ICF Harming Gaia Competitiveness

[jacobgadikian]

1. the icf, per their own admission, is severely delinquent in updating delegations.

2. Planning for Gaia is done on a closed discord server. Even validators and large code contributors cannot participate in planning for Gaia.

I do not know if Ignite still owns atoms. If they do, they’re likely delinquent on item number one here. To the best of my knowledge, they do not control or make policy on the planning for Gaia.

The reality is that no one knows except participants in that discord server.

DEPRECATED: ~[PROPOSAL #][DRAFT] Gaia v8-Rho Upgrade~

This analogy is getting really tiresome and difficult to engage with, Jacob. I take it in good faith because I don’t think you intend for this to be anything more than a funny way of talking about bloated code and minimalism. Speaking about a codebase as though it’s a woman who needs to lose weight is pretty distasteful and unprofessional. This is a space where women exist and (likely) are not interested in a comparison between a(n allegedly) feature-bloated blockchain and their real, physica…

Jacob’s Analogy: terminated
ICF Delinquencies: exist

the solutions are really quite simple but I know for sure there’s a swath of incumbents who may be opposed to addressing them.

At this stage, it is not unreasonable to wonder about:

• are delegations actually based on votes?
• should new and highly participatory validators look to chains other than the cosmos hub?
• should I steer top new validating talent away from the cosmos hub?
• what are the relationships between non-participatory incumbents and the icf or its members / directors?
• Should the community look past Gaia for hub-like properties in a blockchain?

Surely the ICF currently has very significant delegations to non-participatory incumbents.

Surely, this harms the quality of Gaia’s validator set and disincentivizes highly participatory new validators.

Surely, the solution to this is not even remotely difficult.

Surely, this has been discussed at great length, and both issues have been recognized as serious by the Interchain Foundation.

Surely, no action has been taken.

Why?

We all want the Cosmos hub to be highly competitive, but the ICF continues to take actions that seem to harm the competitiveness of the cosmos hub. (I am not talking about prop 69, prop 69 was in my opinion made in good faith, and sparked a great deal of thought and consideration on my part)

As a validator with delegations on the cosmos hub from atom stakeholders, I feel obligated to point out that the opportunity to recruit technical talent via the validator set is being completely missed on the cosmos hub. I think that missing opportunities to recruit technical talent can cause harm to the value of the atom and the speed of evolution in cosmos and / or harm Gaia’s role as a hub in cosmos.

Furthermore, the delinquency can cause harmful doubts-- for example, if I knew that any validator could fully participate in planning conversations, and that the interchain foundation used their stake to onboard highly participatory validators, then I’d have no reason for concern about @lexa’s request to stop using the phrasing which shall not be named, and no reason for concern that ICF delegations may be based on compliance with the ICF agenda for the cosmos hub.

So, if we’re all assuming good-faith here, I would like to once again urge the interchain foundation to update their delegations and ensure that all:

• validators
• code contributors
• infrastructure proviers

… can meaningfully participate in conversations about Gaia’s development. By commit count, I am the 5th largest contributor to Gaia (code contribution should not be measured solely by commit count, others have done much more than me, and probably some of them have fewer commits on Gaia than I do and that is fine) and I do not have a way to access the discord server where Gaia’s development is planned.

I may (once again) be dinged by some employee or grantee of the ICF for mentioning this stuff, or be told that these conversations are better held in private forums, but these issues are really very persistent, and the solutions seem quite simple to me.

Or, is there an argument that today’s validator set is maximally competitive?

Please note that this is not a discussion of Prop 69, which I personally think did serve to make Gaia more competitive in the long run, even if just by sparking high quality discussion of important issues.

If you feel that these are important issues, please consider delegating to Notional’s validator on the Cosmos Hub, and advocating to ICF members that planning occur in the open, and delegations be routinely updated.

should I freak out and sell all my atoms?

no. This can be addressed through advocacy, I think.

Does this mean that the icf is terrible at everything they do?

No. The icf is terrible at the two items that I hope to get addressed:

• delegating its atoms in a way that reflects the current reality of the network
• ensuring proper transparency around cosmos hub development

Some Questions

• Should ICF delegate to validators who have never voted?

They do.

• Should ICF delegate to a provider of white-label services to validators in cosmos?

They do.

• Should ICF delegate to validators who have been jailed?

They do.

• What is pe4x72?

A validator the icf delegates to with no known public record.

• Should validators fear retaliation by the icf?

Notional does.

Prove notional wrong please

faddat