Vote Stagnancy Solutions

Governance
#31

@Geo_Dude @Brandon_FBM @NorskKiwi @Emre @Cali @nblaze @mj-reliantnode @thelionshire @Edouard_POS_Bakerzn @Paddy @TranscranialSol @ICON_Buddy @Icon4Education @stgian
I’d also like to present these questions to everybody, and please try to keep in mind that the answers to these questions need to be expressed in something on-chain:

What is it you want to accomplish?
i.e. lowering inflation, impacting ranking/rewards/votes received of p-reps, impacting rewards of voters, etc…

How would you define an inactive/stangant vote?
i.e. doesn’t send a vote transaction, doesn’t claim rewards, doesn’t send any transactions, etc. etc.

Based on your answer to the above question, what time frame should we consider inactive/stagnant and how long should it take to decay (or some other solution)
i.e. 60 days of no action + 100 days of decay, 90 days of no action + 60 days of decay, etc. etc.

Based on discussions so far, some ideas I think are realistic to add to the original proposal are:

  • Not doing a full decay, only up to x%
  • Burning rewards of voters instead of reallocating (P-Reps won’t be realistic but I can explain in private if anybody cares)
  • Could also scrap this entire thing and start again, hence my above questions. Seems that it’s a bit contentious and not clear if it will accomplish the goal we want
3 Likes
#32

Thank you for doing this. We often get sidetracked and may miss the point of the proposal.

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What is it you want to accomplish?
In my opinion, we want to solve vote stagnancy problem because

  1. votes are unfairly distributed (subjective)
  2. improve decentralisation

I feel that lowering inflation or change in the rewards of the voters could be the artifacts of the solutions we want, and are not the priority for this thread.

It is difficult to address (1: votes are unfairly distributed) since it’s a subjective matter. Who is to say (P-Rep A) deserves more than (P-Rep B)? But the problem is, people are more likely to vote for Top P-Reps, especially for new comers.

Below is Top 10 P-Reps voted by New Voters each week since the beginning (there are more but truncated).

‘week’ column represents how many times they were in top 10.
‘prep_ranking’ column represents median ranking of the P-Rep.

image

From the data, it’s clear that new voters tend to vote for Top P-Preps.
When more self-staking P-Rep whales come online, will the top spots be replaced by them, because more voters will just vote for the top P-Reps?

This point then becomes more of ‘voter apathy’.

So then (2: improve decentralisation) seems like a more viable area to target, but is subjected to Sybil attack in some way.

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How would you define an inactive/stangant vote?
It should be when they do not send a vote transaction. I don’t think claiming rewards should be considered as active.

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Based on your answer to the above question, what time frame should we consider inactive/stagnant and how long should it take to decay (or some other solution)

image

I feel that 60 days (or 90) is good, with a little aggressive decay of another 60 days.

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* Not doing a full decay, only up to x%
Not doing a full decay seems reasonable, but this means the outcome of the vote decay may not be impactful.

* Burning rewards of voters instead of reallocating (P-Reps won’t be realistic but I can explain in private if anybody cares)
This seems better in terms of being fair and no need for complex system of re-distributing somehow.

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It’s a tricky problem with many interlinking parts, but discussion is very much needed sooner than later.

1 Like
#33

What is it you want to accomplish?
Personally I think providing a carrot (or stick) to address vote stagnation should be the key focus here and I think a decay (or burn) are a good way to address this.

Secondary to that I think reigning in inflation and/or making sure it is used wisely are other big issues, but largely beyond the scope of this discussion with the exception of the proposal for burning inactive vote rewards rather then a decay.

The top heavy votes right now I think are probably, at some level, an issue too, but I also feel that providing a protocol level incentive to vote may help address this to some degree. Unfortunately any approaches to making it more “objectively” fair at a protocol level that I’ve thought on either introduce too much complexity or expose ICON to attack vectors we want to avoid.

How would you define an inactive/stagnant vote?
A stagnant account would be an account that has not participated in a voting action within a defined time frame. Claiming rewards, sending transactions or even staking (without vote) should not count toward this.

Based on your answer to the above question, what time frame should we consider inactive/stagnant and how long should it take to decay (or some other solution)

I think 60 days seems fair. I think a 100 day decay also works, especially given how many in the community are going to come back after a year and complain already. :stuck_out_tongue:

I do think that burning “inactive” votes would likely be better. But i’m on the fence, because if we effectively unstake inactive votes, then rewards will proportionally grow for P-Rep teams in general (this coming from a lower ranked P-Rep with 60% of votes “inactive”). Leaning more towards a burn though, to help combat inflation.

1 Like
#34

I personally believe that it is very hard to separate the main issues that we are facing and to provide a solution to only one of the problems as essentially they are quite interconnected. I think that the vote decentralization is very closely intertwined to voter apathy and vote stagnancy. A ton of voters are simply apathetic, they do 0 research and choose the prep names that they have been exposed to only because that is a requirement to get their rewards. Once they have done that, it takes a miracle to make them to switch their votes and that is why we have teams that have been inactive since decentralization that are still occupying top spots

I also dont believe that those voters dont re-claim their rewards, I believe that they dont bother to switch because their rewards are not affected if they do and that is all that they care about. Re-claiming and voting (for the same team) provides cumulative rewards though, so Im quite sure that almost all voters do this. I think that the majority of the ‘stagnant votes’ that we are currently tracking belong to large entities (the Icon Foundation included and being very large part of that) and Im not sure that this is an issue that we might need to try to resolve.

That being said, Im not sure that I have a suggestion for a solution to the current problems that is not complex or does not create extra issues. We could easily implement a ‘I dont care’ vote that sends the rewards to all preps or to a separate fund; we could implement a decay for wallets (or % of them) that were not switched to another prep in a while; set levels of rewards depending on the amount of preps that you have voted for (with % of your wallet as a threshold) or even set up a decaying vote reward system, tracking separately the amount of time (and vote %) that you have left your votes for on every individual prep that you have voted for in the past year and lowering your rewards gradually for continuing to vote for each of them, etc etc - the solutions are endless, however I think that most that I can think of involve either danger of sybil attack, cartelization or making the system too complex.

#35

Hi Scott,

First, I would like to say thank you for the constant work and dedication on so many things related to ICON. You have been instrumental for ICON and I don’t know if you get thanked enough for that.

Second, In regard to a better voting situation, we need to take a step back and look at how great the current system has worked. We have had multiple P-Reps rise the ranks over the last year. I think your ideas on vote stagnation make sense but this may solve on it’s own over time. Maybe time and energy should be focused on collaboration with current P-Rep skillsets heading into ICON 2.0. Let’s dive into this deeper with skill sets the Foundation can incorporate:

Some that come to my mind:

ICX Station- Works 24/7 for the public chain creating use cases
ICONation- Contributes to ICON in many impressive ways (outreach, develops, reddit organizers).
Ubik- I believe Russ could greatly impact ICON at future blockchain project conferences around the world. Maybe the Foundation should reach out to him and his team to see if he would be interested in representing ICON in this way.
Rhizome- Foundation should utilize their expertise in knowledge of Node and blockchain technology. They also are very talented in writing articles related to ICON.
ICON Hyperconnect- Great outreach for ICON for Korea and the world (Rose the Ranks)
Mineable- Best video maker in the Crypto business (Rose the Ranks)
ICON DAO- Best outreach in Korea and education in Asia (Rose the Ranks)
ReliantNode- Talented programmer and developer (Rose the Ranks)
ICONPLUS- Impressive work ethic, incredible outreach for ICON through their many team members (Rose the Ranks)
IBriz- They put their head down and develop for ICON (Rose the Ranks)
ICONVIET- Great development team
Block42- Transparency and development
Parrot9- Design (Rose the Ranks)
ICON Pinas- “Positive attitude and adoption marketing” (Rose the Ranks)
Sharpn- Great development team
Blockmove- Incredible development team

I will stop here but there are many, many more quality P-Rep teams not mentioned above and their work for ICON is impressive!

As we move quickly to ICON 2.0 a lot of current P-Reps will become long-term voters for various reasons (Full Node Cost, Risk of Burn, etc). We need to move forward with a focus on the Foundation reaching out to ICON 2.0 Active P-Reps to utilize their skill sets. A perfect example of teamwork between teams is the project “Balanced.” We are starting to see more examples of the Foundation doing this, and that is awesome!

Third, Our Team’s Thoughts Moving Forward:

IMO, moving forward the (1.) Foundation should continue to HEAVILY PRIORITIZE use cases of $ICX within its growing network in Korea as they have already started to do. The Foundation knows the unlimited value of our public chain and I believe will do everything they can to incorporate the public chain when possible. (2.) Utilize ICON 2.0 Full Node Running P-Reps skill sets and increase transparency, positivity, and teamwork between teams and the Foundation. Affirm P-Reps contributions, especially when made outside of the grant process (This is very important). 3.) Everyone likes the contribution proposal system and we should see great progress in this area. (4.) Work on ways to decrease inflation, vote stagnation.

We believe ICON has been a true success so far. Over the last 2 years, many projects have fallen to oblivion but ICON has been consistent on delivering its vision. We look forward to the future of this project.

#36

It would be ideal for ICX holders to keep up-to date and delegate their votes every 60 days, but this is unrealistic.

We’d have concerns if we start to penalize ICX holders if they don’t delegate their votes every 60 days.

A large number of users won’t understand or want to comply with this requirement and we will leave them with a negative experience of dealing with ICON governance.

We think lowering the reward a P-Rep gets as a result of their own voters getting vote decay is a positive.

Ideally after 60 days without any new delegations a voters delegated votes slowly decay away from the P-Reps and towards the CPF.

After talking to Benny this is challenging to implement technically, so we are still considering the exact solution, but this is our thoughts on the current situation.

1 Like
#37

@BennyOptions_LL

Glad to share my view. Although not affiliated in any case with ICON, neither am I a prep, I am an invested stakeholder who wants to see the project achieve its true potential and become what it was built for. I am happy this panel gives the opportunity to people like me to raise their thoughts/constructive criticism & be taken into consideration. There are different issues that, in my point of view, need to be addressed*, but let’s stick to the topic in hand, stagnant votes.

Related to that, I think the general voting process and allocation of votes needs an overhaul. I raised this many months back when the initial discussions started for Icon.More rules need to be implemented and the core logic of voting to change. Although it might be cumbersome to do so, at some point in time, we potentially need to deal with it to structure an effective governance tool.

There are at least two issues with the stagnant votes, a) the fact that these are stagnant to specific preps, thus potentially not rewarding quality preps, who can better contribute to the ecosystem and b) that people do not actively participate in governance since the general model incentivizes people to stake and forget.

For me, the main challenge is to ‘attract participation’ through a model where people will have to come back regularly and participate in the governance. Will this ever be ideal? Most probably not, but it can improve from the current setup.

By adjusting the rewards:

  • You accomplish less inflation, especially at a time where the usability of the ICON blockchain is still to be proven. As mentioned in previous message, suggestion is for now to burn these rewards vs reallocating them to other prepsand in the future once the ecosystem is mature enough, to potentially use these rewards (i/o burning them) as an additional governance fund to support start-ups/projects etc.

  • At any point, you have an analysis of the amount of stagnant votes, as you know how many rewards are flowing to the new category, burned/in the fund etc, thus you know you need to take additional action to improve the governance.

  • You create more active participation, as I am sure the majority do not want to lose on potential rewards.

  • You avoid having people that want to exploit the high rewards ICON offers, without contributing anything.

The above alone is not solving fully the issue of adjusting the votes to different preps, as most people would come back, stake the earned rewards periodically and leave without adjusting the vote allocation. As complimentary action I would consider a step where participants will need to adjust, let’s say arbitrarily, 20% or any other % of their votes to different preps than the ones on their list, unless their vote spreading is satisfactory (maybe > 22?). Is this something that can be implemented?

To be honest, something like that should be applicable for everyone, even the preps. In order for a system to succeed there needs to be trust amongst each other and having the same goals in mind, thus preps should also be supportive of other preps they deem worthy of part of their votes. There are more implications there, such as the bond they need to keepetc, but maybe something to consider. Then questions arise as how often will participants need to adjust-reallocate? This brings us to the next point, timeframe.

What is a reasonable timeframe for votes to be considered as stagnant? Difficult question. Is there a market standard or are we creating the standard? Then let’s think about how active we want the governance participation to be. Are you happy with a year timeframe? I wouldn’t. Are you happy with monthly? Might be a bit aggressive. I think 60-75 days gives a good balance between asking too much and too little, but this is definitely something that can be discussed and refined accordingly.

*Following up on the above and to finalise, I think you need to initiate a discussion of transactions in ICON vs rewards as the weight leans disproportionately towards high rewards with limited transactions in the ecosystem today. Increasing the fees will definitely help towards the right direction, but the gap is still very big. I mentioned above an overhaul of the voting system. In my mind this would include various KPI’s on which a prep is evaluated, including the desired mix of preps in top 22 (marketing/developer/block producer etc) as well as KPI’s for the number of transactions, the projects being worked on etc etc, putting different weights on each KPI, based on the significance. Also, allocation of votes based on several rules (not been able to vote for 1 prep only etc).

#38

I agree with what @nblaze wrote. Any changes would create new problems that would need to be solved, creating a mousewheel scenario. With large self-staking/non-contributing holders being the future, p-reps are going to turn into simply large holders getting extra rewards for being rich, while developers won’t bother running a node and simply apply for grants. I think it’s sad as I believe that this is not how the p-rep program was initially envisioned, but it’s quickly heading that way.

#39

Based on current feedback and a lack of clear consensus on a specific direction my current plan is to try to solve the problem using UI/UX changes to ICONex and the Tracker after the Contribution Proposal System comes out. The problem I am trying to solve with this, to be specific, is voter awareness/education.

ICONex CPS Update
ICONex CPS Update2160×490 71.7 KB
Tracker CPS Update
Tracker CPS Update2316×394 105 KB

As you can see in the images above, adding these two metrics should hopefully push more voters toward teams that are actively engaged in managing the CPS and sponsoring projects. Neither of these metrics are game-able, especially the Sponsored Projects column.

Maybe I am wrong here, but to me it sounds like the primary concern is that people are unhappy with how people are choosing to vote. Voters are not well-researched (understandably so) and are sometimes making uneducated decisions when it comes to allocating votes. I’m hoping the changes to the UI/UX will lead to at least basic levels of research to see who is contributing to governance. This also provides an incentive to actively manage the CPS.

After looking more at the data, stagnant votes are not actually as big an issue as we thought imo. Ubik capital, for example, only had ~3.5M stagnant votes (stagnant for 60+ days) last I checked, which would only drop them from rank 5 to rank 7 even if all 3.5M votes were decayed. ICX Station, as another example, had 4.4M stagnant votes over the same period. This would drop ICX Station to rank 3 instead of rank 2. Not a huge impact.

To me, it doesn’t seem worth it to dramatically shake things up for voters (our primary user base) and do a ton of R&D just to see small changes in voter behavior / p-rep rewards at best. But I’m open to being convinced (especially if @TranscranialSol finds more convincing numbers) and open to other proposals if anybody wants to put together something specific.

Thank you everybody for the feedback and constructive discussion. To reiterate, happy to continue the discussion and offer feedback on any new proposals, but for the time being I want to try this UI/UX change + promoting the change to the community once the CPS launches.

1 Like
#40

I think at this stage, UI/UX improvement would be a good start. Perhaps if top 5 P-Reps have more than 50% of the total votes (currently ~31%), then this could be re-visited. Hopefully UI/UX change and other promotions will help mitigate vote concentration to the top P-Reps.

1 Like
#41

@BennyOptions_LL
Good idea but how we the sponsored projects part got edited. Is it in control of the foundation? I really prefer sharing what we doing and spending with the foundation over the prep projects system which is not a good system.

#42

May I just confirm if I understand the new UI correctly? In example:

We have 2 preps - prep1, gaining 20k ICX as a monthly reward and prep2 gaining 10k ICX as a monthly reward

prep1 sponsors 20 small projects for 500 ICX each (totally spending 2 weeks worth of their rewards in the process)

prep2 sponsors one large project for 40k ICX (spending 4 months of their rewards worth in the process)

If I understand correctly the new UI will show as sponsored projects prep1 with 20 and prep2 with 1, thus giving much higher recognition for prep1? Is that not quite easy to abuse?

In regards to the Governance section, if a team votes on 9/10 proposals, what will the section show - yes or no?

#43

@Emre sponsored projects is on chain data from the CPS. Read more about it on the CPS thread. It’s not related to the projects section of icon.community.

@nblaze

Let’s see how it plays out, but I think you underestimate how difficult it will be to pass meaningless projects that are just meant to boost your sponsored projects numbers. Each sponsored project must be approved by 67% of p-Reps. If somebody passes 20 small projects through this system, that means they researched and supported 20 quality projects that 67% of the governing teams approved of.
I don’t see this as a problem, but if it becomes clear that it’s being abused we can easily remove that from the UI. Also just a reminder that sponsors are not spending money, they put the ICX up as collateral and earn 20% return per month for doing so.

The governance column is whether or not you are registered to manage the CPS. Not sure if you looked at the CPS thread, but managing is now an opt-in format. If you miss a vote, you get de-registered and it would then say “no” in that column. To register again after missing a vote, you need to burn some ICX as a penalty.

#44

Something which can’t be manipulated and transparent I am backing that with full support even though I don’t think we will have much action as a sub with this part. I believe that’s a great indicator for people to look at.

1 Like
#45

After seeing the vote stagnancy problem being tackled through a design mechanism I think this can bring meaningful impact for new voters thus limiting the vote accumulation in the upper part of the p reps ranking.
I am not sure of the impact it will have on votes that are already casted thus here is an idea I hope can help tackle those problems:

I know the focus is on vote stagnancy but the problems are both vote stagnancy and vote spreading:

So what I think can help is iconsensus
I think there should be another iconsensus initiative to help fight vote spreading and vote stagnancy.
Of course for it to be meaningful there should be incentives and it should not be detrimental to voters embracing the vote once and forget mentality.

So here would be the process clearly:

  1. Some noise will be made with p reps going in campaign mode on the basis of their contribution to the ecosystem.
  2. A period of time will be set to vote for many contributing p reps.
  3. A set of rules will be made such shift your vote around and vote for more then 10 p reps.
  4. Voters who play the game well will receive icx from a pool that will be set in advance (maybe the cps so redirecting more inflation to the cps will be a great idea)

So basically come and vote for the most contributing p reps and as many as possible and you receive more icx and if not you miss on an opportunity.
This is more of a community effort as the perfect technological solution has not taken shape yet.

#46

Check this out @Primo this is a recently supported grant by ICON and is similar to what you are suggesting

1 Like
#47

Thanks for the explanation, maybe Im looking at it wrong, I dont know… In my opinion as the projects are not submitted by preps only, if in example I was a prep, planning a large marketing campaign, I would just split it into its integral components (in example twitter campaign, facebook campaign, influencer marketing, article submittion etc) and even submit each of those via a separate new nickname. This would give me a lot of projects that I would just sponsor myself (if I understood correctly the project leader picks who will sponsor their project out of the teams that have agreed to do so) and boost my stats this way. A single stat seems quite easy to game and it shifts the focus on the smaller projects in the system. I believe that we should should have a second one listing the total monthly lockup (summed value for every ‘per month’ lockup needed for every separate project)

The same thing with the governance column - in my opinion there should be more than a single yes/no indicator as that would oversimplify the contribution of the more active teams. I believe that the current yes/no column should stay as it is definitely useful but we should also have the amount of votes that that prep has participated/failed to participate in as a separate one, as in example when you compare preps and they have respectively 9/10, 1/2, 23/23 and 1/1 governance participations, that would give a lot more information to the Iconists, compared to only having their current status

#48

We like the idea of improving UI/UX on both ICONex and ICON Tracker. In addition to the new columns being proposed by @BennyOptions_LL , how about one for “latest progress report” that can be linked to a site that summarizes a P-Rep’s most recent contributions (e.g., Medium, P-Rep’s own website, a designated website for all teams to use, etc.)?

This report would be updated by individual P-Reps themselves, but we can agree to a standard template that everyone adheres to (similar to how grant applications are submitted). It can be, for instance, a quarterly report that teams would be responsible for keeping updated on a regular basis…

Yes, although it would be possible for teams to embellish/exaggerate their own contributions, at current, there seems to be more than enough entirely inactive nodes (where it actually seems probable that some teams wouldn’t even bother to provide a link and/or update at all)… For voters, clicking a broken link or opening a blank page should be an obvious “red flag”…

Also in a way, this is what the iconpreps website was supposed to be all about, so if there’s a way to re-introduce or integrate this original neat idea, it might be something worth looking into. And furthermore, it might be useful if there’s a way for other P-Reps/ICONists to weigh in (this ties into what @TranscranialSol has proposed with ICON Reviews)…

2 Likes
#49

I’ll point out that my project “iconalyst.com” was also built to try and inform iconists about prep activities, including governance and voting participation but the engagement, from anyone, has been near zero.

This could for many reasons from a lack of awareness, to a lack of care, but the fact is very few people seem to care enough to find or use resources that are out there to learn more about preps.

Admittedly there could be more relevant information there too, but that would require some level of participation from preps and additional enhancements that are hard to justify currently.

#50

@Brandon_FBM
I like to share my point for that. First of all nothing against your platform we nearly take 3-month silence on twitter. We are a group of devs and with our rewards, there is no way we can hire someone considering the lowest hour pay is 12-13 USD and we are getting around monthly 600 right now. Secondly, there is the main website for this kind of stuff which is icon.community prep section. That tool has projects side which is flooded and some joke projects so I don’t see any value even spending time to create data there. Lastly, there is a problem of a lot of prep coming up with their own platform and expect all preps and iconist jump onboard. In iconanalyst case there is several platforms like that if I recall correctly. Lets say there was 4 platform like that at peak while there is only 10-50 iconist actually looking for that kind of information. Biggest issue is most of the time it comes up as because of how it is it’s hard to get data about preps etc. we should have better platform system while literally no one cares about that.

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