Do Kwon’s mysterious proposal

If you follow Do Kwon on twitter you might have seen a recent tweet about elimination of #ANC airdrops for delegators into the TOP10 validators for the #Luna token. It is not uncommon to promote decentralisation but it’s uncommon to see a threat with a proposal which never comes, at least not in the suggested timeframe. Its even more uncommon as Do Kwon is the CEO and founder of Terraform Labs, the company that backs the Terra blockchain ecosystem  and something like a rising Crypto Legend these days, highly respected and successful.

What is behind his emotions and if such proposal will be up for voting, how should it look like? Within this article I like to allow myself to play psych and discuss some options and outcomes to this fight for decentralised voting power. You missed his recent tweets about this topic and you have your #Luna token delegated to one of the Top10 validators? If yes, keep reading!

[I  suggest to also search for the proposal and details. Until today: 22nd Dec. no proposal has been raised though Kwons statement “Proposal to go live tomorrow” which would have been the 11th. Dec. Maybe in the aftermath of this article a proposal is up for vote.]

Do Kwon doubled down on the 20th Dec. and retweeted @cpablo1888  original tweet about fear of centralisation. You do not need to be a magician to see what will happen soon, a Kwon backed proposal will pass and in one way or another less ANC will go to validators/delegators who are compiling plenty of voting power. You might say: Evil to him who evil thinks’ if those Top10-Top20 validotors really are such a threat they easily can veto such proposal, right? Also any Top30 validator might rather veto before being pushed into the top spots and directly jumps into a redelegation war. Fear of losing out on airdrops never helps. But once on Kwons mind he usually pursues an idea. He might needs to re-think the content of such proposal or creating awarness in other ways.

Community reaction?

Let’s take a look on the community reaction since @cpablo1888 twitter account posted on the 9th Dec.

Did the community shift their Luna within the last 13 days? Did Kwon repeat of a treating proposal help to shift the #Luna into other validators? My personal believe is that he wanted to see if a social media pressure similar to COSMOS #Atom will suffice to have an impact on delegation and by doing so he might show that he gets closer to his official next move and also prepares for negative comments by backing himself with evidence that he warned the #Luna stakers – The “I warned you” phase (looks like this phase is taking 2 weeks).

Comparison chart below. Compare voting power change from the 9th to 20th December.

Analysing the percentages does not make sense. His tweets had not much impact to the voting power. The overall sentiment is: nothing changed.

This is not uncommon as most stakers won’t follow Do Kwons daily messages, which sometimes can be plenty and most often are emotional. I personally believe Do Kwon will act even harder seeing no movement on a topic he personally pushes. 

Furthemore no proposal was raised which will be the final alarming sign for many who not much care about his arguments about better distribution of voting power. Worst case for Kwon, the Terra Luna community does not care about decentralisation which would be inversing Kwons future vision and work over the last couple of years.

Reasoning

Though its very unlikely the Top10 validators pool their voting power together and overtake Luna voting, certainly on a long run a few important decisions could be taken out of the  community hands in favors a few strong hands. Anytime this happens too often rumbling emotions would come to surface and more and more delegators would react based on stronger socialmedia presence of the Terra leadership team and their supporters.

Considering this it might be better if Do Kwon and the Terralabs team rather pushes educating social media content regarding decentralisation and impact of centralised voting power instead of plain threats being blanks.

I understand every ones opinion to decentralise further, having less power for few validators, especially if they aren’t actively supporting development in the ecosystem but I also see that currently it is hard to know which ones are the active validators using voting power/ delgation to support community, the Terra Ecosystem and it’s common users just might go with the lowest pain variant: Come-click-stake by knowing that a pick from the Top10 is unlikely to have off-time and get slashes. Especially since there is no difference in received APY its just and easy click-and-go activity by taking no risk as on lower validators. Also if they have high numbers of own stakeit is unlikely a validator has off-time.

Beside a professional social media campaign to educate on decentralisation/ distribution and shift voting power to active contributors shaping the Terra ecosystem there is another suggestion for improvement:

• better UI in Terra Station
• min. profile information for all validators

It might be good to have a better UI in Terra Station with more applicable information right on hand, something like a min-profile for validators to comfort the users basic needs of easy access instead of DYOR. (I strongly suggest you do your own research though.)

https://discover.luno.com/wp-content/uploads/DYOR_1200x620-3.gif

Feasibility of Do Kwon’s plain proposal

Furthermore Kwon idea is suggesting to take away the airdrop privileges for all Top10. Though I believe the upcoming proposal won’t be as simple as his tweet can suggest, I rather like to believe it will be more reasonable as there will be always Top10 validators and a validator war to not become Top10 isn’t something you plan neither for your project. The goal is to have less voting power, to spread it all over the place but still have active contributors to the Terra Ecosystem.

How about

• a hard cap for max validator %
• min % until a validator and its delegators still receive ANC airdrop
  reduced #ANC shares to delegators
• min % until a validator and its delegators still receive ANC airdrop
  no #ANC for all delegators if % exceeded
• fewer ANC for delegators to validators over certain % based on a accumulation level e.g., 1% = factor 0,8 ANC / 1,5% = 0,6% / 2% =0.4% / 2,5% =0.2% etc.
• let me know in the comments what else can be suggested

The underlying idea is simple, decentralise voting power. COSMOS already had a certain problem with delegations of #Atom token which lay mostly in the hands of centralised exchanges. The community just recently started to promote to stake #Atom to more decentralised validators and Cosmos airdrops usually skip everyone staking with CEX or centralised validators not engaging in the ecosystem. That would not apply too much on #Luna as CEX are not represented in the list. It worked for Atom but the socialmedia campaign was supported by the community, the were asked to be engaged and educate the others. It worked asit came from the inside. The tweet by Kwon is rather acommander intimidation. I personally like Orion Money, which is a leading validator. It's tough to see them taking down by using leading peronalities promoting their idea of whats good. A proposal shall have some debate, Pro's and Con's and eventually transfering into a proposal the community can vote for or against.

A tweet by the CEO of TerraformLabs to change the ecosystem isn’t that decentralised neither,don't you think?

https://sarafoleyinternet.weebly.com/centraliseddecentralised-network.html

Let me know what you think. 

Maybe let me know what suggestion is the best and argue why in the below comment section and I will discuss it in a further article. 

Stay safe and happy.