I’d like to point out another issue with the coin-weighted polling.
Let’s put aside the privacy and security problems; hopefully we can resolve these using new protocols (and perhaps a network upgrade to enable them). Let’s also put aside the “plutocracy” and “pay to vote” issues; maybe we’ll decide that these are acceptable, at least when the coin-weighted voting is just one non-binding signal among several. There’s still this:
The whales are silent. [1] They’re not vocal about their position. As far as I can tell, no one on the Dev Fund public discussions identified as holding significant fraction of the ZEC supply, so how can we tell in advance what’s on the mind of those whales?
Now, for a poll about a simple “yes/no” question, maybe it doesn’t matter: the question is what it is, and we’ll know the result when the poll is over. But in the Dev Fund discussion, we had complicated adaptive dynamics where proposals were created and modified based on the ongoing sentiments expressed on the forum, blog posts, Twitter, etc. Many of the final proposals were honed to those sentiments. If the whales don’t contribute to to the formation of the proposals, then perhaps none of the proposals properly reflects their perspective?
And so with “silent coin-holder-weighted poll”, things become reminiscent of ancient cultures arguing about sacrifies to the silent gods. The fields are dry? Clearly we need to sacrifice a goat. No, the gods desire a lamb. No, it must be a child! No, a maiden! So which is it? Only the gods know… And then there’s a flood, so people explain that it was because the lamb had a blemish. Perhaps, all along, the gods just wanted a nice salade niçoise?
Now, perhaps whales’ opinions are close enough to what we are hearing, and their opinions are already adequately weighted in. Maybe. The incentives are very different, so it’s hard to tell. But for what it’s worth, to the extent that the recent experiment is indicative of the whales’ opinions (despite the many reservations), we see very significant divergence between the opinions expressed there vs. the forum members and Community Governance Panel, so there’s reason for concern.
Action items?
- Obviously, encourage the whales to show up and express their opinions (whether or not they identify as such)
- Recognize that this is another issue with the signal quality of coin-weighted polling.
- Strive to make the poll questions simple, with few moving parts, so that it’s more likely that some choice represents the wishes of parties who did not contribute to the formation of the poll questions
Note: all of the above applies also to miner polling.
[1] By “whale”, I mean someone who holds a large fraction of the pertinent ZEC supply; enough to significantly affect (or even dominate) a coin-weighted vote. No derogatory insinuations are intended.
. The channel is live and I’m monitoring it, zeal with it.