First, thanks for opening up the discussion on the forums as I am not involved on Discord.
“Inactive grain whale” chiming in here. To be frank, I’m feeling a little thrown under the bus here. Plus I’m worried the proposals are very short-term, with risks to have long-term negatives.
After the Cred scores have been biased towards recency in the past:
Now at least one of the proposals is to prioritize recent Grain vs “Old Grain” and make old grain a 3rd rate citizen. (* understanding it’s still a proposal, but it signals a sentiment)
And I find some of the wording rather harsh. For example: “If an inactive grain whale wants to take out a bunch of old Grain, that won’t screw over active contributors who depend on SourceCred for their livelihoods.” Note: I’m fully supportive of safeguards for people’s financials (actively reached out about this before starting to redeem)! This just reads to me as sympathetic towards active contributors, and borderline contemptuous towards inactive people as though they’re a mere financial liability.
I just so happen to quote @ezraU because you happened to write the summary opening post. Please reset assured I’m not taking this personally, I feel like it’s a trend and I’ve seen this sort of wording before in the community.
And benefit of the doubt, I’m assuming this is genuine oversight for what my situation is like as an old dev. By definition “inactive” probably means very few are around to push back or share their thoughts. From my end, out of principle I didn’t want “cash out” immediately to cover just my own interests. Now being talked about in this kind of way while burning tens of thousands of $s worth by the time I’ve completed the redeeming process… I signed up for that risk, but the treatment stings.
To further add to that, I feel like I didn’t fully have a choice in leaving. Or in not coming back. Or in redeeming Grain. I had different views on implementations (including financial responsibility or caution in the ledger design, wasn’t that foreshadowing!) I was swimming against the current there and had a burnout. Not prepared to come back full-time when I feel I constantly have to advocate for things again (like I’m doing right now) and risk another burnout. As for the redeeming I already dove into, on-chain grain will incur insane bookkeeping burdens due to tax law here.
So when Cred biases towards recency, and Grain is proposed to make old Grain a 3rd rate citizen, and the tone is harsh towards “inactive whales”. It looks like a matter of structural policy to devalue people in my position. Hopefully it makes sense why I feel thrown under the bus.
On to proposal feedback.
Proposal A (full disclosure, probably most detrimental for me personally)
The way I interpret this, it has some implications that I feel should be clearly communicated and discussed.
In essence, I see this as declaring bankruptcy for the old Grain ledger and simultaneously restarting with a new one. Because it means it puts the final nail in the coffin for the old ledger, never going back towards 1:1 backing for it and attempting to absolve the new ledger from previous “creditors”.
In “the real world” this would drag your reputation through the mud and put you on all kinds of blacklists. With the main difference I think being people understanding and opting in to SourceCred as an experiment.
Still I think there’s a real possibility, with enough scrutiny this becomes a black page for SourceCred that will be hard to undo in hindsight. As opposed to adjusting Grain distribution policies and redemption ratios to overcome this period.
My suggestion is to discuss this broadly, (I have my biases after all) and see if the community is comfortable with this.
Proposal B.
Is this different from the status quo? My understanding was the current redemption ration depends on the available backing funds. So if more backing funds comes in, wouldn’t the ratio be adjusted up? As per Proposed Change to Grain Redemption
Or is the proposal here to let go of the “depends on available backing” formula and choose an arbitrary ratio? If so, what would it be based on instead?
Proposal C.
“Would mean we aren’t dogfooding anymore, at least for a time”
Do you mean exclusively going to salaries? As in putting Grain on hold entirely? What about Cred?
If it’s on hold while paying salaries, how does that not increase the financial gap to fill?
What I dislike about these proposals is that they are short-term plans. The predicament is not new. The writing was on the wall, the emergency brakes have been pressed months ago. So why are we still picking between short-term bandaids? For all 3 options I fear it could cause even more problems down the line. So I’d say the even appear like short-term at the expense of the long-term!
If I read between the lines of these proposals, I get the impression the community learned the hard way, being a long term financial custodian for many people’s accounts (especially with a fractional reserve) is H.A.R.D.
And I will predict, without a sound plan, on-chain Grain is going to make this worse. Less manual work, but also less control. No more ability to simply have meetings to implement emergency measures.
Edit: my off the cuff short term suggestion would be, to continue with the previous measures, of unpegged Grain and letting the additional fund recover some of the ratio closer to 1:1, and adjusting the redemption cap as needed to protect people immediately dependent on liquidity. In my view these still cover the emergency basics, and long-term solutions should be invested into rather than going from one emergency fix to a different one.
Edit2: just a final addendum on why I feel the devaluation of older contributors is hurtful from my POV. And that’s in what it symbolizes. Recalling earlier design talks about Grain, one way to think about it is as a “proof of contribution”. Which would make sense whether you’ve sponsored by buying Grain from others or done work to contribute and got it based on Cred. Having older “proof of contribution” depreciated just because it’s older, just signals that the community is willing to forget I’ve at one point contributed to earn such “proofs” in favor of whoever is active today. This pains me more than even thinking about the $-value involved.