It is unfortunate that many community members feel left out in the current governance and can only comment on the forum. I urge all of you to claim your votes at the earliest. Like Jack mentioned, there are several community members who are qualified for votes but still have not claimed them. Nevertheless, we assure you that voters are considering the community sentiment before casting our votes. One of the best examples is PEP 15: PEP-15: Pocket DAO Treasury Diversification Proposal, which was rejected due to the larger community concerns. Also, the rejection of PUP 12 has to be mentioned here as it was taken out due to the feedback received.
With regard to PUP 11 and 13. I feel most of the community concerns have been addressed but not everything was adopted. Here is what I noticed:
- With the network already hitting 30k nodes, the supply side is more or less satisfactory, and to continue the current level of inflation and rewards is unsustainable in the long term. And current high rewards were set up for only one purpose: bootstrapping the demand side. There were some community concerns against decreasing the reward but taking the long-term view on the network, it was clear for most of the voters (a huge proportion of node runners themselves) that the current uncontrolled inflation in the network is unsustainable.
- The request for an opinion from an independent expert on the new economics is taken up by Jack.
- There were community concerns over the 6 months timeline being too short to reduce the rewards. Here, this is a proposal to manage the inflation temporarily until the new system comes into place with version 1 (Also, many recommendations from the community including stake burns can only be done with version 1, so the feedback wasn’t rejected as such). So it does not make sense to make the timeline to 1 year or more because by that time frame Version 1 could be already out. Moreover, the current high inflation is not a good signal to the market. By having a concrete plan to manage the high inflation ASAP, we are committing to the long-term vision of the project. I am of the opinion that it could have been shorter than 6 months. But keeping the larger community feedback in mind, a less drastic 6 months is understandable.
The governance of Pocket is set in such a way that only engaged community members can vote. I will be in support to continue this. Unlike many protocols Pocket, solves a core problem - infrastructure that is decentralized. Any governance system with an easy entry (i.e., voting according to the number of tokens held) will make it too easy for token holders who do not run nodes, and big node runners to dominate the governance. This does not stay true to what the network tries to achieve. Whereas the current system is set in such a way that any node runner can become a voting member, provided they attain the milestones. The same is true for an application or a community member who does not run nodes. This governance system provides an equal voice to the long tail of small node runners and applications along with the whales in the network. But it is true that it doesn’t offer any governance rights to token holders whether small or big, and this is intended.
Nevertheless, I am up for any measure that decreases the complexity of attaining votes for node runners and other community members. But I will not remove them and make it too easy for token holders or holders who run nodes through third party options (because you are not really helping in the decentralization of the network), because the primary citizens of the network are node runners running nodes themselves, that party who runs nodes for you (he/she can get a vote), and the applications. The governance has to be set this way to attain the decentralization of nodes and hence the service.
Lastly, little value can be ascribed to the experience of investors. In the current proposal, maybe. But it is good to see that non-voters are already giving their feedback. But why do I need the expertise of a host of investors in a governance system where 80-90% of the decisions are technical? How will it help in the long term when most of these investors are not interested in other decisions made in the DAO? Whereas other stakeholders such as node runners, community, and applications are much better bet to continue a DAO that is focused on the protocol and its long-term sustainability.