- Polkassembly/
- #574/
Kusama Governance Concerns
In a forum post last week, the Kusama council posted a debrief of a town hall call to discuss a proposal about the deployment on Kusama of a common good parachain with high perceived value. In the proposal slides, it's mentioned that the proposal under discussion is actually a revised proposal, not the original proposal submitted by the project. The first proposal was for a more familiar launch configuration: a parachain for Kusama at first, and a distinct parachain for Polkadot once parachains launch there. I.e., the same deployment configuration as all other projects previously discussed, such as Statemine/Statemint and Karura/Acala. According to the slides, this original proposal was subject to an anonymous "signalling" vote involving both councils simultaneously; Polkadot "signalled" in favor of launching the project there, but Kusama "signalled" no (11 no : 4 yes). This signalling vote happened at some time before the town hall call.
The rest of the discussion is about a compromised proposal by which the project would launch on Kusama and then somehow "migrate" to Polkadot when parachains launch there. The council has indicated misgivings even about this compromise, partially due to uncertainty about the definition and technical aspects of "migration," but also on the grounds that "Kusama exists to serve the goals of Polkadot." The implication of the latter concern is that the project is seen as having high value, and Polkadot doesn't want Kusama to have a first-mover advantage. The suggestion was made the the project should forget about Kusama and simply wait to launch on Polkadot.
Regardless of the details of the specific proposals and compromises, I think this situation represents a critical test of the governance system, both in its visible on-chain mechanisms, and in the invisible politics of the council. It could easily be argued that the decision to vote against the original proposal by the Kusama council was not in the interests of the Kusama community, as it benefits the Polkadot community alone. That this rejection happened off-chain, in an anonymous signal vote involving both councils, suggests an ethically questionable coupling between the two councils.
When anonymous signal votes are used to filter and transform proposals, the community is starved of information about the opportunities under consideration and the motivations of the actors involved in governance. If a proposal is made, the community should be made aware of it before it is filtered and transformed by interests we may not share. The votes of each councillor should be visible and persistent so that community members can decide, individually, if these councillors represent the interests of Kusama.
(In the poll, an aye is meant to indicate agreement with these concerns.)