Restarting Community Sentiment Collection for Dev Fund Proposals

Community Collaborations protocol
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https://www.zfnd.org/blog/updated-community-sentiment-timeline/

New timeline (summary)

  • Today: ZF reaches out to ZIP authors to encourage collaboration.
  • EOD Thursday, November 14: Deadline for changing, combining, or withdrawing proposals for evaluation in the sentiment collection poll.
  • Friday, November 15: ZF publishes specific poll with finalized ZIPs that will be used for forum, advisory panel, and miners.
  • Saturday, November 16: Polling opens for forum users, advisory panel, and miners.
  • Saturday, November 30: Polling closes.
  • No later than Tuesday, December 3: ZF publishes summary results in a blog post.
  • No later than Friday, December 6: ZF publishes analysis on which upgrades we can support, based on sentiment and board discussion.
  • Week of December 9: If ZF’s guidance diverges from ECC’s position, we will meet to reconcile. After reconciliation, if further ZIP specification or updates are needed, consult with authors/ECC and (if necessary) engage in another round of sentiment analysis.
  • TBD: Feature selection locked in for NU4.

There are way more details in the full post, so please click through and read it:

https://www.zfnd.org/blog/updated-community-sentiment-timeline/

ZIP champions — @mistfpga @amiller @mlphresearch @aristarchus @anon16456014 @Blocktown @lex-node @kek @avichal @rebekah93 @ttmariemia @mhluongo — please ACK that you’ve seen this post! If I don’t hear from you by the end of the day, I will dig up an email address. (Luckily, I think the people who don’t frequent the forum regularly are the ones whose emails I can easily find!)

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ack,

I have an email for @lex-node if you need it.

That timeline is tight though.

Sorry completely misread this part.

I wont have computer access between the 14th and 20th. UTC

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Just thought today, that funding matter is asap thing and a little bit later
 this
nice work. We might still see the resolution in 2019 , it this goes wellđŸ’Ș

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This is my understanding of the above community sentiment collection:

  • It will gather votes on (some) proposals that are are ill-specified or can’t be implemented
  • Where variants (e.g., setting parameters or coin-burning alternatives) exist, the variant voted on is arbitrarily determined by the current ZIP champions, and can’t be changed anymore (because it would be impractical to proactively submit forked ZIPs for every tweak to every proposal, ~and anyway new proposal ZIPs are no longer allowed~ edit: forks are still allowed)
  • It does not commit to another round of adjustment and sentiment-collection, focusing on the winning proposals, to address the above

Added:
Consequentially, the most likely outcome is that the sentiment gathering process will result in either great embarrassment and delay (when we realize we voted in favor of “do an election” and now what), major judgment calls by ECC+Zfnd on their own funding (which they have so far expressed reluctance to do), or millions of dollars allocated with the parameters set at the whim of a single person with no realistic way to explore and vote on variants.

I hope to stand corrected.

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Here’s my understanding @tromer:

  • It’s been four months since proposals have been submitted and discussed on the forum and GitHub.
  • Including those withdrawn, there have been 25 submitted proposals.
  • Of the fifteen active proposals, by my naive count there have been over 600 direct forum comments in aggregate, not counting the 300+ comment megathread or side discussions. I don’t know how much has been discussed outside the forum/didn’t count GitHub or other mediums.
  • There has been ample opportunity for people to select variants, build their own proposals, or discuss the details and merits of particular approaches

  • 
and at least by the Foundation’s approach to sentiment gathering, there’s still a week left to consolidate and/or discuss new forks or variants.

I hope that proposers will spend the week specifying the pieces that are still ambiguous, or withdrawing such proposals if not properly specified. Look if you have specific improvements to a particular proposal, by all means, fork it and submit it as a PR and/or new forum topic to be included in the sentiment collection by November 14. While I’d personally like to see a consolidation of proposals before next Friday, there’s no reason it can’t go the other way to provide more choices for miners, forum members, and community advisory panel members.

But to be blunt: trying to gauge every possible tweak or variant on proposals is an impossible task, and honestly, there’s been ample opportunity to bring these issues up and suggest alternatives months ago. And there’s still a week left to do more.

Finally: if a proposal is truly not well-specified or impossible to implement, I should hope that the forum members and community advisory panel members take that it into account when they’re polled and/or provide feedback on the forum/GitHub for specific proposals. If not then we have bigger problems.

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My point is exactly that there has been this huge discussion over months — but a lot of it is not reflected in the current ZIPs. Some champions are unable or unwilling to address feedback/problems. Some just don’t agree with the suggestions. So many of the known issues are not reflected by what we will vote on in November 15, unless huge progress happens in this week that hasn’t happened for many months. These are the facts. The question is how to proceed.

Look if you have specific improvements to a particular proposal, by all means, fork it and submit it as a PR and/or new forum topic to be included in the sentiment collection by November

Actually this phrasing in the announcement is confusing:

Deadline for changing, combining, or withdrawing proposals

If new proposals are allowed, please clarify that


And to the point: of course I have specific improvements to particular proposals.

And if I knew we were focusing on a couple of proposals, I would put in the effort to create forked ZIPs (whatever else it took) to enable community decision on the details.

But I don’t know which ones to focus on. Neither do others here. So
 Should we now spend the next few days forking each of the ~25~ 15 ZIPs (probably multiple times) to tweak some number, or add some recusing rule, or change the meaning of “burn”? Ending with a few hundred ZIPs to vote on? And having a few hundred forum decisions to discuss the merits?

Clearly that’s impractical. You’re expecting people to use (and faulting them for spending months not using) a mechanism that obviously cannot work.

So the inevitable vibe I was getting is that people were mostly focusing on the high-level ideas of the proposals, and merely brainstorming tweaks, with an implicit expectation that once we focus on specific proposals we’ll get a chance to whip it into shape.

The alternative interpretation is that people are just fine with all the proposals being optimal in their own respective directions, and no is ever in disagreement with any champion (the one exception being the “10%” proposal). Or alternatively, that everybody here is just too lazy to really bother calibrating how many tens of millions of USD will be disbursed. I don’t think either’s true.

if a proposal is truly not well-specified or impossible to implement, I should hope that the forum members and community advisory panel members take that it into account when they’re polled and/or provide feedback on the forum/GitHub for specific proposals.

I hope you’re right. Though there’s still the quantity problem: none of the proposals is called “everyone gets a pony”, and some hide a deus ex machina pretty well. With ~25~ 15 of them to read, a lot can go unnoticed. I would have hoped at least for a strict requirement that proposers resolve known issues/ambiguities to a level that makes the proposal executable, in order to be included in the voting.

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One last point: remember the previous Advisory Panel poll, where questions were badly and inconsistently phrased because we just took the first phrasing someone sent in, and we didn’t have the process to edit and curate it? And we got flak for this, and vowed to do better?

Well we’re sort’a doing that again, by just having 25 champions choose the “question phrasing” at whim. It’s better, because this time there was plenty of time for feedback; but also worse because (for all of the above reasons) much of the feedback still isn’t and can’t be incorporated into what’s being voted on in a single round.

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Concrete suggestion: can we start right now a preliminary poll, lasting 3 days, that has no normative weight whatsoever, but will provide a cue on what proposals to even focus on for forking before Nov 15?

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There are 15 active ZIPs out of the 25, the other ten have been withdrawn. So I’d focus on the non-withdrawn ZIPs to start. Do you truly believe each of those ZIPs is worth a slight change in one metric here or there, or at a high level do you only support certain variants? If the latter is the case, then maybe just focus on those variants, whittling hundreds of combinations to maybe 5 or 10 variants. And “neither do others here” is a rather broad generalization @tromer and certainly doesn’t speak to my experience reading the discussion here and elsewhere.

I am not faulting people for not using them. I’m saying there’s been ample opportunity to do so, and either folks haven’t or they’ve generated their own proposals with these key differences. Meanwhile individual proposals have factored in feedback from individual discussions and have improved or changed their proposals based on that feedback.

Yes I remember, and I truly think this process has been much, much better. What you call “question phrasing at a whim” I call “many months of incorporating feedback and synthesizing discussion” which I think all the ZIP authors did with aplomb. I think you’re doing ZIP authors and community members a disservice by suggesting otherwise.

I will change this language in the announcement to add “forking” in addition to “changing” to make it clear you can do so.

If you think it would help, you are welcome to do so! As is anyone on the forum. There’s a “build poll” button in discourse, have at it.

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Do you truly believe each of those ZIPs is worth a slight change in one metric here or there, or at a high level do you only support certain variants?

The question is not what I support. The question is what the Advisory Panel is likely to support. So in that sense:

Yes, of course: for almost all ZIPs, if they turn out to be likely to be how we distribute tens of millions of dollars, then there are definitely changes worth properly discussing and explicitly gathering sentiment for. I’d be heavily disappointed if people focusing at a single ZIP didn’t see points that needed that.

If you think it would help, you are welcome to do so! As is anyone on the forum. There’s a “build poll” button in discourse, have at it.

The idea is to poll the Advisory Panel, and in Foundation-branded way they’re likely to respond to.

What you call “question phrasing at a whim” I call “many months of incorporating feedback and synthesizing discussion” which I think all the ZIP authors did with aplomb.

Most did, and I am grateful indeed. None the less, there’s no way they could represent all feedback, simply because opinions differ, and (as amply discussed above) cannot be comprehensively polled in a single round.

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Just a thought, perhaps a closing remarks thread where zip Champions and advocates could make their case for why the zip should be considered, I know there’s many things still to specify and unanswered questions and if that’s the case then at the minimum they should explain why that should be overlooked :man_shrugging:

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I’am strongly against polling the Advisory Panel in advance for several reasons:

  • The Advisory Panel should not function as a polling mechanism but only as a final voting mechanism for final decisions.

  • The results of polling the advisary panel could be used to change given proposals with just the intention to get a higher voting result.

  • The results of polling the advisary panel could be used either to favour given proposals or to badmouth them IF they don’t fit cetain peoples interest.

  • Proposals should be designed, tweaked,fine tuned by the community from beginning. Every proposal has it’s thread and contributions where concerns or improvements can be discussed. This said, i don’t thnink it’s a good idea to poll the advisory panel for the only benefit that based on the results “officials” are than able to tweak/fork such proposals for “their?” interest and wishes.

  • For my personal taste there was and is allready too much interference from the ECC and ZF on the proposals having in mind the proposals should be only and soley made by community members.

  • The beauty of voting, at least in my opinion, is that nobody upfront knows the final result until the voting/election has happened. Using the same mechnism for polling should be a no-go in principe!

I have asked this some months ago and it wasn’t clear than back, hence why i’am asking it again:
How are miners polled? With only 7 days left, how are they made aware they have a vote?

As this is just in a week some more questions if you don’t mind:

  • List of members of the new advisory panel that have a vote?
  • In which relation are the results of forum, advisory panel and miner vote handled at the end?
  • Do i understand it correct that the single proposal with most votes will the the choosen one?

Uhm, shouldn’t it be that whatever proposal “wins” the voting the ZF should/must support it?

I’am not really aware of a proposal that can not be implented. It may come with trade off’s or risks or whatever, but i think every of the active proposals could be implented.

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ACK - 20 characters


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“ZIP - Changing Zcash supply curve to 3% yearly after 2020 halving”

even though this ZIP is probably the only ZIP that might improve zcash as both a SoV, and MoE - i’m going to withdraw it due to the fact it’s a radical change that hasn’t seemed to have gathered much support. really don’t want to waste peoples’ time with a ZIP that doesn’t have a chance for acceptance.

@sonya

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The only proposal that never had a chance was the one that didn’t get submitted
Only hindsight is 20/20

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I wrote a ZIP version of ‘The Mysterious Third Entity’ but didn’t submit it.

It was a method for collecting community input and felt it was redundant after reading what ZFnd are doing for polling, plus it wasn’t a complete proposal.

The challenge is getting escaping worms back in the can, so rather than posting it I’ll share with any proposals that might need it - PM me.

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cough :stuck_out_tongue:

also I though it was sentiment raising no?

To be honest I cant see another way forward. it has to be a modular design. or like I said on the live stream, the ECC and ZFND get together now, and “fix” the proposals. I don’t think we as a community have the ability to do this.

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@acityinohio, I’ve been thinking about what ZIPs should be proactively forked now, and realized that (for me at least) there’s another difficulty:

There are ZIPs that I think can be improved, but are overall not a good direction. So I don’t want to create and champion forked variants of these, because I can’t justify (and don’t want to be seen as, and don’t want to spend effort on) supporting the wrong direction.

Still, it turns out that the Advisory Panel does like the direction, then I would definitely want to my improvements to be considered! But by that point, my suggestions would contradict what’s in the proposal that community sentiment was gathered for.

So what’s the right way to proceed?

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Ooooops
 @mistfpga helped (lots!)

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I am working on a flow chart (yeah I know they are simple and kinda stupid) but it should allow modular dissection of each proposal - if the community is going to have to get this done on this timescale, I don’t know what else to do.

And really, @acityinohio (originally I @amiller, not sure why. sorry about that.) I agree to an extent the community has had extra time to work on these proposals. however we did not have any knowledge if/when the trademark would be resolved and we did not really get great feedback until the last hangout. (which actually for me solved a lot of issues and helped refine a lot of things in my mind)

I know we severely behind on schedule. but as @daira said in the last stream we are at a point now where we cannot get these changes in without the dev fee stopping for a period of time. or we break the emission curve/halving schedule.

So what is a few more weeks? - we just need a bit of leadership and direction and I think it will be okay. I feel this is essentially what Eran and boxalex are asking to be defined too.

Here is a poll
 I did on the fourms


Daira’s comment below my post seems very relevant.

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