A couple of quick thoughts and a disclaimer.
This turned into a bit of a ramble exploring different options and likely outcomes. It is not a pithy proposal, but me digesting Jacobs suggestion of forking and my interpretation of the opportunities and threats at this moment in time as we all contemplate the Atom 2.0 vision and the historical relationships that make coalescing into a shared vision together challenging.
This response is broken into three parts:
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A proposal about definitions
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A proposal about the “fork on the road”
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An exploration of different scenarios
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A proposal about the process and culture of governance we should embrace at this moment as the Cosmos Hub Community.
1: Definitions:
We should not be using the term slashing for any of this discussion. It is technically inaccurate imho. Slashing is a predefined and deterministic removal of tokens from a wallet associated with actions that can undermine the health of a PoS network. It should not be used to describe any social processes resulting in token holdings being changed via token voting. (In this I may be going against @jaekwon’s statements, I am not sure, but I think it’s important to be very precise in our language for discussions as important as these). Therefore I propose that heretofore we agree to use the following terms:
- - Slashing: Exclusively for in-protocol, deterministic removal of token holdings for actions that are provable in a deterministic way such as double signing or too much down time.
- - Forking out: Creating a new genesis file for a distinct chain, and rearranging the token distribution on the fork (Daughter chain?) in a way that is more reflective of what a sub community determines is a healthy token distribution). This is my understanding of a well understood and healthy mechanism for PoS networks to remove what are considered to be bad actors from a token distribution. Note that there will always (or almost always) be a original chain that may keep running if there are enough validators and token holders that think it is important to maintain the original chain.
- - Social slashing: It is. important to put that social word in front of slashing to denote out of protocol removal of token holding to a reason that a community deems important while NOT FORKING. Now we get into the weeds a little bit because if a change is made to the chain that breaks consensus (like changing token holding), and everyone choses to run the new chain and no one chose to run the old chain, then we are really forking out someone and in a way social slashing…If we fork out token holding and but there is still a legacy chain running, I would argue there was not social slashing. So there are two distinct options a community may have.
Now I would like to share my opinion and state clearly that I do not consider ICF or AiB to be “bad actors” in a way that we should be using the term “social slashing” for any of the discussion. My understanding as a community member who has worked extensively with both AiB and ICF and the Cosmos Hub is that there are long held disagreements, and different visions that are reaching a moment where we need to arrange more space for the exploration of these different visions. Mistakes have been made. Mistakes are always made doing bold and innovative things. But imho there has never been any negligence or malfeasance or corruption from founding orgs that I am aware of. Therefore I would like to propose that we are not discussing SLASHING or SOCIAL SLASHING, but instead, we are discussing the potential that FORKS are the appropriate way to realign stakeholder vision with state machine (blockchain) operation and political economy. I am grateful for @jacobgadikian for bringing up this option, and would like to continue to explore it within the bounds of discourse I have outlined.
2: A proposal about the “The Fork in the Road”.
I will start by stating that I am ambivalent about the prospect of a cosmos hub “fork off”. There are elements I find invigorating, exciting and aligned deeply with economy, philosophical and technical opportunities. Equally there are hazards and challenges and a sense of sadness that “we all cannot get along”. This proposal is an attempt to outline another iteration of @jacobgadikian’s suggestion above with a little more detail and in my own words such that I find it attractive. I am not yet sure I would support this yet. So that is my disclaimer.
The Cosmos Holy Trinity
In which Gaia becomes three and we have our cake and eat it too (ideally).
The Mother, The Daughter and Holy Wild Spirit.
(From wikipedia)
Gaia (The name of the cosmos hub blockchain), is the mother of cosmos. She has been a benevolent mother, and raised up a whole ecosystem around her. She deserves respect, care and should not be abandoned. Therefore I propose that we hold AiB and ICF accountable for working better and being responsible token holders and founders by continuing to maintain the “motherchain” of Gaia Into the future. No Slashing except for those in protocol, or in the case of proven (in due process) malfeasance, corruption or negligence).
Anesidora should be the new Atom 2.0 Chain. Just as her mother, Gaia, gave birth to her, Rhea will serve to give birth to the next generation of cosmos projects. She will invest in them, she will secure them and nurture them. She will be a novel and powerful onchain institution, providing much needed onchain services. Her token holders should be people who believe in that vision, and she should fork out those who don’t believe. I would not presume to advice on who gets forked out and why, as I myself am an excited advocate of the need for this new daughter of Gaia, however I believe it is being suggested that AiB is excluded from this fork, or has a lesser role than current holdings on Cosmos Hub.
Eurusternos Should be the name of the new Gaia fork that could be called the "Tendermint 2.0 Chain, (in which ICF is forked out or the stake of that org is reduced to represent a share that feels appropriate for this vision of a minimalist and lean cosmos classic). Perhaps this chain secures gnoland. Perhaps this chain competes to be “the real atom”. I am much much less clear about the role of a fork that is presumably maintained mostly by AiB than the other two versions (atom 2.0 sans AiB, and the continuation of Gaia as the Cosmos Hub in an uneasy continued alliance between the founding orgs, the broader community expressed through the protocol politics of the cosmos hub). However setting that aside, a resurgent and healthy AiB investing into a daughter of the cosmos hub could be very invigorating and exciting, so I want to set out that
IF THERE IS GOING TO BE A FORK OUT, I would prefer not to see protocol politics in which we are voting on social slashing, but instead positive and proactive visions in which those who are into a specific vision are opting into governing and securing a chain with a specific purpose.
Now that it is clear what I am proposing (which is that if there is to be a “fork off” that we should acknowledge the need for three separate chains, one which preserves the original token distribution, and two which prioritize token holder alignment with different visions for a new direction), we can talk about the relationship between these different chains.
These chains could either:
- compete for supremacy in the interchain
- compliment each other with different application specific services to the interchain
The Daughters staying at home Scenario:
It is possible that there is a scenario in which the two daughter chains are secured by Gaia, and then prioritize different directions. Perhaps they even still use the same atoms (which complicates things and goes in a very different direction from the atom 2.0 paper I admit, but it is a thought worth considering I think).
The Game of Thrones Scenario:
But setting aside the version of future history in which we maintain unity through daughter chain forks leasing security from the existing cosmos hub, we have three distinct validator sets, each of which needs to compete for validator, developer and exchange attention. The current cosmos hub gives a massive service to the community with its’ deep liquidity, stability, and exchange on and off ramps. Whatever we do, we need to not threaten that existing value.
In a game of thrones scenario there is a fight for being “the real atom”. This fight is zero sum and only the strongest fork survives. This plays out the Eth - Eth Classic scenario in which eventually there is a remnant chain that has little value or adoption and a “main chain” which is generally accepted as the “true and proper chain”. Given Cosmos’s vastly different thesis in which chains are meant to represent a seet of stakeholders and provide a specific application service to a broad interchain world, this seems dumb to me. Surely there are enough different services to use this as an opportunity to focus on providing much needed services in a complimentary fashion? We are so early, with some much space to grow that falling into a zero sum game at this stage seems to me to be a folly.
But then again my go to modus operandi is “out cooperate the competition” and I see the world through the lens of my biases.
However, despite my distaste for the zero sum game:
From an exchange and user perspective therefore we should acknowledge the need to cut down confusion and maintain the value of the original hub. Unless there is hard work and cooperation to get adoption for different versions of the Cosmos Hub, the community outside of core contributors and validators is likely to “chose one chain to rule them all”. This fact will tend to force us towards reconciliation instead of forking each other out, or into a zero sum competition. This is the most dangerous element of the fork in the road. Unless the great fork-off is orchestrated and amicable, we are likely to see the short term fragmentation of the ecosystem and of liquidity, doing great damage to the viability of cosmos as a place to build.
Mycelial Mesh Scenario:
In this scenario these three forks work hard towards a version of mesh security (I wont call this " @sunnya97’s mesh security" because although he recently presented on it is has been something being discussed and socialized for as long as I have been a part of the community (2017), however I am exited and grateful for his attention and leadership on this! Sunny and the osmosis team should be proud of the way they consistently step into the leadership gap and move the community towards value, functionality and security.). In this scenario these three visions for cosmos bind themselves together not through the traditional app chain approach of token distribution, but through shared interchain security. Each focused on a specific service to the community, in a way that is complementary and pre competitive with the other three. The token economics are designed in a way to compliment and not compete, and no single chain of these three is considered the mother chain. This is attractive because of the challenges of human ego, but challenging due to technical implementation and business development realities. It seems more likely because of the sensitivity around sovereignty that is part of the founding spirit of cosmos in which none of us want to give up sovereignty of the consensus layer to focus only on the application layer.
4: A note on process.
The culture of governance is EVERYTHING. I would like to propose that we follow the following norms as a community, and that we call each other out when we are not following these norms.
- Decorum. This discussion should be civil, polite and focus on substantive discourse with precise definitions. I would like to applaud the efforts of the atom2.0 authors and team for putting a huge amount of work into a positive vision for the hub, and ask that everyone maintain decorum and not take the easy road of hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric. If someone is engaging with inflammatory rhetoric I pledge to call them out even if I agree with their position.
- Disclosure of interests. If there are interests to disclose that are unknown to community members, they should be disclosed. We need to do better as a community about this. It should be a norm.
- Benefit of the Doubt combined with rigorous clear and precise critical feedback. Give people disagreeing the benefit of the doubt, and when you disagree be clear about exactly what you disagree with and why. (maybe a subset of decorum)
- Parliamentary Proceeduralism. We should vote down ANYTHING regardless of if we agree with it, if it does not follow due process. We should clearly outline what due process is, and maintain and upgrade that understanding to facilitate transparent, clear and effective governance.
