[Withdrawn] Reduce mint reward to reduce apathetic voting?

Is there an accurate way for the protocol to differentiate between an apathetic minter and a minter that doesn’t agree with a proposal or proposals?

Peercoin’s dynamic block reward is interesting, so if there was a way to inform the protocol of the number of minters that are actively engaged in shareholder matters, the Nu block reward could be increased or decreased within some range.

More engaged voters == higher block reward
Fewer engaged voters == reduced block reward

My hunch is that this is data that may be very difficult to actually determine, but with the large number of smart folks in the community, perhaps there’s a way to provably calculate the ratio.


Edit: @masterOfDisaster’s comment came in during the time that I had started writing my original comment and when I posted this, so I had not read it yet. Upon reflection I’m swayed by his argument that introducing a modification to the reward calculation has a non-trivial risk of negatively affecting the network.

I also agree that “vote fuzzing” should be a higher priority item than any modifications to the minting reward system (and probably a mid to high priority, in general).

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Wouldn’t that just lead to people voting on random motions to get the extra reward?

Ways of gaming the system had not yet entered my thought process but you’re right. This would be a non-starter if that attack vector wasn’t mitigated (presuming that the idea had any legitimate use, to begin with).

I know. I was talking about new people facing an army of 700 alt coins. If there is a consensus that Nu is going to take off, then you need no mintng reward, because everyone will pile into Nushares. When Nu needs support it is at times when it is small, weak, not well-know, filling many with doubt. Nu needs any support it can get. 2-3% inflation is appropriate.

The way it is. It’s an upward spiral.

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This is an interesting point to me and it is reaching a point where shareholders should discuss it. Does Jordan Lee have an obligation to not only propose motions he is in favor of, but also post detailed analysis of every motion he is not in favor of? If so, why? I’ve been very puzzled over the last few weeks that a victimization culture is emerging where users are acting hurt if one large NuShareholder isn’t providing his input. We are a decentralized project that can authorize users like Jordan to complete work on our behalf; there is no centralized control that can dictate the direction of the network at their will. Jordan is not being compensated by the Nu network much (or at all) at this point as far as I’m aware, as B&C Exchange funding is paying him for his time. He should feel free to propose Nu motions and comment where he likes without shareholders being offended.

The whole point of the motion system in Nu is that every shareholder is free to propose their own motion without being intimidated into silence, and if it passes we can be certain that the majority of the financial stake in the network supports it. It’s pure democracy that can’t be interrupted. If you want your idea added to the network, campaign to other shareholders on its merits (as @Nagalim has done well with his supporting data on frequency voting) and avoid attributing other factors (such as the absence of a certain shareholder opinion) to its current popularity levels.

Creon made his own choice to leave and I think this list is a bit dramatic to keep linking to. It is 100% guaranteed we will lose other community members in the future due to a frustration that their ideas aren’t accepted by the majority of shareholders. Those who are able to accept the reality that we can’t always get our way within Nu will succeed here, and the others will leave. Our voting system ensures only the most widely-supported ideas will pass. Based on the comments above so far, I expect that the draft motion Jordan created with my comments will likely not pass, and I’m perfectly okay with that if shareholders decide it is unworthy of inclusion in our network.

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@creon was brilliant in the solutions he devised, but he was rather emotional and negative in his communications as well. The dialog on this forum is generally very professional and focused on understanding and formulating solutions to complex issues and needs. This soft attribute brings a lot of value to the Nu network. It is in stark contrast to the quality of dialog occurring on other forums, such as bitsharestalk.org. So let’s stay focused on politely discussing technical problems and their solutions.

The discussion @Nagalim is leading in the frequency voting thread is only obsolete if forum participants and shareholders agree it is. I haven’t seen any indication of such a consensus. My original post above can’t make it obsolete. Rather, it enriches the dialog surrounding the issue of apathetic voting, by offering a completely different approach to resolving it. Because it is a completely different approach with an implementation unrelated to the implementation @Nagalim has proposed, it requires a separate and distinct motion, as opposed to negotiation about the specifics of Nagalim’s proposal.

One of the beautiful features of Peershares is that there is no barrier to proposal of motions. Absolutely anyone can propose one and the network permits as many motion proposals as people want to make. So why should I be made to feel like I’ve done something inappropriate by proposing a solution to a problem forum participants care about? It would be healthy for the network to see more motions, not less. Let there be a rich and diverse dialog so no potential solution is overlooked.

My proposal is controversial, but it does solve the real problem of apathetic voting. The question at hand is whether the solution creates more problems than other solutions, or more problems than it solves. So let people that want to discuss that do so.

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I didn’t participate initially because I didn’t believe the approach should be implemented and my time is very limited. Once it became apparent there is considerable support for frequency voting, I facilitated it by offering a preliminary estimate and offering some information about availability of developers to implement it. As I understand it, my obligations in this matter are limited to this kind of facilitation.

While I don’t think I am obligated to detail the strengths and weaknesses of frequency voting, I did mention this:

Perhaps I should elaborate on frequency voting making it easier for motions and grants to pass, because it may not be clear what I meant. This isn’t a good thing, and poses a security risk. If a custodial grant has 37% explicit support (edited to correct an error), and there is 40% apathetic voting, it passes. That is a risk. Frequency voting will increase the incidence of apathetic voting. Using a data feed is still expressing a preference about how the network is run, and is quite different than frequency voting in my opinion.

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Mint rewards take money from non-minters and gives it to minters. As we are all about making money here, that can be considered a revenue stream. What’s more, it increases the mint difficulty, a boon for the security in the network. The only thing increasing mint rewards introduces is more apathy in the system. Therefore, it is in our best interest to increase the mint reward just below the point where we start having problems passing motions. As we are not having problems now, now is the time to increase mint rewards, not decrease them.

Frequency voting greatly increases the potential for increasing the mint reward further, possibly by orders of magnitude. When we hybridize frequency voting with data feeds, we can increase it even further, thereby increasing revenue, security, and marketing.

No it’s not. With 40% apathy we’d need over 80% of non-apathetic voters to be voting for a motion for it to pass. That would cripple the network’s ability to make controversial decisions. If 50% of self-declared non-apathetic voters vote for a motion, it should pass. That is not a risk.

If I have a network with 10000 people where 1500 want something , 500 don’t and 8000 don’t care, why is that any less powerful of a consensus than a network with 2000 people where 1500 want something and 500 don’t? All you’re doing is stripping the 8000 who don’t care out of the system.

As I’ve tried to indicate, we can combine frequency voting and data feeds such that you can subscribe to a group of data feeds instead of a single one. That would vastly increase the decentralization and security of semi-apathetic voting.

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Sorry if my words sounded harsh. I am not a native speaker. Keep it in mind when you read my posts.

You are the architect of Nu and when a major change with huge impact on the voting system is offered such as Frequency Voting, I need to hear your opinion and/or the opinion of sigmike before deciding how to vote. I treat my duties as a shareholder responsibly and I do not want to vote for before I heard your or sigmike’s arguments against.

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I don’t see such an obligation.
But creating another motion instead of participating in shaping the original one is not the style I favour, either.
I find it not as helpful as discussing the original matter, searching for benefits of it, but even more important trying to game it, abuse it, find drawbacks.

Creating a different motion is like hard forking a discussion after a long way where two equally big parties don’t find consensus.
I don’t that phase reached in the frequency voting thread.
I’m not saying we don’t need this motion here. I just think it’s too early for it and now we need to follow and participate in two discussions that aim to solve the same problem.

The benefits of frequency voting have been made quite clear and I still haven’t seen sound arguments against it.
The simulations indicate that frequency voting is helpful and hard to game.

If this is true:

we don’t need to mess with the minting reward either - because reducing the mining reward would seem like a solution to a problem we don’t have.

In return reducing the minting reward introduces a potential economical risk to the Nu network:

which frequency voting does not pose.

I was asking for the reasons against frequency voting

but didn’t get an answer.

@Sentinelrv was asking @sigmike

and got an answer that makes me wonder - wouldn’t it have been less effort to chime in the discussion about frequency voting than creating a draft for a different solution to a problem that Nu might face in the future?

I don’t want to victimize anybody.
I have big respect for this whole community and for what @JordanLee designed and implemented.
I just don’t understand…

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the title has a [Draft] and a question!
thus i would like, as a novice NU user, to read the pros and cons of such a proposal without the
accusation talk that i see with politicians during an election period!
thank you! :wink:

good point, I think.

The reply from @masterOfDisaster here, to me as a nushareholder seems also sound–

I do not see personally how such a reduction can help encourage apathetic minters to take responsibility and get really involved in studying carefully each vote before actually voting.
But more fundamentally, what is the concrete issue with apathetic voting?
Can someone clearly articulate it? I would like to make sure we are not trying to solve a false problem.

We want many minters for PoS security but we only want well informed minters for voting. The question is how to maintain a high PoS security while allowing for a distributed consensus that is both powerful and efficient. If a network has 1500 people who want something, 500 who don’t, and 8000 who don’t care, what should the system do? Currently, the answer is nothing and the system will become stagnant. With 0 mint we kick the 8000 out for both voting and security. With freq voting we attempt to ignore the 8000 for voting while still keeping them for security.

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@cryptog’s question is if there is a concrete case to solve the issue now. From recent important issue voting, the percentage of yes in the last 100 blocks often reached above 50%, which seemed to suggest a low apathetic rate.

I feel that apathetic minters is an issue but not an urgent one.

Correct, this is not presently an issue. However, as the OP suggests, there is an intrinsic link between mint rewards and apathetic voters. Therein, we can increase security and revenue by solving this issue, which I could argue are always a boon for the network. However, small measures of security and revenue are not vitally important right now, so I agree that this is not high priority.

I took a stab at fully solving the minting equation and it wasn’t too bad. I came out with the statement that increasing the minting rate from 1.025 to 1.05 while keeping a 35% mint rate siphoned money from the non-minters at an increased rate of 9,250 NBT/year. The siphon rate is maximized at 50% mint rate (not surprising) and it’s somewhat linear near unity mint rates. We should be able to get ~4 kNBT/year/% mint reward as a form of dividends paid by non-minters.

I used mathematica, the equation isn’t super simple so I’d rather not post it. Let me know if anyone wants to see it.

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Agreed. It’s an relevant issue although not an urgent one (yet).

I don’t understand what you are talking about. I may have missed something.

If you have a mint rate of x, a fixed marketcap of y, w nsr minting and v nsr not minting, giving an initial price of q, the amount of money you siphon from nonminters to minters is (estimate without using calculus):

$$ = qw * [ x(w+v)/(x*w+v) - 1 ]

It does not seem that such a proposal has a lot of support. I am not supporting it right now.