[Discussion] Activating FLOT

[dysconnect]

In many teams there are roughly 3 types of people that can be kept as long as their output can be afforded, from the lowest weight:

1. Those that choose to coast along but maintain the minimum level of responsibility, and don’t want to work harder even offered a rise.
2. Those that would perform at a level of their pay, and can do more for a pay rise.
3. Those that over-compensate for their pay.

Among flot, I’d say moD fits squarely in type 3. I would think I’m 3 on a good day, but overall not too far from being type 2. I refrain from commenting too much on others at this point, but they lie on a spectrum between 1 and 3. Even 1 is still a perfectly reasonable place to be because very few of us can commit a lot, and at least I don’t think FLOT members are anywhere beneath that.

It’s easy to deal with those that consistently over-compensate; you just give them more and more, well-paced with a carrot on the stick, and then they’ll catch up to the point that they can’t afford to visibly over-compensate anymore. Perfect slave to capitalism.

Type 1 people aren’t too hard to please either. We can ask people to be up front with it and then determine the minimum amount of work justifiable by a token amount of compensation.

Type 2 is the trickiest and I haven’t made up my mind with a low-friction way to deal with them.

[masterOfDisaster]

Those 3 types describe indeed a lot of people’s behaviour, and performance!
As long as the NSR holders find all FLOT members in range 1 to 3 everything is fine, right?
You can think of ways to improve the performance, but that would only be necessary if the current level of performance would be insufficient.
Unless you require the improved performance you waste money if you buy superfluous extra performance.

You should consider different types of motivation as well. Some people can be motivated with money (a type of extrinsical motivation).
Others might have other motivations (maybe intrinsical ones).
Most might have a mixture of extrinsical and intrinsical motivations.
Obviously you can influence only extrinsical motivations.

[Dhume]

It’s hard to say, when we started I felt the fee we’re charging might be a bit steep. However seeing how active FLOT had to be due to essentially having no functioning T3 layer combined with the BTC volatility I think it was justified. I feel T3 is improving and if this continues the demand placed upon FLOT should decrease, justifying a decrease in FLOT “salary”.

Along with that I would like to see the NBT group extended to increase all 8 members. Currently there’s not much to do for us NSR signers and I don’t see a scenario where this changes. In contrast this places a higher strain on the ones in the NBT group compared to the ones in the NSR group. I see no good reason why we couldn’t and shouldn’t change that.

I could even see a new division where we essentially decrease FLOT into a smaller team that handles the changes in demand and holds a smaller portion of the BTC and NBT funds in a 3 out of 5 address and a larger team that holds the majority of the reserves in a 5 out of 8 address (FLRT, First Liquidity Reserves Team). Time and activity requirements for the FLRT would be lower than for the FLOT team and payment should reflect this. Also it would be easier to require more active participation from the FLOT members since as a smaller team that’s their job, the FLRT is more of a backup and only requires the occasional (maybe 2/3 times a month) signing to restock the FLOT address when needed. However this would mean that 3 of the current FLOT members would need to do a step back from the current situation, something I’m not very enthusiastic about since I feel all have fulfilled their motion requirements.

[dysconnect]

Along with that I would like to see the NBT group extended to increase all 8 members. Currently there’s not much to do for us NSR signers and I don’t see a scenario where this changes.

If you do feel that way, perhaps you could have also responded to the recommendations I’ve made that the NSR group can help with non-signing tasks or participate in discussion by the NBT group, even though technical issues bar some members from being in charge of signing.

Perhaps it would have been better for me to ping everyone everytime I said it, but missing all of my several posts related to this is a sign of passiveness. I’m not dissatisifed with how FLOT has operated for most of the time, as I opined about commitment and also considering the size of the fee, but it’s not a good feeling to see it brought up this way.

[Dhume]

I merely meant that I don’t see a good reason why we currently have 5 members of FLOT assigned to NBT which clearly requires much more signing then NSR. I understand that those not in the NBT group can contribute in other ways but I don’t see a reason why we shouldn’t be added to the NBT group as well. Is there a good argument against a more equal sharing of the work (signing)?

[dysconnect]

You did talk about NSR group members sitting around doing less work, so my overall theme wasn’t entirely unwarranted.

As per your suggestion, currently one possibility is to create another 3-of-5 NBT group, and a similar feasible formulation is one single 3-of-8 group. Either is plausible; there may be discretion issues in these arrangements but certainly there is something to be gained. On the other hand, I vaguely remember a similar discussion in the past that never gained traction; it was about factoring the BTC group though, and there were too few participants in the discussion to develop a consensus. Perhaps there were individual concerns left unexpressed @jooize @ttutdxh @cryptog @mhps @woodstockmerkle

[jooize]

Two 3-of-5 groups would fragment some risk, I guess, and shouldn’t be worse (messier) than now if we use different signing threads. If we want all of FLOT to sign (or state their disagreement with) everything, two groups wouldn’t cause more work (perhaps a bit, and there’s some potential for confusion).

Is there any worry in having more potential signers with the same required amount of signers? Disregarding any potential risks, additional signers would make FLOT more agile.

Alternatives

• Single 3-of-5 (current situation)
• Two 3-of-5
• 3-of-8
• 5-of-8 like FLOT BTC
• 4-of-8?

Which of these are technically viable in the current state of Nu?

[Passed] Peercoin FLOT Reserve

It can be done, but it won't work very well until many nodes have upgraded, because older versions will not propagate these transactions (they will accept them within a block though). Another solution is to build a 2.0.x with only this change.

Did I respond with what you asked for?

[Dhume]

I’m not criticizing your interpretation merely refining my point.

My suggestion would be to install a 3 out of 8 address (only 3 signers warrants more speed). If we feel uncomfortable having 150k Nubits on a 3 out of 8 address, we could also keep the current 3 out of 5 address and use it as a “reserve” address. We then transfer say 30k to the new address and use that for day to day interactions with T3 and others. This way the whole of FLOT would be more actively involved with the balancing of both the buy and sell side.

[mhps]

Is there a good argument against a more equal sharing of the work (signing)?

What is equal? equal number of groups to belong to? equal number of signings per month? how is timeliness of signings put into calculation? If someone can come up with a calculator the FLOT can bill shareholders based on actual work done. Oh wait that is not good. Because it incentivises a FLOTmember to make a unneeded txs to get paid more. More thinking is needed.

install a 3 out of 8 address

That is fine with me.

Note: The reason why the NBT group has less signers was that T4 buy side BTC was greater in value than sell side NBT when FLOT was formed. Now there are $127k worth of buy side BTC and $153k of NBT. Either we should make the NBT group 5-of-8 or make the BTC group 3-of-8.

[Nagalim]

So what if we have 2 groups (to simplify @dysconnect’s 3 types of people and remove the questionable type 2). Level 1 FLOT members are paid like they are now and function the way they do now. Level 2 FLOT members must sign every Txn within their window (or give a reason why not) and are paid in a different way. The danger here, again, is the sybil attack. For example, if we simply pay Level 2 more than Level 1 then it would be profitable for a level 1 to design a bot that automatically signs every Txn that hits the forums. However, this would have to pass a Turing test provided by the forum goers and most basic attempts at level 2 farming would fail and end in ejection from FLOT and tarnishing their reputation.

Another thing to think about is giving incentives for forming new FLOT reserves, or tieing incentives to the magnitudes of the reserves. Again, we have to tread very very lightly here to avoid messing with the good faith of the signers and creating conflicts of interest.

[mhps]

So what if we …

What was the problem to be solved can someone remind me?

[Nagalim]

If we begin to consider performance incentives we need to be very cautious because we may influence the signer’s opinion of the best thing to do in a given situation by personally incentivizing one option over the other.

FLOT can bill shareholders based on actual work done. Oh wait that is not good. Because it incentivises a FLOTmember to make a unneeded txs to get paid more. More thinking is needed.

^That

[mhps]

If we begin to consider performance incentives

That started with an “If”. I don’t clear see a performance problem that warrants complicated mechanism to be installed.

I appreciate the enthusiasm. All FLOT members and you are active Nu community members. And that is part of the problem. I can’t help feeling we are all spending time polishing the shining steering wheel of a boat when the boat is having bigger problems in its direction. I’d rather see us talking about nubits adoption and a working profit model.

[Nagalim]

FLOT is a very new concept without a whole lot of thought put into it. We’ve been talking about nubits adoption and a profit model for over a year now. If you have something to say about those topics, please say it. About the concept of FLOT I have some things to say and I feel the freedom to say them. It’s even possible that we could come up with a blending of T3 and FLOT such that there are many many reserves and many many signers in different combinations. Like B&C but with Nu funds. I really think there’s a lot here to talk about here. Anyway, go to another thread if you don’t like this one.

[mhps]

About the concept of FLOT I have some things to say and I feel the freedom to say them.

Fine. If it’'s interesting I will discuss them.

Anyway, go to another thread if you don’t like this one.

No need to be condescending. If I see a waste of FLOT members’ time I say it where it is appropriate.

[Nagalim]

This thread is about how shareholders compensate FLOT. I find it strange that an FLOT member is telling a non-FLOT shareholder that discussing their pay is a waste of time. Anyway, i did not solicit a response from FLOT.

[mhps]

Discussing per se is OK. Your OP was fine and had interesting points. It was the long winded mechanisms all under “If” that I think is too much. I prefer to keep things simple although I, too, like to play with shining gadgets.

i did not solicit a response from FLOT.

I am a shareholder.

[Nagalim]

all under “If”

That ‘if’ was the third sentence of the OP and the whole point of this thread. Maybe I should edit the OP to read ‘when’ because I’m 99% sure someone would have brought this up if I didn’t. Eventually, someone’s going to start talking about 2 and 3 person multisigs and when they do this discussion will be very important. So you think it’s wasting time but I think it’s saving a bunch of time down the road to map this out theoretically now.

[cryptog]

3 required signers might look like a bit too small but this is what NBT FLOT requires and so far it seems it worked fine.
Perhaps we can try 3 of 8 for BTC FLOT, NSR FLOT and BKS FLOT for a portion of the funds at the beginning to see how it goes.

[dysconnect]

The reason I suggesteds 3 signers is strictly technical. I’ve begun to realize it wasn’t commonly remembered why NBT/NSR are confined to 3-of-5; it’s because the network doesn’t support 4-of-6 upwards. It’s not a difficult change but even when updated it will take some time for the network to handle it stably (i.e. most clients updated).