Hello fellow Cosmonauts.
I want to touch on the topic of Risk evaluation and due diligence when suggesting new features that are altering the core of Cosmos to the point the suggested ones do.
New features = New revenue streams.
This is correct, yet not absolute. New revenue streams can come from product robustness, longevity and security as well. In software development, whenever a product reaches a supposed stalemate in development, the new features are used to drive new capital in and push development. However this does not come without a cost.
Enter, Software Development Entropy Acceleration.
The new features albeit driving new capital, are consuming resources, the development cost goes up, and the risk ratio rises. New features albeit alluring and capital inducing at first, in the long run inevitably drive the product to development entropy in a more accelerated manner.
Disclaimer: I am not advocating for software stagnation and a supposed equilibrium. This is an impossibility in Software Engineering. The point i am trying to make here, is to prevent high levels of entropy by introducing rushed new features.
No new features? NGMI!
I do not agree at all with this sentiment. Protocols that take huge risks and development leaps of “new feature === then price go up” are getting sacrificed in the altar of acceleration and we need only to look outside our comfortable and secure Cosmos bubble(with minor exceptions of course). Cosmos is a safehaven in that regard because of robustness and it wins by minimalism. (Cosmos hub minimalism is a matter for another time though)
The Burden of Proof
Lies only to the proposer of drastic changes. The demand for transparency is not something that the hub devs or anyone for that matter should think its an “optional” request. It is not. I am not trying to be disrespectful and i appreciate the development done so far. BUT. We are at the crossroads of BoP(Burden of Proof) and accountability.
In traditional fintech SENG companies, If a lead architect/product owner/CTO etc. want to change the business logic of an application, or even change something on a runtime engine, or anything altering the initial scope and product mission there is accountability and approvals that need to be made. From whom? By board of directors and shareholders. There is ZERO times in any serious business, where someone said, lets change the application entirely and the stakeholders just shrugged.
**Any change proposed should come with a transparent publicly available Risk Assesment Report. **
Any claim of New Feature === Price goe up should come with a publicly available Return on Investment Report.
Again, forgive my forthcomingness, but you (the change proponents) are obliged and mandated to produce such reports. There is risk analysis/marketing/product team for the hub, no? It falls into this jurisdictional level. This is also to ensure Liability.
Another analogy:
When a bridge is made, if the bridge at some point collapses out of material/design negligence, the parties involved are and will be subject to legal repercussions. This is what skin in the game, accountability and liability is and why i love these concepts so much. You suggest x modification will account for price increase? Perfect! I am not saying it wont. I am also not saying it explicitly will. We have to put our logic first and then sentiment. And logic dictates calculation, thus the need for the above mentioned results.
If the new features fail, who is accountable?
If the new features do not deliver, whose money are gone?
If such analysis was not made, how can we suggest price go up with such certainty?
I am making this thread in the governance section for the following reasons:
Before an onchain proposal goes live, it is my opinion that these matters should be addressed and used as a point of reference for accountability and transparency. It is owed to the cosmonauts and investors. It is the sane, logical and safe way forward and again, imo, if those criteria are not met, no proposal of such significance and with such hub altering elements should see the blocks of a chain.
Tax increase is directly linked with new features and the suggested new features of the hub that were pointed out in Atom2.0 and albeit atom 2.0 died with the NwV prop, the ghost of Atom2.0 past still lingers on with concepts like MEV,Liquid staking etc (another reason why the above-mentioned reports are needed)
The elephant in the room: ICS
YES to ICS. I am a very big proponent of moving forward with ICS.
However now we are reaching a point where we are debating the funding of the remainder of the ICS completion(bootstrapping new consumer chains) and i have to ask(out of ignorance essentially) Was this not calculated in the first ICS cost allocation? If not, why at least not on a high level? Discussions about which chains would be bootstrapped first and which later are not something done with a flick of a switch so this could be estimated, or at worst, sized up by a range that translates to monetary value in terms of costing.
I shall make a different thread regarding the community tax and how i think it should be handled, because this is purely to raise awareness and to point out this obvious thing:
We need more transparency and less blind faith.
Sincerely, your friendly neighbourhood helicopter operator
PS. If adequate analysis was done and i am ignorant on it, please provide below and i will be very pleased to correct my critical judgment with less scepticism.
PS2: TL;DR