Governance Meeting Notes Mega-Thread

Secret Governance
102

where is the agency Summary ?

103

There are some notes in the above full notes of the call, the actual report will likely be published by the agency next week.

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104

Abstract

  • Secret Surge is very close
  • Secret Agency is proposing to reduce the Agency tax to 0% (as per prop #127) and use the remaining funds from this tax (estimated at ~275k SCRT) to fund their expenses in May and June. Should it seem that the NPO is not going to be set up by July, they are proposing to come to the community pool for a spend proposal to fund the agency for 3 months in the first week of June.
  • Secret Agency invites everyone to give their feedback on the funding proposal as well as their 2023-Q1 Review on the forums so they can formulate a response on Friday when Ertemann and Skrillah are back ‘in office’.
  • Lumi and Serdar are leaving the Dev Committee after the current funding period ends in a few weeks. Xiph, Hasseeb, and Seanrad are interested in continuing the dev committee but several community members have already signaled a new proposal would be considered a completely new committee.
  • Depending on what is funded through the Community Pool, and what the price of SCRT is, the Community Pool will either not run out at all this year (1.50 USD SCRT, not funding Agency), or it will run out before September (0.70 USD SCRT, funding Agency, University, etc).

Action Points

Full Notes

105

Abstract

  • The next mainnet upgrade is tentatively scheduled for May 16th.
  • An official governance channel on telegram has been created: Telegram: View @SCRT_gov
  • Secret Agency has added most of the community requested data to their Q1 review, the exception being individual pay or hours for agents. Data related to leads is fully public. Their proposal to use the remaining tax funds for May and June will likely go on-chain the 2nd part of this week.
  • Secret Agency would greatly appreciate community feedback on their metrics in their Q1 review, what would you like to see added?
  • It currently seems that the Dev Committee will not be renewed when their current term finishes in the next few weeks. The weekly Dev call will continue either through Secret Agency (Seanrad), Secret University or both. Development efforts could potentially shift to micro-grants.

Action Points

Full Notes

106

Abstract

  • The v1.9 upgrade proposal is currently in voting, the upgrade is scheduled for May 16th around 14h00 UTC.
  • A proposal to check community temperature on a potential move from Discourse to Commonwealth for forum discussions is currently in the forum discussion phase for 2 weeks.
  • The draft of the new Secret Network Charter & Code of Conduct is now available on the forums, the aim is to have it in a state for on-chain confirmation after 14 days.
  • The dev committee has now officially ended, the dev call / hangout will still continue as a collaboration by Seanrad and Secret University.

Action Points

Full Notes

107

Abstract

  • The v1.9 upgrade is expected to happen tomorrow around 3PM UTC.
  • It would be interesting to explore a Cosmos wide governance call a few times a year in order to tackle issues that all ecosystems face.
  • The API Team has created an auto-healing mechanism for their load balancers, thereby ensuring nodes catch back up quicker and queries get a proper response.
  • Technical dApp teams that experience difficulties, for example with BD, can reach out to the Secret Agency to see how they can help them with raising funds, bizdev, marketing, or recruitment.
  • Projects funded through the CCBL have so far not led to active dApps on mainnet. Reference implementations are in a way a little similar to MVPs in the sense they often are not easy to turn into dApps. Improvements to this bounty system will be explored in the coming period.
  • A flat validator fee could help lower ranked validators be more sustainable, likely at the cost of a small reduction in staking rewards to delegators and commission for large validators. Brainstorm will continue next week.

Action Points

Full Notes

108

Abstract

  • An update regarding the SF transition to a new NPO has been posted on the forums, in short: 500k USDT has already been transferred and a 700k SCRT loan has been repaid to SCRT Labs. Another 842k SCRT will be transferred in the near future. A new Executive Director has been found and will be announced in the near future!
  • The trustee that oversees the transition of SF to a new NPO will start joining the governance calls on a regular basis to keep the community up-to-date. More info on this soon.
  • The Support Team has a new proposal in the forum discussion period, this time just with Garbonzo since Waffle sadly had to step down due to time restrictions.
  • The new section in the draft Secret Network Charter & Code of Conduct on perpetual taxes needing at least a yearly signaling proposal to signal continued community support seem to take away some of the concerns related to on-chain taxes.
  • Supporting smaller validators seems popular, but what method to achieve that goal with and making sure it could be practically implemented with little dev overhead seems to be the limiting factors at this moment.

Action Points

Full Notes

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109

Abstract

  • The updated Secret Network Charter & Code of Conduct (proposal #244) is in the voting period for another ~28 hours, if you haven’t cast your vote yet please do so a.s.a.p.
  • The ‘Forum Migration to Commonwealth’ proposal is temporarily delayed while we wait for the Commonwealth team to finish improving the page loading times.
  • Secret University is finishing up the last aspects of their second milestone. In the next few days we should see two additional pathways becoming available, one on viewing keys and permits and the other on secret toolkit.
  • We are aiming to have the trustee that oversees the SF NPO transition join the governance calls every two weeks, starting next week. Once this is confirmed it will be shared in the governance channels.

Action Points

Full Notes

110

Abstract

  • The new Secret Foundation NPO Executive Director will be Lisa Loud, the full announcement: https://scrt.network/blog/introducing-lisa-loud-executive-director-secret-foundation ; https://twitter.com/SecretNetwork/status/1665754209445085195
  • The trustee to oversee the transition of SF to NPO introduced himself and will join the governance calls every first Monday of the month. In addition there will be biweekly updates on the forums.
  • Around 1.5M SCRT and 500k USDT have already been transferred. At least 700k SCRT will be immediately available for use once a new foundation address has been established.
  • The new foundation will be located in the Cayman Islands, we expect it to be established within the next few weeks. Otonomos is the registration agent.
  • The US tax implications of dissolving the current Secret Foundation are complex. A CPA firm is being selected to provide tax strategy and also file the tax returns. This is being done in parallel to setting up the new NPO.

Action Points

Full Notes

111

Abstract 2023/06/12

  • The Keplr 2.0 upgrade has caused a number of issues to UX, mainly the fact it resets all viewing keys. StarShell is a good alternative for Secret.
  • The SecretAnalytics backend is getting closer to a state where it can be released to the public. It may be interesting to move (part of) the front-end to the Secret Dashboard both to have all information on one page, as well as transferring some of the front-end dev burden.
  • Inactive SCRT may be best spotted by taking the ratio of staked SCRT in the active set / outside the active set. An account based system may be more interesting for dApp/network usage but doesn’t work when looking at ‘inactive’ staked SCRT.

Action Points

Full Notes

112

Abstract 2023/06/19

  • Scam proposals have sadly returned, the last two went into the voting period and their deposits were burned. With most front-ends now blocking scam proposals from being viewed it doesn’t seem urgent to further increase the deposit.
  • Discussions have started about creating pulsar-3 based on a mainnet snapshot. This would bring testnet in line with mainnet thereby reducing overhead for SCRT Labs and ensuring better predictability of upgrades. One of the discussion points is on whether to keep the more relaxed SGX requirements, or bring it up to parity with mainnet. Taariq will keep the community updated in governance calls on how the discussions progress.
  • UI/UX remains one of the bigger issues in user retention. It is a hard issue to ‘solve’ but there are already things available to help at this moment such as query permits. Further improvements are in the pipeline. As more dApps are created it becomes even more important to have standardization related to what we expect from UI/UX.

Action Points

Full Notes

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113

Abstract

  • Contract migrations will likely be added in the 1.10 network upgrade. Old contracts that want this functionality need to signal this before the 1.10 upgrade as it will be hardcoded in the upgrade.
  • Osmosis seems to be moving their forum discussions to Discourse, we’ll wait to see how this plays out before continuing the Commonwealth discussion.
  • The maximum VP proposal seems to have had a shift in sentiment and thus will be reopened for discussion on the forums, followed by an on-chain vote.
  • stkd-SCRT parameters are currently being discussed on the Shade forums in the form of a proposal to centralize the delegation distribution to a 85% allocation to secure secrets and 15% to IBC relayers and Shade contributors.

Action Points

Full Notes

114

Abstract

  • The new Cayman NPO foundation will be established in the coming weeks, during the call a large majority of attendees preferred the name ‘Secret Network Foundation’ over ‘Secret Foundation’.
  • An accounting firm to crunch the numbers and file tax returns has been found. The goal is to retrieve as many funds as possible from the for profit US entity before it is dissolved.
  • The new foundation is planned to have 3 board members, with the option to increase that to 5. There will likely be a community aspect in selecting the board members but it is still being figured out how to best handle this.
  • It is the goal to have some components be determined through on-chain votes. We are trying to figure out how to best involve on-chain governance, it is always a challenge to link it to a real life organization.
  • The proposal to institute a flat validator fee (in the form of a small tax) and change inflation will likely not proceed into a voting stage at this point. There doesn’t seem much support for it at this time but it would be good to return to it at a later date.
  • There seems to be support to increase gas fees on the network. Next week we’ll dive deeper into this topic and determine the best approach to potentially implement such a change.

Action Points

Full Notes

115

Abstract

  • If the maximum VP proposal passes it could be an idea to implement this ‘feature’ in front ends in advance of the technical implementation. Secret Dashboard will adhere to the result of this proposal and if it passes implement this into their front-end.
  • The burn and fee parameter proposal does not specify a specific implementation and leaves it up to SCRT Labs to determine the best/easiest approach if it passes. For a parameter it seems important to not lock validators out of setting a higher fee than the minimum defined in the parameter to ensure validators can still adequately respond to urgent situations.
  • For future proposals that ask SCRT Labs to implement a certain technical feature it seems wise to require a response from SCRT Labs that includes their opinion on feasibility and dev costs both short term and long term. Realistically there are only so many SDK changes that can be maintained properly so this aspect should be included in proposals.
  • This week there will be a short survey for both the community and validators on gas fees aiming to gather feedback on desired gas fee levels. This survey will help formulate a new proposal to increase gas fees to a more significant level.

Action points

Full Notes

116

Abstract

  • The contract upgrade feature is fully developed and tested and will be included in the v1.10 upgrade. This feature is backward compatible however admins will need to prove their ownership and supply an admin address before the v1.10 upgrade as this needs to be hardcoded.
  • Pulsar-3 will be up for teams to use in a few days, pulsar-2 will stay online for 3 weeks to ensure a smooth transition.
  • The maximum VP feature should be straightforward to implement in the next upgrade, the specific implementation chosen is not clear yet.
  • The fee grant faucet continuation proposal aims to fund the operation and maintenance of this community faucet for the next 6 months. It is used in the Secret Dashboard and can be used to wrap/unwrap and IBC transfer in/out. It can be used for staking once the staking page will go live. 80 SCRT was used since inception and ~450 SCRT is still in the treasury.
  • IBC fee middleware was included in the last upgrade, but is not yet supported by wallets and/or dApps. This could offset any potential fee increase and compensate relayers more effectively than other methods.
  • Fees have never been cheaper than they are now, it may make sense to increase them to keep the fee cost in USD roughly stable over time. There seems to be support to increase the fee to 0.25 uSCRT, potentially we could first move to a system where we have a low fee that is 0.1. uSCRT, a medium fee of 0.25 uSCRT, and a high fee of 0.5 uSCRT. It would be critical to ensure that the medium fee is included within 5 blocks in ~99.9% of situations. Front ends need to be updated before validators and api nodes institute new values.

Action Points

Full Notes

117

Abstract

  • It currently seems that the following gas fee values would see broad support: Low: 0.1 uSCRT; Med: 0.25 uSCRT; High: 0.5 uSCRT.
  • There are still some bumps in the road to fully implement relayer fees using IBC fee middleware but it seems the best way to make sure relaying is sustainable. Indirect compensation is not optimal and a relayer fee between 0.01 and 0.05 SCRT per IBC tx should already cover expenses.
  • Until relayer fees are implemented we could use a fee grant to cover gas costs through the community pool, this is estimated at 1000 SCRT a month for all IBC txs at a gas fee of 0.1 uSCRT.
  • Next week we will again discuss the topic of a minimum validator commission parameter, there are some signals that this is perhaps also something that should be voted on again.
  • Pulsar-3 is live, currently it is estimated to be 2 or 3 weeks until pulsar-2 is sunset. There are some issues with support for both networks on wallets and cosmos directory but that is being worked on.

Action Points

Full Notes

118

Abstract

  • The gas fee proposal has been changed to ask for a minimum of 0.1 uSCRT and advising front ends and wallets to set the following values: Low: 0.1 uSCRT, Medium: 0.25 uSCRT, High: 0.5 uSCRT.
  • If the gas fee increase proposal passes, a proposal to pay relayer fees from the community pool through a fee grant will go into discussion. It seems to have broad support and could be incorporated in the community fee grant faucet.
  • The API Proposal IV is very similar to the previous proposals. Icing on the cake is that there are some exciting developments with respect to auto-healing and caching that could significantly increase rate-limits.
  • There don’t seem to be any specific focus points that need additional attention in the coming governance period so the upcoming governance committee proposal will focus on consolidating the current responsibilities and reducing hours a little.
  • There seems to be renewed interest in a minimum validator commission, mostly depending on when we will receive it from upstream updates. If it is more than a year away there may be a demand to expedite that.

Action Points

Full Notes

1 Like
119

Abstract

  • Secret Network Foundation (SNF) has now officially been approved by the authorities in the Cayman Islands.
  • The goal is to create wallets for SNF as soon as possible and begin the transfer of funds that can be moved safely. There are tax implications for moving crypto funds, the CPA is working on a timeline.
  • A document will be drafted that contains financial details and will act as a reference for everyone. Hopefully there will be additional updates by next week.
  • If the increased gas fees proposal passes, a proposal to pay relayers’ transaction fees using a community pool funded fee grant will move on-chain. This is a temporary solution until relayer fees can be implemented and is expected to cost around 1k SCRT a month with an initial 3 month proposal.

Action Points

Full Notes

120

Abstract 2023/08/14

  • The front-ends and wallets are the most important in regards to increasing the gas fee, they first need to increase to ensure good UX. Following that, and the v1.10 upgrade, validators and api providers can start increasing their fees.
  • The v1.10 upgrade will not have the features communicated earlier, those will be included in v1.11. This upgrade will only allow patched nodes to register and start.
  • An implicit requirement of the fee middleware is that the relayer fee and ibc transfer messages are placed in the same transaction, this prevents reordering and needs to be set by the front-end. An async version exists but is likely to be less popular due to increased complexity.
  • IBC channel upgradability isn’t coming along very fast, early Q4 is the target and it will require IBC v8.

Action Points

Full Notes

121

Abstract 2023/08/21

  • Slightly more than 422k USDT has been transferred from Secret Foundation Inc to Secret Network Foundation. This is expected to be the first of multiple tranches as funds are made available.
  • Gas fees on the wallets have been adjusted following proposal 260. The lowest accepted fee is now 0.1 uSCRT with the Keplr average being 0.25 uSCRT and high 0.5 uSCRT. Over the next few days and weeks it is expected that the old 0.0125 uSCRT fee will be included in fewer and fewer blocks and will not be accepted any more by api nodes.
  • The IBC fee middleware indeed has an issue where proposers can take the relayer fee in the current implementation. The solution to this may involve the currently empty allow_list field which could be used to select the relayers that should receive the fee. This approach would not allow proposers to take the fee, only block it. Technically there are three fees: the receive packet fee, the acknowledgement fee, and the timeout fee.

Action Points

Full Notes