SesameSeed and Vote Buying Discussion

Governance
#52

Metanyx,

We agree, you all should consider adding your coin “METX” to the ICON network. We agree with Benny and Min that moving forward this should not be policed. Sesameseed spreads their “Seed” much further than what they are currently doing on ICON on other blockchains, and hopefully, they will feel welcome to spread further on ICON if they choose to do so. Their generosity and work ethic is a welcome addition:)

We all wanted to see vote spreading for over a year and it seems Seed is leading the way of actually causing some movement. Other teams are currently allowed to follow suit if they want to offer something like “Seed.” Teams will have to be creative in filling a need as Seed has. They are offering their own token, adding Defi, and causing transactions on ICON:)

*** It is incredibly refreshing to see a team like “Sesameseed” share their vision and their own token with the community.

We have many great P-Rep teams and everyone has their own opinion, we support you Sesameseed:)

4 Likes
#53

I believe you meant Vote Stagnancy.
They certainly are decreasing vote stagnancy right now, and it appears that the lack of incentives (or competition of reward) was one of the main factors that led to vote stagnancy.

This methodology is actually the opposite of vote spreading by the way, but with more P-Reps doing similar things, maybe this will help with vote spreading, too.

2 Likes
#54

Yes, thanks for clarifying, this is your team’s expertise:) I assume teams that have their own token will implement something like this if they are interested. It will cause excitement and “less stagnancy,” not “vast spreading” to all teams, just to teams that are proactive in doing something similar.

I think ICONFI will cause “vast spreading” to all teams:) Very, very exciting times:)

1 Like
#55

I think so as well. This is turning out to be something very interesting, and creating competition that may dissipate with IISS 3.0 (block production reward). It may be limited to dev teams though.

1 Like
#56

Why do you think it could dissipate once ICON 2.0 starts? That is an interesting viewpoint and would like to know more… How much is the block reward going to change for 2.0?

I know Seed is actually giving out a lot less on ICON than they do on other chains, probably to not rock the boat too much. I think unless it is a drastic change for rewards on ICON 2.0 there should be minimal change to this possible “new strategy” for willing P-Rep teams.

1 Like
#58

Probably best to refer to:

2 Likes
#59

There is no way of fixing it without seed change their policy if everyone sees that as an issue. Just to point out something before with same idea ICX Australia increase very high and they still hold 700k votes. At that time voters were more active and scared of burn. We will open a gateway to preps like ICX Australia

image
image1191×66 8.03 KB

Enforcement is dq proposal. Since it’s in the code if main presp have issue preps can vote seed of that’s simple. If main preps ok with this then there is nothing to do. Main preps are the biggest losers of this and probably lose more in the long run or they just jump into sharing reward system.I am not saying lets just dq seed out but way to enforce is vote by preps. If dq vote utilized first of all seed need to change their policy I know they don’t want that but whole issue is because of that and secondly, It will just put a line and future ones like ICX Australia etc. will not keep appearing on chain. Of course that’s considering majority of main preps having issues with it. If that’s not the case nothing to enforce.

1 Like
#60

For those who don’t know/have the context.

icx_australia
icx_australia1851×741 326 KB

Numbers above bars represent P-Rep ranking.
This is the first 80 days since they came online.

2 Likes
#61

I don’t know how the constitution is,
Because the group divided into pros and cons, how about voting sesameseed’s problem?

Can’t we just convert icx to seed without providing seed?

#62

Thank you for elaborating on your suggestion. I now understand that you are proposing that a P-Rep DQ proposal be used to enforce off-chain policies, such as anti-vote buying policies.

The P-Rep DQ proposal is not meant to enforce off-chain policies. Its purpose from the start has been to help the network if ICON is in a “black swan” scenario, where unforeseen circumstances force the network to remove a faulty node in order to continue steady block production and/or ensure security. I personally do not like the P-Rep DQ proposal, but it was incorporated in the design only for extreme circumstances as I described. If it becomes weaponized as you described, I would then push to remove the P-Rep DQ proposal and come up with another way to handle the aforementioned “black swan” events.

#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!