Thanks to everyone in the community for your engagement over the past week with a number of constructive conversations and comments that have led to an optimized proposal we are pleased to share where you can track edits in this post.
The key themes that we heard over the past week centered on:
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The economic design and underlying infrastructure costs associated with running a production MPC node.
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The resulting conclusion from these deep dive discussions arrived at the infrastructure costs alone being a bare minimum of $4,500 USD to run the three required nodes: 1.) a production mainnet node, 2.) back-up mainnet node, and 3.) a testnet node, all of which are required for the system. This represents the bare-bones, minimum cost in the cheapest hosting provider without contemplating any of the required software for security / monitoring, or the costs associated with people required to do the work.
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While not a material change, we have shifted the cost structure from $6,000 USD to $5,750 USD while retaining a 20% margin. In doing so, this reduced the per node incentive from 4,800 NEAR to 4,600 NEAR.
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We also discussed the idea of making the incentives payable in USDC rather than NEAR, to which we explained our stance in the comments expressing concern over consistent sell-side pressure on NEAR to facilitate the system, and the muted incentive that is provided by doing so, where the majority of the node providers are long NEAR and view the forward opportunity on USD value of the token to be much higher.
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Bowen pointed out in the forum that there are alternative hardware solutions from AMD on the horizon that offer material price advantages as compared to the Intel TEEs. These solutions will not be implemented within the production system for several quarters, but given the fact there will be future optimization opportunities for cost structure, we have implemented an Annual Program review which covers evolutions infrastructure and cost
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We also reviewed and discussed in a number of comment threads, the decision for the go-to-market motion to be driven by the SVRN team, rather than having a full blown decentralized voting process out of the gate to select and de-select MPC nodes.
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We’ve thought long and hard about this decision, and ultimately concluded that the best approach is to progressively decentralize the approach, rather than boil the ocean.
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To this point, we are committed to revisiting the maturity of House of Stake in conjunction with the performance of MPC nodes over the first 12 month period, to assess whether we’ve reached a point of maturity that warrants opening a stake-based voting mechanism on MPC nodes included within the system.
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In the meantime, we will provide clear guidance regarding the selection criteria and new MPC node providers that join the system if the proposal passes
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This will not meet the expectations of all parties who have shared their feedback, however we feel confident that it is the right path forward.
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Finally, there were a number of questions raised regarding the maturity of House of Stake to govern an economic policy vote of this nature.
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House of Stake went live less than 180 days and is rapidly maturing into a key governance forum and mechanism within the ecosystem.
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Bringing proposals that carry gravitas and are significant in nature build credibility within the system which will drive more NEAR token holders to participate in future proposals and votes.
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It is our duty as pioneers in the system, to lead by example and expect that by doing so we can help to steer the course for HoS to develop and mature.
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In closing, I wanted to share a note of thanks to the community for your engagement and thoughtful discourse. We’ve done our best to internalize comments and provide a revised proposal which aims to address the feedback that we can, while understanding that based on some of the views expressed, this revision will not result in your support. We hope that everyone appreciates our genuine efforts to advance this proposal in a manner that is transparent for the community and thoughtful as stewards of the protocol itself.
Best,
Sal