A response to xaqfield's post "Gridcoin Issue Breakdown: "Wealth" Disparity"
I posted this as a comment on @xaqfields' post seen here. I figure I'd post it as its own thread to encourage more people to join the conversation:
Without knowing the size of everyone's wallet in a conversation, I think the main argument many people are making about "whales" is not that new users want to equal the stake of early adoption whales, but that after two years, for example, of being the "worker (BOINCer)" of gridcoin, that worker will have just about the same weight as they did when they started: 0. Stake is currently a representation of an individual's total Gridcoin holding. Weight is currently a combination of mag+stake with an emphasis on stake.
This means that the mag-weight of all BOINCers can never compete with the stake-weight of a single whale, let alone a pod of whales. This means that for a poll to pass it must convince only the whales, perhaps even just one.
One could argue ad nauseam about "economic majority" -- let the whales carry all the weight as they will never vote against the best interest of the economic value of the coin. Unfortunately, this leads to trouble, as we can see with the segwit fallout in the bitcoin community: contemporary economics is short term and what's good for the short term economy is not necessarily good for the long term endeavor.
Question: As early adopters will likely never face competition with regards to their stake-weights -- unless someone drops a large sum of money into the market -- at what point will stake-weight mean less and mag-weight mean more? Or at the very least, what can we do to ensure that mag-weight has more weight than it does right now when it comes to deciding the overall direction of Gridcoin?
I think that, under its current definition, the stake-weight of whales should be easily overpowered when enough workers band together. If a whale has mag-weight along with a stake-weight, they will benefit from this sort of protocol as well.
I want to stress: From what I've heard of the conversation, no one is going after whales with pitchforks. No one doubts that there are whales that produce value for Gridcoin as a whole. However, people have legitimate concerns about whether these whales will put into place structures which consolidate their power, known as centralization, or structures which return power to groups of people, or decentralization. In other words, will they hold onto the power they have right now, power which they have earned and deserve, or as the community grows, will they help spread power among those who contribute to the project at large.
Edit: I also want to stress that right now Stake = Money = Power. There are other ways to define Stake. Production value, for example. So when I say "spread power" I do not necessarily mean "distribute gridcoin." I mean "power" as defined here:
When it comes to organization, power is the ability to make decisions, act on these decisions, allocate funds, prescribe priorities, and define the overall vision of an endeavor.
I'm new. Really, really new to Gridcoin; I wouldn't presume to suggest that I should have equal vote to someone that has more stake than I do. Two reasons.
I have shares in companies in the real world and during a vote for the company, if someone with 20 bucks in the company shouldn't be allowed to decide what happens to my 1000 dollars. And I shouldn't make a choice that affects someone else's 500,000 dollars. That just makes sense to me.
Second reason. I learn something new every other day about Gridcoin and still rely on the Whales to fill in the blanks. I'm trusting in them knowing more than me, otherwise how did they get that far? By knowing more I'm hoping that their choices protects my wallet as well.
The main difference between crypto and stock markets is that individuals are able to actively contribute to the development of crypto asset while stocks are intended for exactly what you described.
Another way to look at it: consider an investor vs the individual who buys stock but also works in the company. If decisions are made by shareholder voting, the person who works in the company has (or used to -- labor unions) an influential weight regarding operation. It has never been enough to outvote the investors, as we live in a society where Money is King, but that doesn't need to be how crypto works -- crypto organizations require lots of work and they pay for that work without a central authority. It's lovely, really.
I think the medium we need to find is a way to make it so X number of "workers", perhaps 85%, perhaps 55%, to be determined, but this number of workers can outweigh all investors combined. This means that investors will have to seek the approval of workers to get something passed.
Regarding new users, I think you're right. Individuals and groups should have to build trust and respect through work. As they produce work which benefits GRC as a whole, they are rewarded with weight, in whatever form that might take.
Great read, Ringo, and thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my article as well. Resteemed!
So, I always have to be careful how I say this because I believe if I say it wrong, it gets shifted into a discussion about "consolidation of power" and such, which is not where my mind is at. Let me take a stab at this.
People who have a large stake in Gridcoin (think, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of investment in USD) want to have a commensurate level of influence over the decisions that are being made with the coin. I don't think that's because they're just power-hungry and they want to just squash innovative ideas. I think it's just because they have a large investment in the coin and they don't want to feel like decisions are being made by people who have a less meaningful stake and are thus more-likely to want to take unnecessary gambles or not put as much thought into the long-term implications of the decisions they're supporting.
The way I see it, when we make decisions in Gridcoin, we are effectively putting everybody's money on the line ($15 million in market cap worth). We just have to be careful that people who have invested heavily in the coin don't start to feel like they're being stripped of influence and thus have what they feel is an unacceptably low level of control over their investment.
I understand there are arguments to be made about decentralization and the "purpose" of decentralized currency, but for better or for worse this space is receiving an enormous influx of investment from people who are here not necessarily for the ideology but for the investment opportunity. And that's not a bad thing --- we need them here if we are to grow and do great things to help advance science which is, after all, the core goal of Gridcoin.
An excellent synopsis of the situation the Gridcoin Community finds itself in at present.
Whether we like it or not there will always be the 'crunchers' and the 'whales'.
There are also 'cruncher whales' the name I call community members who have multiple hosts at their disposal (virtual and physical) and also have 'weighty' wallets as a result of their computational power.
These powerful 'community members' are ultimately necessary as their wallet weight gives the Gridcoin currency its strength and stability.
However these 'community members' are not true community members if they do not interact with the community on a reasonably regular basis.
There is also the lingering fear that these 'community members' could 'sell out' at any time without warning.
This certainly causes a dilemma as the 'crunchers' and even in some cases the 'cruncher whales', inevitably feel that they have more right to plot the course of the coins future development, the day to day running decisions of the Gridcoin Community and Foundation expenses. This is where the schism lies.
I believe the only resolution in this case is some from of governance which more evenly distributes the decision making power across the community as a whole.
At present our voting system does nothing to balance power sharing.