#44 Now is not the Time; Vote Against This Proposal
My proposal was to Redenominate Kusama 100:1 and thereby bring all of the benefits of DOT Referendum #52 to Kusama. As listed under Referendum #52. The main benefit of this change is to avoid using small decimals when dealing with DOT and to achieve an easier calculation system. Since Kusama is billed as the value brand between the two sister chains, it is even more important to Kusama and yet Kusama will be using 2 extra decimals over DOT. Additionally, as I now know others have mentioned, the redomination would bring conversations, comparisons, etc between DOT and Kusama into an apples vs apples realm instead of the current apples vs golden apples situation we currently have.
Much has been made about DOT and KSMs ability to adapt and change without having to hard fork leading one to believe this change could be made with a simple on-chain rebase command which could change the entire blockchain. Apparently this is not the case. Apparently, it takes a massive amount of work to redenominate the chain. Even more so that when it was done with DOT as transfers have been enabled. It is unfortunate because when DOT was redenominated, would not have been the best time to redenominate Kusama. However, it now appears Kusama can never be redenominated, which is also going to be tragic. It is already a problem, but as KSM becomes more and more valuable this problem is going to do nothing but become worse.
However, with all that said, at this point in the market cycle and DOT ecosystem lifecycle, there is absolutely nothing even as close as important as the deployment of the parachains. This is one of the main premises the DOT ecosystem is built on and nothing must get in the way of it.
This is my mistake and if I had known it had been proposed before and if I knew how much work needed to be done to implement it, or if I had know how much confusion it could cause I never would have proposed it.
To the developers, is there some ability to add rebase functionality into the code in a more convenient time in the future? Or anyway to accomplish this at a more convenient time as there are substantial benefits to KSM with the redenomination?
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I am against this proposal (again) for the same reasons as the one before. Here I am including some of them from all community members who discussed this idea before:
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The remark in the referendum is vague; it's only a signal in favor of or against redenomination, but doesn't state when it would take place or a strategy to handle it. I would recommend the proposer to at least outline a strategy moving forward.
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Redenomination doesn't require anything for the protocol itself, but it requires tons of work interacting with users, wallets, custodians, data aggregators, and other people/teams affected by the decision. It probably falls on Parity/W3F to handle that, who at the moment are working hard on parachains infra.
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a plan from the proposer of how they'd help make this happen is not developed.
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the denomination of KSM doesn't change the economic properties of the network, so the argument that this is to bring Kusama into alignment with Polkadot doesn't hold much weight
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The actual work required from a wallet perspective to track at a certain timepoint (like we had in Polkadot) and then dealing with all the messaging around it is not an easy job and requires a complete strategy by many teams, and this is not needed today.
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The confusion this proposal will create if passes will be higher than its benefits: this proposal will not necessarily lead to better system testing accuracy and better market validation.
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Kusama is a running network, with enabled transfers functionality, unlike Polkadot when redenomination happened: this makes things much more complicated when dealing with this kind of proposals.
Thank you to RTTI-5220 for your comments. I did not know this Polkassembly discussion area existed or I would have not have made the proposal. Also, since Kusama has features built into it to change the chain without hard forks and it was accomplished under Polkadot, I was under the misimpression that this would be as simple as a rebase. Code in the chain just rebases the amounts across the chain. In making this proposal, I believe all of the reasons given for the redomination of DOT are equally valid for Kusama. Since, Kusama is supposed to be the Canary chain, or as listed in the white paper the economy chain, it is even more relevant for Kusama. Additionally, as others have mentioned, since Kusama is the sister chain of DOT, it really makes sense for it to be denominated the same way. However, with that said, now that I understand the work it would take to accomplish this I am not in favor of it any more and would withdraw the proposal if I could. At this point in time, the parachain roll out is of paramount importance for Kusama and the DOT ecosystem as a whole and there doesn't need to be any confusion thrown into the mix by trying to accomplish everything listed above.
Thanks for the reply! Yes, indeed I dont think now is the right time. Happy to talk more about redenomination on Polkadot and how this happened if you have any questions.
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