Contribution quantifying model and prevent centralization of power

Original post: https://medium.com/iconviet/contribution-quantifying-model-and-prevent-centralization-of-power-f4d0b70a196

Solving contribution puzzle and introduction of ContributionDAO. How it could deal with the public enemy of every blockchain ecosystem: centralization of power.

It explores following topics:

• Can contribution be quantified ?
• A heuristic technique to quantify contribution
• A special DAO for overseeing contribution ( ContributionDAO )
• Every form of centralization is disfavored in public networks
• The power of early adopter and contributor
• What we could do in early stages to avoid the fate of crypto-dystopia

I wrote with the love for ICON and many years of experience in crypto/blockchain space as well as a long exposure to political theory. You know, blockchain is a beautiful combination of economic, politic and technology. But it will become ugly if not being done properly in the first days.

Can contribution be quantified ?

This question should be started with another one: how do we define contribution ? We cannot quantify something without identifying it first.

But there are many answers, very biased ones you know. Anyway, at the end of the day, we must come to a consensus on how we could identify contribution. In my observation, the consensus is "anything help to bring value to ICON network, it could be counted as contribution"

Now here comes another question, how do we know that some activity will bring value to ICON network ( and ICX price ) ? Well, just use common sense alone, I can make a list like following

• Develop open source projects in ecosystem
• Make great tools and documentation to help onboarding new developers
• Implement ICON node client using different languages, it plays a vital role in resilience of the network ( Ethereum has 7, 8 different client implementations )
• Hosting hackathons and developer events to spread awareness and create strong developer mindshare
• Brainstorming ideas on how to use blockchain ( and ICON network ) to bring economic benefit to business, as well as executing those ideas
• Propose strong and well thought proposals on network governance

That is my list, there are many more for sure, it depends on your experience and perspective. As long as you can explain how your activity could bring value to ICON, and if community accept it, then it is contribution. Subjectivity is the nature of the game.

At this point, assume that we can identify contribution ( or we think something may be a contribution ), how to quantify them ? How to determine how big, how important, how significant that contribution is ? Again, subjectivity is still around here. There is no universal truth at all. Each ICONist probably has a subjective view on the significance of some specific contribution. It makes us hard to quantify contribution reliably, so what should we do ?

A heuristic technique to quantify contribution

So, do we must live with it ? Even ICON Foundation does not give us any strong set of rule on this quantification problem. Is it that sad ? Is it the end ?

Not really, no way we are in dead end here, we never surrender. In fact, I strongly believe that we just need to use common sense and community wisdom, combine with verifiable proof of finished contribution and one well designed DAO for overseeing them, we could come to a good enough heuristic method to quantify contribution.

Wait a minute, what does heuristic mean ?

"A heuristic technique, often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect or rational, but instead sufficient for reaching an immediate goal." - Wikipedia

A special DAO for overseeing contribution ( ContributionDAO )

To quantify PRep contribution, the heuristic framework could be like this

• First, we must build one DAO called ContributionDAO
  • ContributionDAO comes with its own token ( maybe CNTR token )
  • This token will play a key role in the way contribution is evaluated and quantified.
  • The main purpose of CNTR is for competitive voting of contribution items.
  • Initially, CNTR token will be distributed to all ICX holders with conversion ratio calculated by a special formula for reducing the influence of whales.
  • All above rules will be explained in detail in ContributionDAO light paper which will be ready in coming months, I am working on it.
• All PReps must finish their works/contributions and submit them as individual items to ContributionDAO
• For all submitted contributions, CNTR holders ( all ICONists ) can upvote or downvote them competitively. After a certain amount of time ( determined by a number of blocks ), the winners and losers are known and rewarded or punished correspondingly. Details will be in light paper.
  • Rewarded means winner's CNTR holding is increased proportionally to the amount of voted CNTR and how big they win.
  • Punished means losers's CNTR holding is decreased proportionally to the amount of voted CNTR and how big they lose.
• Vote result of a contribution could be interpreted like below ( still a draft at the moment )
  • If a submitted contribution has very small amount of votes or no vote at all ( both downvote and upvote ), it could be considered pointless.
  • If a submitted contribution has almost equally amount of upvotes and downvotes, it could be considered controversial.
  • If a submitted contribution has way more upvotes than downvotes, it could be considered useful.
  • If a submitted contribution has way more downvotes than upvotes, it could be considered harmful.
  • In conclusion, the higher value of upvote/downvote ratio, the more significant and important one contribution is. This ratio value is calculated using a formula to take net voting volume into account. Again, more details in light paper.

ContributionDAO does not guarantee an absolute objective quantification of contributions, but it could be a useful weak-subjective quantitative tool for community to determine the significance of contributions done by PReps. In the beginning, all ICONists have the right to evaluate and vote for the meaningful contributions, but if they keep voting blindly, irresponsibly and against majority, their CNTR holding will be burnt to zero gradually and they will lose their right eventually.

Note that, beside the initial CNTR distribution by airdrop, anyone can still buy CNTR on open market if there is seller, but that is another story I will go more deeper in ContributionDAO light paper. Just a hint, it relates to governance economic.

Yeah, governance activities could form a whole economy of their own. This game will be interesting.

Every form of centralization is disfavored in public networks

Why ?

In simplest explanation, community support is de facto force for the success of every public open projects ( public blockchain is one of them ). In order to secure community support, the project must belong to community first. By nature, centralization in all forms is against community interest, it will result in gradually decreasing of community activity and ultimately, the dead of project ( or zombie state )

If you still have a vague idea on the importance of community, please take a look at Bitcoin and Ethereum, they are the ones with strongest community support so far. Developer adoption will come naturally with huge community and decentralization. We all see the fact that no one want to build on a centralized authoritarian network.

\* If someone want to bring Binance as counter argument here, please consider the short term benefit of being listed on Binance itself, it has nothing to do with the merit of a truly open and decentralized blockchain project. You know what I mean, right ?*

The power of early adopter and contributor

There are always pioneers in every community, nothing new here. There must be first contributors and adopters who take risk and invest their time into something still being in nascent stage. Yeah, those people really deserve a huge reward.

But the problem here is, that "huge reward" is usually come in form of soft power. It means they possess a huge influence to community. Sometime, it is the hard power, especially in blockchain, if they hold a lot of token and being the owner of big business running on the network. Either accidentally or intentionally, the power is centralized in their hand.

Note that, I don't assert them to be bad actor here, absolutely no. In fact, they could be good actor and still possess a huge power somehow. Anyway, centralization of power is still centralization.

What we could do in early stages to avoid the fate of crypto-dystopia

In my opinion, the first thing we as ICONist should do is make sure we vote for the right PReps as they are the ones with immense power on ICON network. However, wisely voting alone is not enough, we must make sure power is not centralized in their hand ( even for good and ethical PReps ).

With ContributionDAO, we will soon have a single one portal which provide more comprehensive and more details data source to research about PRep contribution. The good news is that portal will be governed in a decentralized manner from the first day.

No more time consuming digging and searching for contribution detail of PReps, it will save a lot of time when there are more and more PReps joining the game.

I hope that ContributionDAO could help more ICONists to participate in ICON network governance by providing better tool and data source, as well as economic incentive. The more ICONists actively research and vote for right PReps, the better ICON network will be in long term.

It is time for wrapping everything up. We should know that ContributionDAO is just a tool, ultimately everything is up to ICONists. If ICONists choose to play selfishly for short term benefit, nothing can save ICON from destruction. But if we - all ICONists - decide to care more about ICON future, I believe ContributionDAO will be able to help us.

I am a member of ICONVIET team and also an ICONist myself. I and ICONVIET strongly believe that beside DApps building and business development, contribution in governance design and proposal is also very important. Therefore, ContributionDAO will be one of our main projects after decentralization.

Thank you for your support :)

@duyyudus - ICONVIET