Threshold
I agree 100% with everything said in the posts above.
When Kusama expanded to 1000 active validators and KSM’s price fell, we set a 10% minimum commission (see https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/79) to stop operators from cutting rates too low and prevent the race to the bottom. This step helped maintain hardware standards and costs. Slashing rewards by half now will contradicts this effort, leaving many validators at a operational loss. This wont be sustainable for network security or decentralization.
deigenvektor.io voted NAY, as we believe that without addressing the issue of validator income, operating kusama validators would become even less sustainable. We are open to supporting proposals that address both inflation and validator income.
Dear Proposer,
Thank you for your proposal. Our first vote on this proposal is NAY.
The Root track requires 60% quorum according to our voting policy. This proposal has received one aye and six nay votes from ten members, with two members abstaining. Below is a summary of our members' comments:
Some voters expressed support for the initiative, emphasizing its potential benefits despite concerns about diminishing validator income. However, a majority opposed the proposal, citing the need for a more robust plan and wider community discussion prior to implementation, especially given the current financial strain on validators. Several voters abstained, highlighting the aggressive nature of the proposal and the potential risks to network stability. Overall, the sentiment leaned towards caution and the need for further deliberation.
The full discussion can be found in our internal voting.
Kind regards,
Permanence DAO
Edited
We appreciate the other commenters and echo their sentiment that this is likely an inappropriate time to do this on Kusama.
The situation here is different than it was on Polkadot, with an already tight security budget due to market conditions that is just enough to cover ongoing hardware costs, even when making the (nonsensical) assumption of valuing the time and administrative overhead at zero.
To our knowledge, there are several efforts underway to revitalize Kusama and help it live up to and grow beyond its current reputation as a chaotic playground, such as privacy-focused tech (see, for example, this forum discussion: https://forum.polkadot.network/t/make-kusama-chaotic-again/11123). This would work towards pulling the much more efficient lever of demand, rather than adjusting supply while risking the compromise of Kusama’s security.
Regarding the coretime sales, in our view, current prices are an attractive offer for cheap compute, and efforts such as lower parachain/data deposits (https://github.com/polkadot-fellows/runtimes/pull/501) are an important contribution towards fostering an environment that supports tinkerers that do not have the ability or do not want to commit lots of capital upfront. It might also be an idea worth exploring to further support such experimentation with treasury loans specifically for this purpose.