Polkassembly - Referendum #672

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 (8 cores 5 years) and ref 672 (6 cores 6 years 8 months) and NAY on ref 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.

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)

References