A Note on the Future of the Cosmos Hub

[jtremback]

@Elijah

To be fair I think the Hub’s community pool has not truly taken responsibility because the community does not have trust in how it is spent. While I’m naturally missing context on the history of everything, this seems to be a recurring theme in conversations I’ve had across the ecosystem.

It’s easy to shit on an existing system, and a lot of people like to do it. I’m not saying that the current governance system is perfect, and it’s not really even my goal to defend it here, but it’s naive to think that any other system wouldn’t have just as many vociferous complaints. The theme of the complaints might be different though. If you tried to put together some perfect system of committees, you’d have complaints that a bunch of insiders were embezzling all the money.

I agree with you that futarchy could present a market-based alternative, and I would be supportive seeing experiments with it, but as far as i know, it has never really worked at any scale. It seems like it could be tried to control a limited set of parameters with clear KPIs, and I would be very excited to see a concrete proposal for something like that.

@Elijah

I don’t agree there should be per proposal committees. There are only so many people with time, qualifications and energy to participate effectively. Additionally committees being set by the proposer seem like a collusion vector in the long term (although it might suffice in the short term until there are established policies).

I think that global committees are tricky, because you are giving one small group of people a lot of power. No matter what you do, someone will always be mad about them, will feel shut out, and someone will be bullying the committee members and alleging that they are corrupt.

Here’s my vision for per-proposal committees:

• The committee is named in the proposal funding the team.
• The team’s funding vests over the course of the contract.
• The committee can always choose to end the funding and return it to the community pool.
• The voters can always choose to end the funding and dismiss the committee, as well as the team.

This accomplishes the following goals:

• The power of the committee comes from the voters. It’s important that this always be front and center.
• One way the voter’s power manifests is in even choosing to approve the proposal with the committee in the first place. If you think that the committee is not going to act as a good check on the team, then vote NO.
• Another way the voter’s power manifests is the ability to dismiss the committee at any time.
• A large part of the role of the committee in this scheme is to provide information to the voters. They can meet regularly with the team, and ask questions that might not be getting asked otherwise. These meetings can be distilled into minutes and articles for the voters. This reduces the information burden on voters, helping them to gauge both whether the team is doing a good job and whether the committee is holding the team properly accountable.

I think per-proposal committees are the most realistic and flexible choice. They avoid the dynamic of trying to choose some perfect committee of experts to rule over everyone, and the personal drama that will entail.

The reason that per-proposal committees aren’t a collusion vector is because they don’t actually try to magically have some kind of perfect representatives that do everything with perfect impartiality and wisdom. The voters are ultimately in control.