Not being able to stop people from using a permissionless system is beautiful, isn't it? but I bet many don't enjoy it when that freedom is exercised extensively. Luckily we are in a crypto-economic system that can protect itself by setting the right incentives ;)
Take the Wish For Change track for example, for a small fee+deposit it allows anyone to post a remark on-chain, e.g. I use it in the way I understand it should be used, to gather community sentiment about actionable ideas/changes that normally require some level of privilege(e.g. modifying the runtime), changes that I'm convinced can be beneficial for the general community and that I know me or my team can deliver without relying on a third-par(i)ty. Other people might see it as a good avenue to give exposure to an idea or arbitrary post as said remarks are made visible enough by the governance platforms many people frequent on daily basis.
If you think that a referendum is spam, pallet referenda has some protection mechanisms like the referendum killer that can slash decision deposits(no useful if there is no DD) but if you want to prevent spam earlier then there is the submission deposit that can be raised to a high enough minimum to prevent abuse. What would a good minimum be?
it' worth noting that the current implementation uses the same SD for all tracks, if it's too high we would be making OpenGov less open.
Other considerations:
collect_deposit that sends the submission deposits that are locked forever to a configured account like the Dark Hole's event horizon ;)
The current incentive design for Wish For Change allows an account to post literally anything to the track.
To post something like:
Please watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnJ3aPt57g8to the track 'costs' 620 micro KSM.The cost to place the referendum is then 563.0092 micro KSM.
Since there is no code to execute, the KSM used to note the preimage can then be unnoted, which basically means the there is a basic spam filter in place, but really its just admin/opportunity cost rather than a direct cost since the KSM can be returned so the KSM can be reused.
There is no requirement to add a decision deposit.
Gov UIs like Polkassembly + Subsquare watch events in the referenda pallet and then query related storage info to then populate the interfaces.
Wallets like Nova and then DAOs using discord bots or other indexing systems then take a feed of either PA/Subsquare or Nova to populate their own UIs in a waterfalling fashion.
The key insight is that the original system remark is at the top of a broadcasting funnel and although people regard this as annoying or spam, it is simply just using the underlying blockchain system in an unorthodox, but highly practical way to as a rudimentary publishing platform.
To date the Kusama and Polkadot treasuries have spent $ millions to date on what is in effect internal token holder communications - attempting to solve the problem of 'how to coordinate' a distributed network towards ever increasing narrative coherence.
Until now these costs have all been born by holders who payout KSM to entities who build out media operations on centralised platforms that offer 'free services' in return for aggregating and selling user data.
There is some value in this approach but it is time/cost limited as a long term strategy.
As Kusama's valuation rationalises, token holders will naturally begin to care more about approaches that consume (burn) KSM.
People under-value the very boring 'use case' of simply posting arbitrary data to a blockchain because there are lots of sexier sounding things that could be done.
This service should have a cost - that cost of KSM should be burned via the new dark hole pallet.
Consider a near future of entirely decentralised, emergent and generative forums/publishing/media brands driving an ever increasing volume of fee revenue and thus burn of KSM.
That journey can begin with a new Kusama forum, built entirely on Kusama.
If you follow the journey from here you can see that atomic publishing can slowly spawn forums, magazines, even something like a movie can be created from many thousands, if not millions of this kind of 'spam' transaction surfaced through existing or unique new 'tracks', whilst ensuring a connection to the original contributor is persisted as on-chain IP, all whilst burning KSM.
Edited