General questions about the use of Community Pool

Conversation Governance Meta
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I don’t have the answers but would love to share with you some questions I would consider in recent discussion on the use of community pool.

  1. ICF. Should the proposer first ask for the support from ICF? If yes, under what circumstances? Is ICF suitable for taking a leading role to grant support to the proposal and then the community pool provides a matching support?

  2. Double-financing. Is that possible a proposer has got support from both ICF and the community pool for the same work (or related works)?

  3. Disclosure and monitor. How much disclosures the proposers should make? How the community monitor the progress and result?

  4. Cap. The pool size is limited and it takes time to replenish. Do we need to set a cap for each proposal? Do we need to set a cap of monthly grant? Do we need to set other policies?

  5. Should ICF and AiB employees be eligible to apply for support from community pool? Any restriction or special policies need to be applied?

  6. Validators’ reward. This is another version of double-financing. Should the pool compensate for the works to be done by validators who are supposed to be rewarded through validators’ operation (commission)?

  7. Related to #6. Is that possible for a validator to use low/no-fee strategy and then get paid from the pool? If this is the case, will the pool encourage validators to cut commission fee? If the proposer is a validator, do we need to relate its commission level to its eligibility to apply for community support?

  8. By making contribution to the community, validator will be rewarded not just from commission. It will earn intangible brand asset which will provide long-term value to the validator. Should we take into account this factor?

  9. Let’s look at #8 positively. This is benefit to us all if the community pool can help to build the brand of some contributors. But who should we help? People with skin in the game or other early mover advantages, or some newcomers?

  10. Will the pool also create disincentive? For example, will the contributors stop to make contributions if they fail to get support from the pool? Will this set an entry barrier to newcomers because normally it is more difficult for them to get supported due to the lack of track record?

  11. In fact, all these questions relate to one single question which is a prerequisite: what is the objective of the community pool? Should we consider something like
    “will this create a more centralized distribution of wealth?”
    “will this make the space more fair or more unfair?”
    “will this benefit to the community as a whole?”
    “will this help to expand Cosmos?”
    “will this help the price of atoms?”

I have not yet concluded my answers to these questions but I am interested to see how you think.

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I don’t have particular answers to the above. However, I think it’s important for the community pool to be sustainable. If we keep granting by directly sending ATOMs from the community pool, it will drain and become empty very fast. Is it possible the community pool itself could run as a validator to make sure the community pool will inflate as the bonded ATOMs? Or could the grant be delegations but not sending out ATOMs directly? I understand that the proposer of a proposal might not be a validator. What if the community pool become a bootstrap grant for those proposal proposers? I wonder how a non-validator would understand the community work and what feature the community want. I imagine there can be 200 max validators by the end of 2020. We can have a lot more validators and we may use the community pool to give a bootstrap delegation grant to those community contributors to become validators.

To be honest, I personally prefer using the community pool on those who really need help. Delegation can help in a longer term and make the pool more sustainable. The projects can still ask for grant from ICF which is totally independent with the decision from the community.

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The things you say are too vague for me, there are so many things that I cannot understand at all

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