SesameSeed and Vote Buying Discussion

Governance
#15

The author wrote in English to share this issue with other p reps, who speak in English.
Answering in Korean can be interpreted that you dont want p reps hear the official answer from Icon foundation. Also that implies you dont respect the author’s intension to share issue with English speaking Iconists and p reps.

The author pointed out it is not fair to let the certain p rep, which is Sesameseed, buy its voting power by sharing its token(Seed). Your answer, the gap of the reward by vote is not severe, does not address whether buying vote is fair or not. Your answer sounds like it is ok to steal a silver bar since it is less worth than a gold bar.

Plz confirm that you are anouncing the official response from Icon foundation.

#16

안녕하세요, ICON.Yesss님.

먼저, 실망감을 느끼셨다는 부분에 대해 죄송하다는 말씀을 드립니다. 전체적으로 말씀하시려는 논점을 파악했으며, 말씀해주신 부분에 대해 내부에서 다시 논의를 거친 후에 답변을 드리도록 하겠습니다.

다만, ICON 재단은 진정한 탈중앙화 네트워크를 추구합니다. 재단이 커뮤니티와 논의 없이 단독적으로 밀고 나갈 의도도 없을 뿐더러, 퍼블릭 블록체인의 특성상 그렇게 할 수 있는 방법도 존재하지 않습니다. ICON Network는 커뮤니티로 이루어진 공간이기 때문에 커뮤니티와 소통 및 협력 없이 존재할 수 없습니다. 여러 방면에서 커뮤니티와 대화하고, 상호 이해 및 협력을 통해 논의를 이어가도록 하겠습니다.

말씀해주신 바대로 아직까지 만들어 가야할 것들이 많고, 부족한 점들도 존재합니다. 위의 사안과 별개로 2021년에는 AMA 혹은 재단과 소통할 수 있는 방법을 마련하여, 소통하고 협력할 방법들을 강구해보도록 하겠습니다.

감사합니다.

1 Like
#17

답변 감사합니다.
다만 좀 빨리 대응하셔야 할거에요.

SesameSeed 팀은 Vote Buying으로 순식간에 피렙 순위 24위로 올라왔네요. 꼴랑 $150 수준의 리워드로도 이꼴입니다. 보상액 조금만 더 높이면 아이콘 재단따위는 금방 제치고 1위 가겠는데요? 팀 순위를 높이려고 애쓰고 노력한 P-Rep들 그냥 다 바보되는 순간이네요. 트랜잭션 0, 네트워크 기여 0인데 순식간에 24위로 치고 올라가는걸 보세요. 이게 애초에 민킴이 Vote Buying이 Illegal이다! 라고까지 하면서 막았던 이유 아니에요??

막말로 재단에서 밀어주고 싶은 프로젝트였다면 아이콘 버리고 떠났던 마커스가 운영하는 하이퍼커넥트처럼 마중물로 한 200만개씩 투표 박아주던가요… 그것도 냉정히 따지면 재단이 강력한 보팅 파워로 원하는 팀은 메인 피렙으로 꼽아줄수 있다는 증거라서 매우 잘못된 행위라고 판단했었는데 말이죠.

이게 지금 얼마나 심각한 문제인지 재단이 인지 못하고 그냥 넘어간다면 제가 감히 예측하건데 아이콘은 끝입니다. 그냥 이오스꼴 나는거에요. 아니 이오스는 뭐 룰이 공정하기라도 했죠. 그게 돈놓고 돈먹기라서 결국은 망했던거지.

이제 Vote Buying 금지하고 SEED 토큰 보상으로 뿌리는거 막아보세요. 얼마나 광속으로 순위가 떨어지는지 한번 봅시다.

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#18

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I remember you said there is no partnership but Sesameseed says ICON granted their vote buying action and there is a partnership. What the hell? ICONPLUS team seems to be CONFUSED WITH CAUSE AND REALITY. People who voted for Sesameseed did not onboard with the idea, but they want to get bonus for their votes. This is not a vote buying? For real? Are you freaking kidding me? Bogan even said there is no partnership but there is. ICON knew this is a vote buying but they ignored the fact cuz Sesameseed is a DeFiproject ICON wanted. Do you people still think this is a fair and democracy blockchain project? I don’t.

I remember you said there is no partnership but Sesameseed says ICON granted their vote buying action and there is a partnership. What the hell? ICONPLUS team seems to be CONFUSED WITH CAUSE AND REALITY. People who voted for Sesameseed did not onboard with the idea, but they want to get bonus for their votes. This is not a vote buying? For real? Are you freaking kidding me? Bogan even said there is no partnership but there is. ICON knew this is a vote buying but they ignored the fact cuz Sesameseed is a DeFiproject ICON wanted. Do you people still think this is a fair and democracy blockchain project? I don’t.

1 Like
#19

It’s plain and simple.

Min Kim has said this in the past.

We’re against ‘Vote Buying’, as defined by offering economic incentives limited to an entity’s own voters or to a subset of an entity’s own voters. Reward sharing’ offered by P-Reps is a blatant manipulation of IISS by providing economic incentives limited to their own voters, which is literally ‘vote buying’ and is a corrupt election practice. P-Reps that offer ‘reward sharing’ are jeopardizing the network.

SesameSeed said the following in their announcement post.

If this grant proposal is accepted by the ICON community, Sesameseed could possibly launch a SEED node on ICON within a few weeks. The stake requested in the proposal would result in great exposure and significantly less community stake would be required to establish Sesameseed as a major validator on ICON. The ICX votes from the community’s contribution will be rewarded with SEED, and begin to support SEED’s redeem value with the addition of ICX. ICX support will be added to Sprout, and ICON would become a part of the SEED rewards economy. At that point,Sprout users will have an additional option when swapping SEED between blockchains, which further strengthens the utility of the SEED Bridge.

If SesameSeed is rewarding its own voters, and not ALL voters, with SEED tokens (a clear economic incentive), then they are doing something illegal from Min’s perspective. With that said, one interesting point is that Blockheads and UBIK Capital were both community-formed teams. If I recall correctly, Pocket (a major validator in the space) also received pressure for their citizen node incentives idea. SesameSeed seems to be a legitimate business, so perhaps the Foundation sees it as “okay”.

Is it playing favorites? Maybe. Is it moving goal posts? Maybe.

It certainly would’ve been nice if Min didn’t call out and spook those community teams back then if the same kind of activity is apparently fine for “real businesses”.

Anyway, I’ll let the Foundation explain. Perhaps it’s as simple as a shift in perspective. Things change over time, so maybe this kind of scheme is okay now. Though I’d be interested to see what the response would be if all teams started offering their voters economic incentives.

Personally, I don’t see an issue with as P-Rep rewards have been cut 80-90% – I don’t know the exact numbers. I think this particular use case for SEED is an overall positive. With that said, it would be nice to see the Foundation clear the air publicly because there is clearly still concern in the community about “vote buying”. This is just another example of how GOOD COMMUNICATION can prevent stuff misunderstandings, mistrust, and overall bad PR for all parties involved.

Also, maybe Bong explained in Korean. It would be nice if those responses could be translated to English since the original topic and almost all responses are in English.

5 Likes
#21

As a “community team” we’ll just add that when we joined the ICON Network as a P-Rep back in February of this year, we were ranked #105 and it took us almost an ENTIRE YEAR of working hard (basically grinding it out everyday, focused and dedicated solely on ICON) to become a main P-Rep (currently ranked #18). So, we definitely understand the struggle and the amount of effort (not to mention immense luck) that is/was involved in order to climb up in rankings and win votes…

With “economic incentives” in place and at the disposal of any P-Rep team to dangle in front of voters, and we don’t mean to pick on any one team as this could apply to anyone, just speaking in generalities, it’s really not difficult to imagine that going down this route would provide a “shortcut”, relative to grinding it out the old fashion way…

Moving forward, concerns would be:

  1. This becomes common practice as more and more newly formed P-Reps will feel compelled to offer special rewards/perks in order to get a leg up on the competition and compete far more efficiently (e.g., why struggle and grind for an entire year or more to prove your worth to ICONists if you can win them over in 1-2 months, instead?).

  2. Expectations of voters will shift from contributions/hard work of P-Reps to grow ICON Network more to, “So, what other rewards/perks can you offer me that the other P-Rep teams can’t?”

  3. Hard-working teams who get passed up in rankings and/or lose votes to teams offering (better) economic incentives will feel discouraged, demoralized, and/or may just elect to give up on their current growth strategies, or ICON, entirely, thinking it’s not an effective use of their time competing this way in a fast-changing landscape.

etc.

By no means are we suggesting that anyone is doing anything malicious here, and we’re always for the growth and continued expansion of the ICON ecosystem, but these are some thoughts that immediately come to mind if we’re talking about going down the slippery slope of potentially creating an uneven playing field for P-Rep teams…

With that said, we’re very happy to see so many engaged and passionate ICONists who just genuinely want what’s best for the ICON Network and its future.

6 Likes
#22

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.

#23

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.

1 Like
#24

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.

#25

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.

1 Like
#26

@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.

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#27

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.

8 Likes
#28

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

5 Likes
#29

Yep. Min’s attacks against Ubik were certainly a net negative.

2 Likes
#30

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.

1 Like
#31

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?

#32

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.

#33

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.

#34

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.

#35

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.

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