS. You have nothing to worry about, I think everybody here sees the value you bring to our community, so if your P-Rep isn’t bringing in enough income I’m sure we’ll find a way to support your initiatives.
@Primo
I understand your concern as well, but it won’t be quite as extreme of an effect as it is on other networks. In the end, ICON is and always has been a DPoS network. DPoC is an ethos, it guides people to vote for who they like the most and who brings the most talent to the network. If competition amongst nodes brings more economic incentives, then at some point competition will even out and again we will be left picking who we agree with and who we like the most. Overall I personally don’t like a focus on economic incentives to vote, but there is only so much that can/should be done about it.
Additionally, the CPS will highlight contributing/governing teams to voters in ICONex and the tracker. On other networks, the primary statistic next to a node’s name is their commission rate (vote-buying ratio, reward sharing ratio, etc.) and uptime. We’ll never have reward-sharing details highlighted to voters.
@ICON.Yesss
There is no special arrangement for SesameSeed, no partnership, and all of this information has been publicly available for quite some time on their grant proposal. Yes I have spoken to the SesameSeed many times about their project, but that is not a partnership. Grants and conversations are not partnerships and we’re not making exceptions. There has been a change in perspective as Brian pointed out. A few ICONists in the English-speaking community had reached out to me about SesameSeed in DM asking my view on this and I shared exactly what I’m saying here. Now more people are asking about it publicly and I am answering. Those that wanted answers from me have always gotten them, it’s just that others chose to DM me instead of creating a forum thread. Both ways work for me.
Also, @ICON_ADMIN’s response in Korean has nothing to do with hiding anything from the English-speaking community, but was actually a matter of better communication considering both of you speak Korean as a first language. Now the English-speaking community is asking about it too, and I am responding in English.
For what it’s worth, I’m excited to see what Sesame can bring to Icon. I think they’ll bring value and transactions to the network. Now, true vote buying as what is being implied here is where whales approach a node and offer say 10 million votes in exchange for say half the rewards. I was approached and turned them down when we first launched. Sesame is bringing an interesting project to Icon that works and we should welcome them, not fight them.
Just my .02 ICX
Yep. Min’s attacks against Ubik were certainly a net negative.
Hey there!
Just my 2 cents here, but I think that most of the problem doesn’t lie in “Will it be actually more profitable for voters” but I am 90% sure that it will create a marketing race between who will get the most profitable rewards and it would harm the network.
The problem is that it’s something that is not directly implemented in ICON governance, having a built-in fee system would be way more healthy in that case. I’m a bit scared about the toxicity/drama that it would create, I really think that it’s really not the good timing for that especially with the current market context.
At the early stages of Sharpn (previous node), we proposed such extra rewards features. With hindsight, this was done in a wrong way and didn’t fit in ICON philosophy. Once again, if we agree to do this as a built-in system for all PReps would be the way to go IMO. I remember that @UbikCapital and us proposed to add such system in ICONstitution but it didn’t happen.
Once again, my main fear is that we shouldn’t divide as a network with the upcoming market shift and we should unite to work together rather than against each other.
Hey @LucasStaky thanks for hopping in. I don’t quite understand your suggestion, would you mind clarifying what you mean by this? ICON, as it currently stands and as it will work in ICON 2.0, has a built in system that automatically shares node rewards with voters at an equal rate across all nodes. The infographics in the hyperlinked article do a good job showing how it works
So what is the actionable next step you are proposing?
To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to suggest any changes in the rewards mechanic right now, the current system works well taking into account that nobody tries to bypass it by going through mechanisms outside of the “classic” rewards. Anyway, we should define clear rules to avoid any unnecessary drama or before everyone gets his own custom rewards system which would definitely harm ICON.
I think the point I am making in my first comment is that there are no rules outside of what is enforceable by the protocol, specifically to avoid such drama. Overall I agree that reward sharing comes with some downsides. I like the ethos of DPoC and will continue to promote it. Reward sharing is an inherent problem with DPoS networks, but at the same time I like DPoS because it lets the little guy earn some share of block rewards. In pure PoS and PoW, it’s pretty hard to get involved in earning block rewards unless you have a lot of capital and/or technical skills. When I first started researching blockchain/crypto, I was really excited by DPoS networks.
If we had clear off-chain rules against vote buying, how would you think the SesameSeed situation would be handled (or any previous vote-buying issues)? I’m genuinely asking if you think such clear rules would avoid drama, because I personally would expect immense social media campaigning that a team has violated our rules, lots of negativity and fighting, lots of attacking the team and their community, then a vote amongst P-Reps to kick them out, therefore alienating their community from ours.
At the very best, there would be a telegram room of Main P-Reps where they would discuss whether or not to kick out the team and try to avoid immense negativity/arguing on social media. If they decided to kick them out, the community would notice the vote or notice the team was gone and start asking questions in public forums. People would start asking why they stopped receiving rewards and would need to be told their team got kicked out. In both scenarios, the relationship with the team itself and the community that supported the team would be soured. They would be left with strong negative feelings about the ICON community and ICX.
I described how I think this would go, but I am certainly open to hearing if you still think this is the best path forward and why.
In terms of protocol changes, we could continue to raise the bond requirement to lower the benefits of vote buying. But we can save that conversation for another time.
Ok Tony, my apologies for referring to the ICONPLUS team in this way. So supporting vote buying is your own opinion. And I have clearly suggested a solution - stop the Sesameseed team to give out economic incentives to the ICON voters and let them compete with other P-Reps on the same playground. Stop this illegal action as @minhx has clearly declared.
So basically what you are saying is stop crying, ICX Station will give your money? I believe you still miss the point as you or ICON team really wants to have Sesameseed as an important part of the network by making it a main P-Rep. @IconPilipinas did not ask for money and compensation, but talking about fair game and contribution to earn votes from ICONists. So plz stop saying unfair game is ok because ICX Station can give some money to balance it.
And this is a more disappointing comment as it seem the ICON team views this issue in a weird way. Why no vote buying means kicking Sesameseed out? Like you say, if Sesameseed is bring huge benefit, ICONists will vote for them. They can show how good they are, what benefit they can bring, and how icx holders can participate in their network. Just like every other P-Reps did. That’s the fair game. But no no no, you are saying we should let Sesameseed give economic incentives so that they can buy votes to become a main P-Rep. And saying other P-Reps shut up, I’ll give some money for this unfair game. Can’t you see this unfairness can bring much bigger negative image to ICON network? so far people think ICON is a good project, successful dpos model. But when it allows vote buying, which was clearly defined as ILLEGAL by @minhx because one player is worth millions of dollars, contribution means having lots of money not participating in the network. OK having lots of money can be also contribution but if we start to talk this way, I don’t see why you pointed out the difference between PoS and dPos protocol.
Sesameseed is violating fair game rules but let’s stop blaming it cuz he is a rich and powerful fella? Jean Valjean will cry out loud if he was an ICONist.
Ok so your solution is to stop Sesameseed? This in turn would stop the connection between ICON and three other blockchains, maybe even stop the build of UniFi on the ICON network considering thats developed by Sesameseed too. So you prefer to get rid of teams that are bringing value and linking other communities together and instead keep ones that just produce blocks and collect rewards? This “vote buying” you are so concerned about is not the same as it was a year ago, first of all, i_rep has been lowered a considerable amount since then and bonds will now be required by the P-Rep teams. The more votes they have the more they need as a bond. The only part I would agree on is that the rules should be the same across all P-Reps and not just favor one.
I’m wondering Sesameseed can engage with P-Rep voting and that is THE ONLY WAY ICONists can get SEED token? Why you think No reward for voting for Sesameseed is the same meaning with “Stop Sesameseed”? Are they the same thing? Nono, if you join the Sesameseed and use their defi protocol, you can swap ICX with SEED tokens. Making Sesameseed not giving SEED to buy votes don’t mean we are blocking Sesameseed. And no matter how low i_rep is, that is not the point of this argument at all. So stealing gold bars from the bank is bad, but stealing a candy is ok to you? This is about fair game rules, not how much value is created. When you are caught, you’ll pay money for stealing candy, and then things are all fine? Ok then stop using the word democracy and decentralized from the Whitepaper and say money worship is the basic rule here. Then I will happy to leave this community.
Please anyone, correct me if I’m wrong. I feel really tired to explain why fairness is important value on the growth of ICON network.
And I’m wondering why @minhx and the Sesameseed team is not participating in this conversation? The most influential person in the ICON community who said any kind of economic incentive for geting vote is ILLEGAL. Im pretty sure they are checking out this conversation here and hope to listen to what they think about the issue I’m raising.
I’d like to remind everybody here to maintain a level of professionalism and respect in this discussion. There’s no reason we can’t have a respectful debate about governance topics.
It seems everybody has made their points and the initial questions have been answered. If anybody would like to make a specific proposal now would be the time do it. Thank you everybody for your time and happy to answer any more questions if they come up
Can,t they change icx to seed and seed to icx without seed compensation in the wallet itself?
How about doing this if possible
So asking questions about this vote buying issue and requesting feedbacks from the one who strictly blamed vote buying and the one who is conducting vote buying is suddenly unprofessional?
And I do not think I got the answer to the initial question “Sesameseed is vote buying or not?” All I could see from your words was how great this team would be in the future. You said we are building a system providing less economic incentive for vote buying but look at what is happening. When suggesting $150 everyday, people just vote for Sesameseed. It jumped to 24th in less than a month from the moment they announced the $150 rewards for their voters.
I feel your concern but all I’m saying is that Icon Foundation and ICX Station have been the police to respect the rules, and now the rule is breaking. Hope you remind the wise-saying, easy way is not always the best way.