Encointer application for a common good parachain slot
Encointer aims to become a common-good parachain on Kusama. This post shall make a case for granting Encointer the privilege of a system-parachain slot.
Why is Encointer a Common Good?
As a not-for-profit endeavor, Encointer does not fit the Kusama parachain crowdloan model. Parachain crowdloans rely on DOT holders to lend their DOT. They do so for a financial incentive exceeding their opportunity costs for disclaiming their right to stake DOT on the relay chain. Encointer cannot offer such an incentive as there is no revenue model and if there were one it would inevitably conflict with Encointer's goal to reduce inequality globally.
Learn more about Encointer's vision to reduce inequality:
We believe an Encointer parachain is of common interest to the Kusama and Polkadot ecosystem because it offers a sybil defense mechanism and a basis for democracy.
Value Proposition: Sybil Defense
Encointer is a unique identity system and solves one of Vitalik Buterin's hard problems in cryptocurrency. The Encointer protocol (whitepaper) enables every human to maintain a unique proof of personhood (uPoP) through pseudonym key-signing parties.
Among its contenders (Idena, BridghtId, Trustlines, CirlesUBI), Encointer claims to have the most secure sybil defense mechanism. It requires physical participation at concurrent key signing meetups with randomized participants in randomized locations within a limited region in regular intervals. If the majority of a community is honest, there can be no sybils. Other projects use social graph approaches or randomized bilateral video chats which may be less involved and more inclusive - but also less secure.
Encointer also goes to great lengths to protect your privacy - which is even more important if you can only maintain one single unique identity.
See our Sybil-defense DEMO video (6min)
Democracy
Kusama is governed by free-market capitalism. Who has more coin has more say, or: who has more to loose has more say. For many financial applications this might be a sound governance design. But there are other applications where we require democratic governance, where every human should have one vote. Such applications are:
- Self-sovereign identiy
- Reputation systems
- Decision making on off-chain matters, not represented by on-chain token holdings
- Global commons governance (human rights, fighting climate change, nuclear disarmament, AI and bioengineering regulations. (See GloCo)
Encointer enables online democracy - on a local to global scale.
Airdrops
Encointer itself leverages its uPoP sybil defense for issuing a universal basic income to every human. Other platforms may want to use uPoP for their token airdrops or faucets.
Native Token, Fees and Financing of operation
As a common good parachain, Encointer does not seek to have its own native token.
Encointer will use DOT/KSM as its native token. Transaction fees will be charged in DOT/KSM and will be collected in Encointer's treasury to be spent on infrastructure maintenance and protocol improvements.
Encointer will take measures to adjust fees to mitigate the volatility of DOTs and ensure inclusion of the global south. Midterm, purchasing-power adjusted fees are planned to be used on SubstraTEE sidechains where participants pay fees in their local currency in a reasonable relation to their basic income in such currency. As soon as this is established, parachain fees will only be paid by sidechain validators and 3rd party parachains requesting sybil-defense, not by Encointer community members anymore.
Encointer doesn't plan to rely on Kusama Treasury funding. Depending on circumstances and adoption rates, we might propose treasury spending if needed to fulfill Encointer's purpose.
Governance
The Encointer parachain will feature a similar governance design like Kusama. However, decision making will be based on democratic voting instead of coin voting. Every person participating in Encointer ceremonies regularly will have one vote to elect council members or vote on referenda.
During an initial phase, the Swiss Encointer Association will define the set of trusted communities whose members will be allowed to vote with equal power. Over time, an unpermissioned web-of-trust will evolve based on inter-community attestations and trade.
Certain governing rights touching Kusama Ecosystem Stakeholders' interests may be delegated to the Kusama Relay Chain Council.
Encointer governance is designed to be subsidiary: Decisions are taken at the lowest possible level.
- Decisions regarding one local community (like demurrage rate, UBI nominal value a.s.o) are voted on democratically by community members
- Decisions regarding the Encointer ecosystem globally (like ceremony schedule, community reputation system) are made by the Encointer Council (with the option of a public referendum, like Polkadot)
- Decisions regarding the Kusama ecosystem (like sybil-defense design changes and respective fees) shall be made by Kusama council / Relay-chain governance
Interoperability
Any third party application can register an application token on our parachain. Encointer ensures that every human can only claim a single account for that application for a certain time period.
Parachains can use Polkadot's XCMP to benefit from Encointer sybil defense. Off-Chain applications can use the Encointer Collator API.
Polkadot and Kusama
Encointer aims to be deployed on both Polkadot and Kusama. It will synchronize the ceremony schedule on both parachains to ensure that meetups happen on both platform concurrently, ensuring compatibility of their sybil defense systems. It will also aim at bridging uPoP between the two.
Depending on technical developments and availability of bridging between Kusama and Polkadot, these plans may be adjusted in the future. What will remain unchanged is our ambition to provide sybil-defense on both Polkadot and Kusama.
Timing
Due to the pandemic, plans to launch the first productive communities have been postponed, given the need to meet other people physically in proximity at Encointer ceremonies. The tech would be ready to be deployed, two testnets are constantly operated since early 2020.
Given the success of many countries to recover from the pandemic, we think summer 2021 would be a good time to launch our productive mainnet on Kusama
Acknowledgements
We thank the
- web3 foundation for their grant to develop our cantillon testnet
- Polkadot council for a treasury grant for developing sybil-defense
Comments (42)
Comments (42)
I really like this idea as a means by which we move towards tying our ecosystem directly to real people and their needs, and away from being focused on gazing inwards at crypto and "rich people playing money games with each other".
Things I like about this proposal and why I wholeheartedly support it succeeding as-is:
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Will eventually work as a permissionless* on/off ramp into the wider ecosystem, especially if tied via xcm to parachains with DEXs and/or asset issuance chains like Statemine. [this is important, because right now the only way to enter the cryptocurrency ecosystem is either via exchanges, PoW, or directly providing goods or services - all inaccessible to much of the world that actually needs this tech, and PoW has massive externalities.]
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Isn't tied to traditional infrastructure (like exchanges) and improves the survivability of the network under scenarios where those entities are restricted. [I'm thinking of a scenario where we achieve strong privacy guarantees on the relay chain or a connected parachain, and the subsequent untraceability causes exchanges to delist due to AML legislation.]
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Paying for fees using the relay chain token is all well and good, since you aren't inventing additional friction, but the dream scenario is obviously having no fees for users [and so the network tokens are largely irrelevant] and I like the way you intend to subsidize that ability by essentially operating a service for other parachains. It would be interesting how this could compose with other parachains to make the entire ecosystem more broadly accessible.
My first response to seeing that encointer intends to have an independent treasury is that a common good chain should probably not have that degree of independence or agency - BUT - I'm increasingly developing the view that core infrastructure and the relay chain should be operated and maintained by a broader coalition of entities than they currently are - I don't see a way to do so without independent treasuries for maintenance, including common good chains, especially if those chains and components aren't all going to be made and run by Parity. I say this alot, but I don't think council should be the ultimate decision maker for resource allocation in the ecosystem, and I think this is a step in the correct direction.
I had a bunch of questions but after rereading your proposal several times, I realized you already accounted for them - the (lack of) necessity of the relay chain token itself, the fact that the sybil protection component of transaction fees is not necessary, so fees can be made less prominent, community tokens being used to pay for fees where they are still necessary, instead of the relay chain token or a global network token.
I have a broader skepticism for trusted hardware based solutions in general, but over the past couple of years I have grown not to let myself criticize it too much when being used for potentially transformational usecases like yours (and the work the Phala team is doing as well)... so I will refrain from commenting about that, support what you have built already, and hope that some cryptographic magic shows up in the near future that you can use to obviate that requirement entirely later.
Largely I see this as a near ideal proposal of what a common good parachain should be - not rentseeking, but still seeking ways to sustain itself long-term without requiring constant support and supervision from the relay chain. I would be interested in hearing if other councilors agree with me that common good parachains should be self-sustaining and outside of complete relay chain governance.
Thank you so much for your endorsement @jam10o
Just answering the TEE scepticism: We're currently running two testnets: Gesell (no TEE, pure substrate) and Cantillon (SubstraTEE based for improved scalability and privacy)
Our deployment strategy would be to start our parachain with no-TEE for the first few communities and once we deploy the second layer (TEE-validated sidechains), communities can opt-in to migrate to a TEE sidechain or stay on the pure-substrate parachain.
I really like this idea as a means by which we move towards tying our ecosystem directly to real people and their needs, and away from being focused on gazing inwards at crypto and "rich people playing money games with each other".
Things I like about this proposal and why I wholeheartedly support it succeeding as-is:
Will eventually work as a permissionless* on/off ramp into the wider ecosystem, especially if tied via xcm to parachains with DEXs and/or asset issuance chains like Statemine. [this is important, because right now the only way to enter the cryptocurrency ecosystem is either via exchanges, PoW, or directly providing goods or services - all inaccessible to much of the world that actually needs this tech, and PoW has massive externalities.]
Isn't tied to traditional infrastructure (like exchanges) and improves the survivability of the network under scenarios where those entities are restricted. [I'm thinking of a scenario where we achieve strong privacy guarantees on the relay chain or a connected parachain, and the subsequent untraceability causes exchanges to delist due to AML legislation.]
Paying for fees using the relay chain token is all well and good, since you aren't inventing additional friction, but the dream scenario is obviously having no fees for users [and so the network tokens are largely irrelevant] and I like the way you intend to subsidize that ability by essentially operating a service for other parachains. It would be interesting how this could compose with other parachains to make the entire ecosystem more broadly accessible.
My first response to seeing that encointer intends to have an independent treasury is that a common good chain should probably not have that degree of independence or agency - BUT - I'm increasingly developing the view that core infrastructure and the relay chain should be operated and maintained by a broader coalition of entities than they currently are - I don't see a way to do so without independent treasuries for maintenance, including common good chains, especially if those chains and components aren't all going to be made and run by Parity. I say this alot, but I don't think council should be the ultimate decision maker for resource allocation in the ecosystem, and I think this is a step in the correct direction.
I had a bunch of questions but after rereading your proposal several times, I realized you already accounted for them - the (lack of) necessity of the relay chain token itself, the fact that the sybil protection component of transaction fees is not necessary, so fees can be made less prominent, community tokens being used to pay for fees where they are still necessary, instead of the relay chain token or a global network token.
I have a broader skepticism for trusted hardware based solutions in general, but over the past couple of years I have grown not to let myself criticize it too much when being used for potentially transformational usecases like yours (and the work the Phala team is doing as well)... so I will refrain from commenting about that, support what you have built already, and hope that some cryptographic magic shows up in the near future that you can use to obviate that requirement entirely later.
Largely I see this as a near ideal proposal of what a common good parachain should be - not rentseeking, but still seeking ways to sustain itself long-term without requiring constant support and supervision from the relay chain. I would be interested in hearing if other councilors agree with me that common good parachains should be self-sustaining and outside of complete relay chain governance.
Thank you so much for your endorsement @jam10o
Just answering the TEE scepticism: We're currently running two testnets: Gesell (no TEE, pure substrate) and Cantillon (SubstraTEE based for improved scalability and privacy)
Our deployment strategy would be to start our parachain with no-TEE for the first few communities and once we deploy the second layer (TEE-validated sidechains), communities can opt-in to migrate to a TEE sidechain or stay on the pure-substrate parachain.