Thanks @shane for putting this thread together. I can’t speak to the other example given, but seeing @poktblade being cited as a source of FUD is rather surprising. He is pretty much the last person in the ecosystem I would ever accuse of spreading FUD.
It will be interesting to see if any arguments against the chain node pooling concept itself are teased out of the woodwork by this thread. I have never once seen or heard a single argument proffered by anyone in the community against chain pooling per se. As you say, all the comments in the DAN proposal were regarding using DAO funds to compensate DA/CC as the sole or preferred solution for altruist/rare chains. As such, they were completely on topic, and do not constitute FUD. They do not even criticize the CC solution; if anything they praise it. They simply cast doubt on whether it is prudent for DAO to fund it. I’m sure the same type of comments would have materialized if a single node provider had proposed to be the sole or preferred recipient to receive DAO funding to provide altruist and/or rare-chain support. I’m not taking sides or saying I agree with the arguments… just clarifying that the comments, IMO, were on topic to the DAN proposal, not FUD, and had nothing to do with chain node pooling per se.
That being said, since you bring up the topic of chain node pooling…
I cannot separate the discussion of chain pooling from the discussion of geo-mesh and lean-pocket. All three go hand in hand. I am fundamentally against all three. All three are examples of the way network suppliers have manipulated weaknesses in the protocol to gamify rewards away from the original intention of rewards proportional to the infrastructure contributed to the network. All three are viruses that threatened the survival of Pocket Network and for which POKT had to adapt/evolve in order to survive. Network providers did nothing malicious in this gamification of rewards. The game always proceeds according the incentive structure of the actual ruleset of the game, not according to the original intent of the creators of the game.
The human system is wonderfully adept at surviving the onslaught of viruses, using a two-pronged approach: (1) fight against and eradicate the virus, if possible. Many viruses can be eradicated before they can take over the body. Chocolate Rain is an example of this. Hackathons and bug bounties are focused on this prong of the fight against viruses. (2) for viruses that cannot be eradicated, the body shifts to a strategy of “if you cannot beat them, join them”. Code from the virus gets added to the human DNA and shifts from being a “disease” to making the body more robust. Likewise, the only way to survive an unintended gamification of rewards that cannot be prevented through a security patch is to incorporate it as a full-fledged feature of the game.
Thus:
While I am against sw mirrors of full POKT nodes that manipulate the portal into directing many multiples more than “fair share” of servicing opportunities to the full node, I am a huge fan of making this open source so as to level the playing field for everyone. Without open sourcing this, the survival of a decentralized network was at stake. This is why I am a big advocate of making sure poktfund and TH get full reimbursement for their work on Lean Pocket. The reimbursement is in line with bug bounties for high/critical-level bugs… but where the solution was not a security patch but an incorporation of the “virus” and making it a feature of the game.
Ditto with geo-mesh. Which is again why I am a big advocate of making sure poktscan gets full reimbursement for making this open source.
With chain pooling, it is a little bit different, in that “leveling the playing field” is not a matter of open-sourcing some software. Other means are needed to level the playing field. Which is why I really like what DA has done with CC. I can best state it like this: I am against chain pooling, but given intra-provider chain pooling, I am a fan of inter-provider chain pooling. At the end of the day, this last sentence is just a different way of saying what @shane is trying to communicate in his comparison table above.
Where does this leave us: let the game proceed as is through the duration of v0. However, the lessons learned during v0 must be incorporated now into v1 planning. We must be mindful and anticipatory of what behavior the v1 ruleset incentivizes, and then tweak the v1 ruleset as needed to align anticipated likely behavior with desired behavior. This should be done proactively. This is one of my major research areas during this upcoming season, and I know poktscan also has already put considerable thought into this as well, some of which they capture in their research thread: