With respect to your responses to items 3 and 5, that is true that a large validator with high self-stake does currently have as much voting power as a large validator with a more distributed stake, and the same would be true whether that high self-stake validator spun up multiple nodes or kept the full stake with just one validator. However, there’s currently no incentive to spool up extra nodes for a high self-stake validator because their is no added benefit and it would just result in higher infrastructure costs.
In the scenario you propose, the high self-stake validator would have incentive to create new validators because it would result in more voting power over a large validator with a more distributed stake.
For instance, Validator.ONE has similar stake to Kucoin, however, Kucoin has about 30 unique delegates whereas Validator.ONE has almost 2,400 unique delegates. Validator.ONE is unable to undelegate those 2,400 delegates and redistribute their stake across 40 new validators. A validator like Kucoin that controls large staking wallets from their exchange would be able to do that with just a few command line inputs.
For this reason, Validator.ONE is unable to support this proposal as-is because it puts our delegators vote at risk of being devalued by a high self-stake validator or large wallet that can easily redelegate to newly created validators for additional voting power.
One person has one vote, no matter their socioeconomic status - $ONE validator has one vote no matter their size
I could be misinterpreting the analogy, but I disagree with this comparison. One validator does not represent one person. One validator can represent hundreds to thousands of individuals who have decided to stake with them. I agree with you on one vote per wallet when we’re voting as individuals, but voting as a validator should be done not based on our personal agendas, but rather based on the desires of our delegates and the health and success of the chain.
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I’m in favor of a more balanced approach to voting power but I’m not in favor of the current proposal, or the adjustments to include a multiplier as I feel its too limiting for those who represent a sizeable amount of delegates. I also feel the proposal opens up the possibility and introduces incentive for heavy vote manipulation from validators who own a relatively large amount of ONE.
I think the idea from @JB273 is more along the path I feel would be best as we continue this discussion. With bands, larger validators will continue to have a “louder voice” as they represent a greater number of delegates, but we avoid a situation where the influence of a large validator is 40x greater than the smallest of us. This isn’t to say I’m 100% automatically in favor of a new proposal using bands, only that a banded approach seems more logical to me if we fleshed it out further and included additional tiers.
I’m interested in discussing additional ideas and methods.
Good points @RockTheBlockchain. 1 ONE has always equaled 1 vote, and this gives the ultimate power to the delegator, not the validator. It seems like a proposal limiting the voting power of ONE and relying on unique validator addresses instead is disenfranchising a delegators vote and actually putting more power into the hands of the validator.
Our stance is, we believe in delegators making the right choices and don’t think having a unique validator address should be more powerful than the power of ONE.
Considering that @JB273 good idea could potentially be a reasonable initial framework for a changed voting mechanism, would the following be a further step in that direction?:
Proposal
Tier 1 from 0.5M 5M has 1 vote
Tier 2 from 5M to 50M has 2 votes
Tier 3 from 50M to 100M has 3 votes Tier 4 from 100M to 200M has 4 votes
Tier 5 from 200M up has 5 votes
The first tier would mainly cover unelected validators that could gather momentum and are actively looking for elected status. It seems to me that there is a decent number of validators that, while created, are not really actively pursuing election. These, in my mind, should not be granted voting right until they pass the threshold of 0.5M that would demonstrated real commitment. Of course I’m cognizant that there are currently validators that, while below 0.5M, are active, therefore, this lower entry number could be lowered.
You have to remember that validators are really no different than an elected official by their peers, similar to the governing body in the US. To strip validators down to just 1 vote, negates the votes of the many for the few. The only proposal I’d support would be a weighted adjustment based on total stake and total delegators, I don’t think 1 vote or a tiered system is a good idea.
I’m excited that so many of us realise the current voting model imperfection, but there’s a STRONG NO from me.
let me add a few facts why this is not acceptable for the Harmony DAO (whether it’s C-DAO, V-DAO, and other future DAOs the full picture of what harmony DAO way is, it’s not to split validators from other stakeholders, but unite them in one organisation):
while we haven’t got 100% commitment from every elected/unelected validator to participate actively in voting (governance) giving just a 1 vote to each validator won’t provide us with quorum; unfortunately, we don’t have such a commitment yet - v-dao is working on the approach how to motivate them to be active;
1 vote for a validator only hurts the whole structure of DAO where every stakeholder might (have an option) take part in decision-making process; this is about delegators, the active part of them who don’t only care about staking returns, but actively follow project development; v-dao is working on the voting design that will open access for this category of ONE holders to the fair participation in governance;
this is just a pick of an iceberg, the bottom is in setting DAO first with the correct basic principles
I think you nailed it. I also stand at a hard no, even if the current system is flawed. I don’t want to support a blind decision based on ease or simplicity. To create a fair and equal or fair and balanced system is not as simple as the suggested proposal dictates. It is great many people are actively wanting to help change the current system but it must be thoroughly thought through. I do not have a great proposal or suggestion to improve the current, but it would be nice to see a proposal that has all levels of details for the ecosystem. It would be nice to see a break down of the current issues in clear and concise way, then also a pros and cons list to compare against a new proposal. The new proposal will subsequently answer the current concerns and maintain/better the current pros. I believe if we use a data driven approach while coming up with a fair and balance/equal voting system, we will be able to properly implement a system that can continue to evolve effectively for the community. It must not assume it is perfect by default.
“One validator can represent hundreds to thousands of individuals who have decided to stake with them”
That implies all delegators share the principals of the validator, when in reality most may just have been arbitrary or monetized decisions, but I get your point.
“I agree with you on one vote per wallet when we’re voting as individuals, but voting as a validator should be done not based on our personal agendas, but rather based on the desires of our delegates and the health and success of the chain.”
The sentiments seem to be that larger/established validator should have more voting power because their status infers a stronger commitment to the chain as a whole (staked $one, successful validation nodes - and the work that goes into that, etc.).
However, it appears evident that election status != participation in governance. Would rewarding validator participation in governance with a larger portion of block rewards affect that positively? For example: validator {x} participates in 100% of governance decisions and is able to offer delegators a higher APY than delegator {y} whom only participated in 50%, and validator {z} that never does. A next-level could perhaps be additionally incentivizing based on percentage of delegator governance participation within a validator’s stake pool. In this sense all benefit when they help strengthen the Blockchain and the validators are motivated to increase participation.
It doesn’t look good for me, seems like a person can create multiple validator pool and influence the voting as 10k is the minimum to become a validator. Also, a validators doesn’t require elected status to vote.
We are strictly against this. As part of the team that discussed and launched the initial governance and its specs, we have debated a lot with regards to stake weight voting or just 1-1 voting. I agree current one can be improved but definitely not with allowing each validator 1 vote, as it is too easy to manipulate and cheat in that case. We also strongly believe that the bigger (more active validators) also have more skin in the game with their total delegations as well as their holdings, and most probably understand how the network works on a purely technical level much more, than a random smaller validator (i bet at least 20% of them still do not understand how EPoS works, not really).
We also want unelected validators to participate in voting, which this proposal cancels.
I think the solution should be more in the way of averaging the voting power, similar to effective stake for example. Or in correlation with bls keys. It also does not hurt to check how other networks tackle this.
But 1 validator having 1 vote is definitely not good and too exploitable, so we stand as a hard no on this proposal.
The proposal has been updated to include the unelected validators.
For a malicious actor to take the majority of the vote it will take at the minimum 500M one. In the case they split in 100 validators with 5M to have 100 votes let’s say. I say “at the minimum” because the other validators could split as well to have more vote as well and regain the control…
Currently it takes about 2B one to cheat the vote.
So it won’t be “easy” like you said and this scenario is unlikely to happen.
For the number of delegations, I think we cannot attribute ourselves all the power of our delegators. It is a bit (a lot?) usurped for many reasons in my humble opinion :
First, some have huge delegation from exchanges,
Second we are not running a politic campaign or something like that, the comparison with the real world election is far from being good here. Most (but not all!) of our delegators stake only because they are incentivized to do it,
Third some low stake validators may have more delegators than high stake validator but they have less tokens.
I would agree that in general, the high stake validators have more experience and some have good technical skills/knowledge but you will find also lower stake validators with good knowledge.
You cannot categorized validators like that, it is a bit too simple.
Right now, the different proposals made look accessible to any validator (with a minimum of research/interest). Plus, if there is a doubt on anything technical, we can still refer to the core team.
That being said I am not totally against the bands 2 and 3 proposed by @JB273 .
Band 2: 2 - 10 * EMS = 2 votes
Band 3: 11+ * EMS = 3 votes
But I just feel it will add a bit more complexity, it will also breaks the initial idea… but if I see a consensus for this I could consider adding it to the proposal.
2 caveats as I weigh in here.
(1) I have not discussed this w/ ANYONE else on the Harmony team - so this is my opinion only. Do NOT weight this any higher than any normal joe contributing on a forum.
(2) I can write code just about as well as a piece of shoe-leather - so don’t take this as network architecture gospel or anything else.
Thoughts:
ElCapitan is 100% on the money when he says that the BEST thing we can be doing is educating the community to undelegate from validators that do not participate in voting. You want to move the needle to see more just distribution of voting power? Undelegate from those that aren’t voting.
This may mean that you need to pull your coins out of a centralized exchange because that exchange isn’t voting - but I am okay with that.
I opted for the yes vote on this. Personally, I feel each eligible person should get an equal vote.
If you take the example of a President, King or Queen, he or she has the same voting power as the everyday person and that is important. Otherwise, the powerful can abuse their position (history has taught us that one powerful person can affect millions). The exception to this would be if the validator could prove they are acting as the one voice for the group of delegators they represent (not sure how that would best work as it is similar to the current system).
If the aforementioned scenario does happen (And new validators unexpectedly start voting to cheat the vote). In that scenario the vote is discarded.
Another possible consideration might be a 20-50 epoch unlock period. Before any new validators are eligible to vote, this would make it a little more difficult to create a validator just to cheat a vote.
I am all for 1 validator 1 vote but I agree that it is easy to manipulate if required but this could be a nice compromise.
Some consideration should be put towards how this could also possibly be manipulated but I do believe that we should not reward larger validators with more voting power by weight, if possible.
Maybe both 20-50 epochs + a trivial but not small amount delegated like 50k…
The spirit of having 1 validator with 1 vote is going the right direction but the math needs to be figured out. As with some other governance tokens, the underlying token holders can also vote without a validator representing them. Meaning, let’s say a large-sized delegator, with 100M tokens, delegated to 10 validators. This delegator then votes “Yes”, while 8 of 10 of the validators delegated to voted “No”, then what? Do we give this delegator 1 vote per wallet? What if someone decides to game the governance system by creating a bunch of wallets and runs amuck in voting one direction. Giving 1 vote per wallet doesn’t work either.
How about quorum? What’s the upper limit of the quorum? Do we count by number of wallets, or number of elected validators, or the number of registered validators (including accidental “create validator” calls)? I believe governance passage require that we surpass a quorum for the Yes/No to be legitimized.
What @ElCapitan mentioned about validators not voting, I asked the question about “Abstain”-ing before, the answer I got was to not vote. There may be some validators that rather not taking a position, hence “not voting” isn’t their fault (and yes maybe some don’t care enough, or simply too busy and missed out). The Snapshot platform doesn’t have the capability to vote a third direction of “Abstaining”, which does help adding the ONE tokens into the quorum.
I like @JB273’s idea of using BLS as a denormalizing mechanism, but we run into the same issue of fractionalizing the votes when delegators breakaway and decide to vote on their own independently.
Hence, when HIP-12 goes live for voting, I’m going to vote No as the proposal is not thought thoroughly yet. I don’t have a suggestion either.
@sophoah@lij@rongjian Can we have some feedback as to the feasability of this proposal as there is currently a vote ready.
If it is feasable and @ONE4All still wants to put to a vote, then we can let the community decide.
@ONE4All It would be great if you can review the comments before deciding to officially put this to a vote. Maybe there are some tweaks or further debate required.