Let me reiterate what I said in the discussion thread:

I'm stongly in favour of a decent minimum commission on Kusama. Making validators profitable is essential to the security and decentralisation of the network.

It's clear that the market for commission has failed. Many validator operators are running at a loss with low commission. Maybe they aren't running validators for profit. But if they aren't, and our systems are secured by rationality, why do we trust them? The least they could do is make a profit and not hurt others doing the same.

We want validators to be be competing on security, not cutting costs. Otherwise we see things like validators running on Hetzner, a cheap cloud provider that has been known to switch off validators. A nominator shouldn't back a validator running on Hetzner for a 10% difference in commission rate. It's not rational - you might be slashed. But nominators tend to be in favour of low comissions irrationally, maybe because it is a number that is very visible.

Performance, reflected somewhat in era points, can also make a bigger difference than commission to rewards, but this is also less visible.

A minimum comission would go some way to fix these, forcing validators to be profitable and compete on security and performance.

As we already posted in the discussion round, we are against this proposal and repeat our thoughts here again for people who did not see our reasoning yet.

There are two distinct issues at hand here: to have a minimum commission at all, and to raise this minimum commission from 3% to 10%.

The first discussion point for us is whether there should be a minimum commission at all or not. We have previously voted against this, and will continue to oppose it. The whole crypto ethos builds on the foundation that network-native currencies can provide sufficient incentives to run a globally distributed, decentralized network. These economic incentive structures should be robust enough to secure a stable network even in the face of well-capitalized and motivated adversaries. To ensure that a true game-theoretical equilibrium can be found by forces of the free market, interventions should be limited to the minimum. If in this intervention-free case, the true game-theoretical equilibrium leads to an end state that is not desirable and unintended by the protocol’s developers and community, then the protocol rules for incentivization should be changed, rather than introducing a subsidy of some kind.

Establishing a minimum commission does not allow for free market competition, or at least makes it harder as the minimum commission can still be circumvented on- or off-chain by means that involve some trust between the parties (operator of the validator and nominator). This is certainly not helpful for having a transparent commissions market. The minimum commission also guarantees a minimum rent that can be extracted by validator operators, which is opposite to the crypto ethos.

The second discussion point is raising the minimum commission from 3% to 10%. This would exacerbate the issues outlined above (more interference, higher rent to be extracted, etc.), and on top of it attempts to play “central bank” to provide a “soft landing” during worsening market conditions.

Now, we have only outlined what not to do so far, so here is what we think would lead to a better commissions market and actually fix the underlying issue rather than continuously attempting to treat the symptom of some validator operators being unprofitable despite providing good services. To do that, research into how users select validators and how to assist and improve this process is required (such as demonstrated in the recent talk by J. Gehrlein, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym8t6cVHhgY and “An active preference learning approach to aid the selection of validators in blockchain environments”, Gehrlein et al., 2022). We would support further efficient efforts in that direction, from research through to deployment so that users can better balance out validator selection criteria rather than placing a perhaps irrationally high importance on commission only.

As we already posted in the discussion round, we are against this proposal and repeat our thoughts here again for people who did not see our reasoning yet.

There are two distinct issues at hand here: to have a minimum commission at all, and to raise this minimum commission from 3% to 10%.

The first discussion point for us is whether there should be a minimum commission at all or not. We have previously voted against this, and will continue to oppose it. The whole crypto ethos builds on the foundation that network-native currencies can provide sufficient incentives to run a globally distributed, decentralized network. These economic incentive structures should be robust enough to secure a stable network even in the face of well-capitalized and motivated adversaries. To ensure that a true game-theoretical equilibrium can be found by forces of the free market, interventions should be limited to the minimum. If in this intervention-free case, the true game-theoretical equilibrium leads to an end state that is not desirable and unintended by the protocol’s developers and community, then the protocol rules for incentivization should be changed, rather than introducing a subsidy of some kind.

Establishing a minimum commission does not allow for free market competition, or at least makes it harder as the minimum commission can still be circumvented on- or off-chain by means that involve some trust between the parties (operator of the validator and nominator). This is certainly not helpful for having a transparent commissions market. The minimum commission also guarantees a minimum rent that can be extracted by validator operators, which is opposite to the crypto ethos.

The second discussion point is raising the minimum commission from 3% to 10%. This would exacerbate the issues outlined above (more interference, higher rent to be extracted, etc.), and on top of it attempts to play “central bank” to provide a “soft landing” during worsening market conditions.

Now, we have only outlined what not to do so far, so here is what we think would lead to a better commissions market and actually fix the underlying issue rather than continuously attempting to treat the symptom of some validator operators being unprofitable despite providing good services. To do that, research into how users select validators and how to assist and improve this process is required (such as demonstrated in the recent talk by J. Gehrlein, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym8t6cVHhgY and “An active preference learning approach to aid the selection of validators in blockchain environments”, Gehrlein et al., 2022). We would support further efficient efforts in that direction, from research through to deployment so that users can better balance out validator selection criteria rather than placing a perhaps irrationally high importance on commission only.

There are so many reasons why we are opposed to this proposal. But I will address just two of them.

1. It discriminates against inactive validators. Active validators will get more rewards and more exposure to nominators, as opposed to inactive validators who will only get losses. Ultimately, this will lead to an even more centralized network. A fairer solution would be to simply give away KSM from the treasury to cover the costs for any validator, even if they are not in the active set.

2. This is basically risk shifting. Nominators are forced to cover losses caused by validators' bad business strategy. At the same time, validators will retain huge levels of profits in the bull market. This is the same thing as the bailout of banks with taxpayers' money.

There are so many reasons why we are opposed to this proposal. But I will address just two of them.

1. It discriminates against inactive validators. Active validators will get more rewards and more exposure to nominators, as opposed to inactive validators who will only get losses. Ultimately, this will lead to an even more centralized network. A fairer solution would be to simply give away KSM from the treasury to cover the costs for any validator, even if they are not in the active set.

2. This is basically risk shifting. Nominators are forced to cover losses caused by validators' bad business strategy. At the same time, validators will retain huge levels of profits in the bull market. This is the same thing as the bailout of banks with taxpayers' money.

I'm voting NAY because I don't think this will make validators any more profitable and will likely hurt security and Kusama's public image by taking returns away from nominators. Albeit more technically involved, there are far more effective ways to increase validator earnings.

However, if this passes, I may look into a data center solution for my validator.

I support this proposal because I think it is needed in the short term. It will help with a part of the problem: making rewards at a sustainable level for Kusama validators.

But I consider this as temporary, because it takes from stakers's pocket to increase the validator commission. A more sustainable way would be a rethink of inflation to increase block reward for staking (lowering a small part allocated to treasury). In a free market, validators shouldn't be forced to set a minimum commission (not more than 2-3% at least).

I'm voting Aye for this with 3x conviction cause I'm staking with a lot of parachains and other blockchains from other ecosystems and they all have commissions of 10% and even up to 30% in some cases and I believe it's needed for the security of the network and have no problem with this personally as long as I'm also earning a share.

Whoever is staking will be happy to support Kusama even with a little bit higher commissions. I'd rather see this than more treasury funds being spent to incentivize validators and I think this is a healthy way to do so long term. Good luck CoinStudio !

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