Hi all,
The general feeling in the community is that Lightcurve and LiskHQ will push the update forcefully.
As expressed in other channels, the general feeling and perception is that Lightcurve will forcefully impose their “Change to one vote per account” “proposal”. Besides the already expressed potential dramatic consequences (exchanges owning most of the forging spots, +90% shares, discouragement of support of the ecosystem, yada yada…). This would put in serious discussion the LIP process per se and the whole centralization of the project. LIP stands for Lisk Improvement Proposal, please reflect on the word proposal. Proposal means something you discuss and then you agree. If Lightcurve GmbH decides to force such update, this would be yet another huge blow that Lisk takes in terms of centralization.
I’d recommend to take further inspiration on the BIP process, where the LIP process take inspiration, works:
Given that the majority of the network does not agree with the change (thanks @thepool for organizing the survey here: https://thepool.io/api/info/lips_approval/ ) and looking through this thread, only 2 voice supports the idea. Can we consider this proposal rejected and move ahead with a newer iteration, perhaps getting away from the mentality of making an easy change just for the marketing purpose?
We all agree that Lisk consensus algorithm can be improved. What I do not agree is that a quick change gets implemented in order to create some marketing.
I would like to share the following thinking in order to analyze the situation by taking some steps back. What is the role of a delegate?
Let’s take a step back and see what is the role of a forging delegate. The main task of a delegate is to make sure that the Lisk network runs smoothly and safely by keeping their infrastructure secure and an uptime as close as possible to an 100% in order to not slow down the block approval process. For this reason, the delegate that does this operation gets rewarded with LSK. It would be nice (even if not written anywhere) that this amount of LSK gets reinvested in resources for the Lisk Ecosystem in order to increase the adoption/value of it. Now let’s look at the current situation. Is the network running smoothly? Yes. As I guess most of us remember, Lisk went through some issues with the network stability multiple times in the past, one in particular was due to a malformed transaction (referring in particular about the 2nd of June bug, recap here https://www.reddit.com/r/Lisk/comments/8o033l/lisk_blockchain_temporarily_halts_due_to_an/) that halted the blockchain for some hours. Panic hours, but everybody ready to solve the situation. The network started to validate blocks immediately after the hotfix has been deployed and the whole network recovered in matters of hours. Therefore the base task of a delegate I would say is covered.
Getting back on the reinvesting into the ecosystem point. Funds are being reinvested in the ecosystem. We could take as example the two Lisk startup incubators from Elite group in China and Japan; or perhaps the Lisk Center in Utrecht from GDT; or the operating Lisk based exchange EliteX, with plans to become a DEX down the road; Or perhaps the countless sponsored and organized meetups. Furthermore is worth keeping in consideration the opportunities that the forging rewards created under the form of bounties in order to incentivize community members to stay in the Lisk community.
The follow up question on this point could be, are this fund reinvested in an adequate way? Maybe yes, maybe not, but for sure this actually created an ecosystem of contributions back to the community that were not designed by the protocol itself. But perhaps this a topic for another day.
According to the previous points I believe the delegates are doing a good job. Is it the consensus algorithm perfect? No and perhaps never will be and for sure the status quo can be improved, but the fact that the network runs smoothly, this gives us the possibility to work together in order to create better a consensus algorithm, instead of rushing the change because Lisk didn’t manage to handle bad press from competitor projects (spoiler alert, there are much worst projects with DPoS algos doing fine). Perhaps switching priorities on the roadmap allows the project to find and work on more elaborated and adequate improvements to the consensus algorithm (perhaps even considering on creating voting anonymity).
Please do not push such changes to create some marketing. Don’t apply a patch that can create more harm than good with the risk of destroying the ecosystem built. The reason why there is so much focus on the DPoS and seems to be priority #1 for the rest of the world is because people have nothing else to focus on Lisk besides the 101 forging positions, this created a lot of bad taste in the mouth of people that did not succeed, allowing competitors and trolls to exploit the situation in order to create bad press.
Nevertheless, forcefully pushing the “One vote per account” rule, brings up some conspiracy theories that have not been expressed in this post yet. One of the conspiracy leads to think that Lightcurve will forcefully impose this change for their own personal interest, given that the team holds 15,3m, which would be enough to self sustain ~30 forging positions assuming the 500k initial entry gap, but even one single account in forging position from Lisk Foundation/ Lightcurve GmbH would destroy completely the credibility of the project.
I hope nobody gets offended by my thoughts.