Yes, jury duty is cool AND saves you time

Conversation Governance Meta
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tl;dr If you’re a validator on Cosmos that cares about governance, sign up for a future validator jury. 50 USD per session, saves you time judging proposals you would need to look at anyways, plus “the best conversation I’ve ever had in Cosmos governance” according to a previous juror. Sign-up here.

What’s a validator jury?

Validator juries are a new governance mechanic being piloted by the Validator Commons. They bring together small, randomly-selected groups of validators (the “jury”) to have intimate, private conversations about upcoming governance proposals.

During each conversation, a neutral moderator will bring in “expert witnesses”, often the proposers themselves, to answer questions posed by the validators. Afterwards, the validators gather together to make a joint, public recommendation about the proposal(s).

This jury system is designed to save validators time (because you don’t have to participate in or evaluate EVERY governance proposal, only the ones you get randomly assigned) and to improve the quality of governance decisions.

Our first pilot was for ATOM 2.0, see the results here.

Now we’re going to start running these jury sessions more regularly. By signing up through the form, you’ll join a pool of other validators and MIGHT get called to serve in one of our future juries. Don’t worry, we’ll confirm with you first.

Have questions or want more details? Check out the project doc where the “court team” is organizing the project, contact us here or on Twitter, or join us at one of our regular Validator Commons calls every Wednesday.

Cheers,
Josh

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I participated in the pilot as an “expert witness” and can report it was very well organized and resulted in constructive conversation about the proposal. There are very few venues for this type of discourse and it solves a real problem for validators: governance overhead. Very happy to see the project continue.

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Submitted!

Would be fun to try imo ^^
Already a passionate supporter of governance, so that energy I will bring to the table.

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We should work towards:

  • A: building tools to remove validators as entities from governance
  • B: building tools to remove the necessity of off chain working groups in web3

Not encourage it…

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@serejandmyself Would still love to have you as a juror and maybe convince you that there’s some hope :slight_smile:

I think we both agree that off-chain working groups are necessary now (perhaps a necessary evil), and that changing or getting rid of the current validator governance will require an act of governance under current rules unless we want to trigger a community hard fork.

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But we also have to face reality that currently people do not care in governance.
And that is not only crypto-reality, but also we see happening in daily life. People are increasingly ignorant of the power they have.

Which is why we need in the current situation these groups to show that participating can make a difference. And over time slowly change to the ideal situation. Rome also wasn’t build in 1 day; I like these small steps to at least try to make governance a place where sound and discussion-based decisions are taken instead of political voting.

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A: I personally disagree. In the era of Replicated Security with the new role validators will play running nodes for not just Cosmos Hub but also Consumer Chains their concerns are important and their opinions matter. Validators are paying the price when it comes to RS with both added workload and increased infra costs as a result of running consumer chains. Maybe it’s suitable on other chains but I don’t think this should be done with Cosmos Hub validators. Certainly not something to rush toward.

B: Agree with @thelastjosh that off-chain working groups are necessary at this point in time. Maybe one day there will be on-chain tools worth consideration for use but imo it’s low priority.

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Amazing concept- we’ve been trying to do this for the v9 upgrade proposal through the forum and individual telegram groups. How can I get involved?

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@hxrts How did the sessions go for Atom 2.0? Would be interesting to hear about considering that the prop failed despite the best efforts to solicit deliberation before putting it on chain

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I only got a view into a small portion of the process as an “expert witnesses” but what I did see was a thoughtful, constructive conversation about the merits of the proposal. It’s a considerable feat to hold space for that kind of dialogue in the midst of that kind of chaotic, often hostile media environment. Strong support for more of this.

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Interesting idea. Small feedback, like how real-life trials are held, should be 2 opposite sides presenting if not arguing the case.

Instead of just the proposer as the expert witness, maybe you can find one more expert on the opposite side, therefore the juries can get more information before making the decisions.

Thanks.

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