SesameSeed and Vote Buying Discussion

Governance
#63

I am not saying lets start enforcing off-chain policies. I am saying we need consensus and there is a function for main preps either it meant to be used that way or not. Everything doesn’t work/utilized as they planned.There are millions of example of that in our life and cpos structure of ICON is also one of them.
Either way from my point as I said we need consensus if we can’t handle this properly it will just split community and this can grow bigger over time. While most of vote power still remain with icon affiliation the decision like that shouldn’t be just done by foundation without any public discussion after long time after decentralization process. This angle bring forward by foundation years ago as all off-chain policies and process like grants etc. The issue comes from there was a point and reasons at that time and community agreed. Right now it’s just we decide this way even though it’s exact opposite of what we believe worst behaviour/illegal thing out there year ago. That’s the reason for outburst.

I am not pro P-Rep DQ proposal or going after a dq. As I explained we need consensus and if outcome is negative for seed and they didn’t prefer not to than there is a tool to enforce thats it. I am talking and trying to show both sides and offer solution from my observations. About removing P-Rep DQ proposal maybe thats something needed to be done but our topic is not that right now.

1 Like
#64

I’m more worried about P-reps in the top 10 who take rewards from the network and provide no value besides running a node. At least, Sesame seed is returning value to their voters.

#65

I think instead of looking at it as vote buying, it should be a motivation for other P-reps to buck up and show what is your value worth and why voters should vote for you. This is a fair market and it will be like that. I actually like Sesame Seed coming in as it makes other P-reps wake up and they will feel the need to improve their game plan. Without them, every p-reps would be complacent and ICON will not go anywhere. Sesame Seed are builders and they have a core strong development team and have built stuff before. Without competition, there won’t be quality growth and I feel ICON needs that wake-up call in that. Other P-Reps if you feel you are better than SesameSeed, communicate to us what you are doing, what value are you providing. I can say as of today I only know very few p-reps about building certain stuff (<5 p-reps) so don’t complain about it. U want votes, prove your value, that is the game in ICON.

SesameSeed had similar issues w other blockchains. When they first came in, every voters went to them, then other validators have to buck up their game to see votes returning away from SesameSeed. So this issue is not new to them, good job SesameSeed for driving competition in ICON.

2 Likes
#66

I mean competition is always nice. I was actually trying to share my observations to both parties since whatever sesameseed did doesn’t effect us. About your builder comment we are builders as well. We are not just building we are building
everything for completely free(without paying team members). We are also building products with 0 profit consern so we can support the general ecosystem. For example 30-50% of iconbet transactions comes from our bot we have 0 gain from these transactions. Our bot’s user number is 3k more than icon main public channels user number. Bot’s iconswap user number is 10-20 less than total number of people in iconswap group so nearly everyone in that group utilize out bots icon swap functions. Now you might ask what you guys spend your rewards on. We spend our rewards to outsource other developers teams (builders) in to icon blockchain so they can be in the ecosystems Iconpool prep is example of that. They started their own project win the hackathon and I believe they will be great asset to ecosystem. With all of this our real vote never pass 900k icx which rewards like 300-400usd per month right now. Which can only cover server fees. With these low rewards we fund our projects while not getting grant (after bots success we receive grant for latest dapps and twitter integration) while majority of peps did most of their work with only grant instead of spending their rewards which is the reason for constant drop rewards for preps on chain. So if I want to complain that would be the reason since our whole plan is fully rely on community support. In general voters doesn’t pay that much attention and some tweet controversial thing cause biggest vote changes in the short time. Anyway at this point we never receive that much vote/rewards so we also don’t get much effected by these big moves. Main preps lose from these kind of stuff since they can lost their main prep spot by rank changes loosing 2-3k USD. They can also lost a lot of vote/reward since some percentage of their huge numbers of voters definitely consider changing their vote under current situation they were in.

The preps I mentioned and some others I didn’t mention like icon pinas are doing great jobs and we are just making it easier for them and their communities to interact with our product and solutions. They deserve all the credit for their work and examples I give not trying to get credit from their work. I wrote all this over mobile so in case of mistype etc. I didn’t want confusion over that.

4 Likes
#67

Hi all. I came to the forum to raise my concerns on this issue but it seems it’s been discussed in significant detail already after being raised by @ICON.Yesss.

My feelings on the matter are that it’s not very fair on existing P-Reps who don’t have a token to offer to people to vote for them.

It can of course be debated whether this is a form of vote buying or not, but regardless of how one looks at it, there is a significant number of ICONists who will delegate all their votes to SesameSeed regardless of the fundamentals of the project. I also don’t blame them for this…even if 1 SEED is priced at a fraction of a cent, this is a fraction of a cent more than they’d get for voting for any other P-Rep. Once rewards are involved, the majority of people have zero loyalty to who they vote for. Frankly speaking, I think the only reason SesameSeed isn’t even further up the P-Rep ranks is because a lot of ICONists still aren’t aware they can get SEED for delegating their votes to SesameSeed. The average crypto investor is here to make gains; they don’t care about tech/fundamentals.

I don’t see how this is fair to P-Reps who have worked so hard to build their communities and gain people’s votes, only to see them delegate them all to SesameSeed.

I can’t see any means by which P-Reps can compete unless they implement a similar token rewards system.

My fear is that this will spark an avalanche of P-Reps competing to try provide token rewards for voting for them, leaving any P-Reps that don’t provide rewards at a significant disadvantage.

I’ve seen a few comments above saying that rather than discussing whether this is a form of vote buying or not, P-Reps should be focusing on this being additional motivation for them to deliver on milestones etc. I can see this perspective but saying that, what’s to stop other P-Reps coming onboard that offer a similar rewards system? Then another and another…it’ll get to the point where the rewards of hardworking P-Reps who don’t offer any token rewards will be diminished to nothing. We’re of course nowhere near that yet but it’s something to discuss now before such an event damages the health of the overall network.

Is there anything in place to stop similar P-Reps coming on board and offering rewards @BennyOptions_LL? If there is, this may be a case of where P-Reps need to accept this for what it is (as you’ve outlined in detail in this thread) and move on. I’m sure similar pushback has potentially been seen with other projects who partnered with SesameSeed. There is always going to be pros and cons of such partnerships. Overall I believe the partnership is great for the network. I think P-Reps just need some form of assurance that there won’t be similar token rewarding P-Reps popping up moving forward, diminishing their income.

Perhaps the fairest way would be to open up a vote on the matter so that all existing P-Reps can vote on how best to proceed?

#68

This topic seems to have strong views on both sides. This certainly has affected voting behaviour and we are currently devising a plan to mitigate some of the issues being raised. This involves getting other P-Reps on board and I believe this will be helpful in many aspects. I cannot share the details here, but we’ll be preparing a whitepaper and hopefully apply to the CPS when it becomes live.

4 Likes
#69

Thanks for that. I look forward to seeing the whitepaper/application to the CPS once it goes live

#70

I agree and back you on this

1 Like
#71

Where have you got with your thoughts here team?

1 Like
#72

We have been internally discussing whether this is going to work given that more and more P-Reps are giving out their rewards outright.

However, if we could get the value of the token up, it could potentially work.

We did not get much further with the proposal due to personal reasons - Tono is the one proposed and will need to write the whitepaper but he’s going through something which hopefully will resolve by early Feb.

Did you want to discuss working together at some point? Please let us know. Thank you!

We could be reached via Telegram (@tonoplast).

Sorry about the delay!

#73

It’s really not fair…seeing more and more P-Reps giving out rewards…it’s just disincentivizing hard-working P-Reps that are actually developing and adding to the network…

Look at ICON DAO…they just dropped out of the top 22 today even though they’re working hard on building Optimus Finance…

5 Likes
#74

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I see that as a working prep we never attract votes though. I am curious about what happens if we do the same. Since foundation just expecting validators with all the updates don’t think it’s going to change much since nearly everything done by preps funded by foundation grants.