With the recent word from the foundation that p-reps are only here to secure the network. And as more p-reps are just self-funded non-performing whales. What is the point of voting? Would a flat rate be more appropriate at this point? Or a heavy cap on votes (~2% of supply). Why does prep A get 15k to run a node but lower reps get $50? Seems broken. I know it’s “set up” this way. But it seems like there’s really no point now. Are we voting on who our favorite whale is? Or who runs an AWS node the best?
The screenshot that Brian shared was taken out of context and I have explained it on a number of venues. Here is an explanation from the same chat room as the original screenshot:
Nothing is changing. Funds from a node are not necessary to contribute. Zensports doesn’t run a p-rep and they built a successful DApp on ICON. Great contribution, and if they were running a p-rep, I would expect people to vote for them because of their DApp contribution.
Balanced is another example. Has cost $0 to build. 5 p-rep teams all contributing using their talents in exchange for splitting upside in the project. I would expect people to vote for the teams that contribute to balanced. Good contribution, has nothing to do with rewards. Balanced cost $0 to build, just effort. DPoC is about why you pick who to vote for, not giving nodes a ton of rewards and hoping they reinvest in ICON. It’s about electing nodes with talent, that use that talent to build businesses on ICON (among other things). It’s about not focusing on which node offers the highest rewards, but which nodes bring the most talent to the ecosystem.
As for what nodes get paid for, nodes earn rewards to compensate for governance and node operations. Contributions get paid for by the success of the business (I.e. Balance token value and dividends), grants (I.e. the LICX grant), or the hopeful impact it has on ICX price (I.e balanced can raise the price of ICX and therefore all of our income). You can also raise money for your contribution as ZenSports did.
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In addition to everything mentioned above, votes will have an impact on a team’s voting power in the CPS. So you should vote for teams that manage the CPS the way you like. If you really like marketing but you see your P-Rep consistently votes against marketing proposals in the CPS, you should change your votes to a team that supports what you like to support.
Managing the CPS itself is also optional, so I expect teams that participate in managing the CPS to also earn more votes for their effort. CPS participation will be shown in the voting screen and on the tracker.
But yes I agree that the income disparity amongst P-Reps is not ideal. We are discussing that internally right now (and on some other threads). A cap is on the table and other potential ideas. If it becomes too equal, we’ll just have whales running 5-10 P-Reps each, but having no equality at all leads to inefficient income disparities
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