Rust Syndicate votes no because:
- Jam will not be stable until next year 
- Kusama Needs to be connected to polkadot 
- JAMKB is not live and we should now allocation and core price AFTER it launches 



I find very valuable the research and proposals from Emiel Sebastiaan and Arief Ernst's 3 papers. As stated in my previous comments on the forum posts and the Polkadot Vibe Check Lives, I am convinced that keeping the status quo on Kusama is not an option. An independent Kusama is something I could support but does not seem to be realistic given the existing community and tokenholders. 

Therefore I am voting AYE on [ref 671](https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/671) (8 cores 5 years) and [ref 672](https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/672) (6 cores 6 years 8 months) and NAY on [ref 673](https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/673) (4 cores 10 years) and [ref 674] (2 cores 20 years). Although I still have major concerns due to the lack of a general Kusama ecosystem strategy that would go along an infrastructure decision, I am sufficiently convinced that at least the general purpose of Kusama has been narrowed down in the forum community discussions to reflect a privacy oriented, cypherpunk network, which I feel aligned with. 

I agree with the published papers, that if the ksmDAO agrees to move forward with a JAM Prime cohabitation, we would present this to negotiate with the dotDAO and include the support of the Polkadot Technical Fellowship in the migration from today's staking structure to being secured by JAM Prime. 

This decision would also imply that Kusama keeps sovereignty on all other aspects, other than security. Therefore, I agree that we need to prioritize the discussion of the future of the $KSM economy, if the token's utility is no longer to secure the network by backing validators, we need a strategy that would avoid tokenholders simply liquidating their bags. This is stated clearly in the [2nd paper](https://github.com/sdfinst/publications/blob/a445bba7ab5a801e3b85168551dfa8b1e5021bc2/content/articles/proposal-kusama-future-jam-prime/index.md#29-give-ksm-explicit-economic-functions).

The benchmark proposed for the cost of CTY(coretime-years), remains hypothetical and is a risk that we would take as ksmDAO. The benefit for dotDAO to receive 5M DOT tokens in its treasury and for JAM Prime to secure a "client" for a number of years for a number of its cores is clear. The benefit for ksmDAO in terms of infrastructure is clear, but if we secure cores without a plan to use them and generate a sustainable $KSM economy that would allow us to potentially extend this number of years on JAM Prime, it would be a shame. 

The renewed vision programme, proposed as "**Cypherpunk Vision Fund**" needs to play a role in the implementation of the strategy, and avoid repeating mistakes from the former KV program or the former Polkadot bounties, such as funding random projects, even if they appear to be cypherpunk, since this does not necessarily translate into clear benefits for the Kusama network.

**Kusama Governance** also needs to play a role in the implementation of the strategy and I am hopeful that more tokenholders will be willing to participate making this infrastructure decision as well as future decisions.

Therefore, the key points that remain unsolved and that I consider necessary to move forward with this infrastructure migration are:
- general Kusama ecosystem strategy (including decisions on system chains and parachains)
- redesigning Kusama's economy (utility of $KSM)

I’m voting NAY on all of them for now.

I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Before committing Kusama to a long-term infrastructure decision, we should first figure out what we actually want Kusama to become.

What are our real needs? What’s the economic vision for KSM? What kind of ecosystem are we trying to build?

The [work shared](https://forum.polkadot.network/t/proposal-discussion-adapting-kusama-to-demand-and-its-jam-future/17141/10?u=rom1.io) by Lederstrumpf on validator and core reductions is a good example of why we need to look at actual demand and decentralization before making these decisions.

I’m not against JAM Prime, an independent JAM, or any other approach, but I think we’re missing the bigger picture here.

Infrastructure should follow a vision, not the other way around.

[@xcRom1](EqZG45vbcbgCyEF15jrcZwsThNEu4gCAdbGjJTacV9rDnCs-kusama) I definitely agree with you in principle, and as I've voiced before, more than once: ["Why are we already benchmarking and pricing something that we don’t even know if we need?"](https://forum.polkadot.network/t/a-proposal-for-a-kusama-future-on-jam-prime/18683/27?u=florentina57) and that I believe we first need an ecosystem strategy before making infrastructure or other technical decisions.

However, I am also convinced that stalling further is not the way either. We clearly have a very limited number of Kusama community members who even voice their opinion on the future of the network, let alone vote for proposals that have been put forward. So unless there is a more convincing proposal that realistically will help us advance, I am keeping my AYE vote on [671](https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/671) and [672](https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/672). 

If it goes through, we would still need dotDAO and the Technical Fellowship to agree to it but most importantly, we need a strategy. For this, we will need to use indeed, everything available already, such as Lederstrumpf's data you quoted above, the recent Kusama bounty cleanup you pushed forward and any other data to understand what exists on Kusama today, what we want Kusama to become and how to optimize the use of the Kusama assigned cores on JAM Prime (especially if they have already been financed by ~50% of the 10M DOT the W3F has committed to Kusama). 

Whether this WFC or the counterproposal [676](https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/671) pass, or if neither one of them do, I am willing to give it a try and contribute, at my level, with whoever else is still around or willing to come onboard and interested in developing such strategy. 

In the meantime I support the further reduction of the Kusama active set initiated with ref [655](https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/655) as it is aligned with sizing the infra to current needs.



## References
- [Forum Post](https://forum.polkadot.network/t/kusama-on-jam-prime-the-infrastructure-decision/19044)
- [Full paper](https://github.com/sdfinst/publications/blob/da60fe67d9c8b13b04bf3af6dab5c49be0625fe1/content/articles/kusama-jam-prime-infrastructure-decision/index.md)

Infrastructure Wish-for-Change proposal 1: 8 cores for 5 years

References

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