I want to say that I really support the Hub funding people to do this analysis and figure out the options.
We have no idea if ICS has product market fit or not so we probably need to know if any of this actually makes any sense as feedback into the the compliance analysis.
But we can spin these efforts up in parallel and I really want to commend @Lil_D for bringing this up.
You’re making very eloquent cases on all points. I oppose a knee-jerk reaction to remove neutron or halt ICS, and I very much support the move to get the hub community some advice.
What will it take for Hub developers and validators to realize they are self-inflicting potentially disastrous regulatory exposure through ICS?
Without professional legal review of AEZ/ICS proposals and their associated projects, the Hub is raw-dogging reality (pardon my language).
I am afraid there is a “sunk cost fallacy” at play in the reluctance to get legal counsel on ICS and the projects that want to use it. Teams and devs have spent so much time and capital building these systems that they do not want to acknowledge there may be externalities they have not prepared for (or perhaps that they never intended to prepare for)—“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
The Hub needs to suspend ICS and pending additions until we can establish professional legal review for these projects and their implications on ICS for the Hub/ATOM staking.
Even bracketing concerns about securities, NTRN’s devs are anonymous, their early VCs are anonymous, and the price those VCs paid for their tokens is unknown. There is no way for the Hub to meaningfully evaluate a merger without these disclosures.
Even at the very opaque level of disclosure for NTRN that we currently have, this is 100% risk for the Hub and its stakers, and 100% reward for NTRN and whoever is behind it.
I support ICS for projects that are genuinely decentralized and that can pass legal muster. Anything else, however, is the Hub gambling the ecosystem’s central source of liquidity to enrich some insiders who have questionable commitments to protecting their business partners.
I got a disagree with you buddy, they have pseudonyms and they’re absolutely totally totally totally real people I have met them in real life and I just think that they’re great.
I do agree with you on the legal thing and I think that I actually came up with a scope for what a hub lawyer should do, with the help of Sean O’Reilly.
I do not view neutron as more risky than the Cosmos hub itself.
I also just want to say though I appreciate the rigor that you’re bringing to this.