Proposed by Nicholas Ochem: [https://forum.tezosagora.org/t/mumbai-variant-fund-the-foundation/4987](https://Agora Announcement)
Mumbai variant: Fund the Foundation
I am proposing an alternative Mumbai protocol, identical to PtMumbaiiFFEGbew1rRjzSPyzRbA51Tm3RVZL5suHPxSZYDhCEc, except for one thing:
At activation, my proposal mints 100,000 tez (one hundred thousand tez) and credits them to Foundation Baker 1 .
The proposal’s true name is its hash: PtMumbaiveNjgvoAng9E3AtNqtBtCQWqpXJdPEdAanAYCZbCgey.
Here is the code diff and the associated Merge Request .
| Hash | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Mumbai initial | PtMumbaii... |
Mumbai proposal, as described in the blog post |
| Mumbai variant | PtMumbaiv... |
Mumbai Variant “Fund the Fundation”, grants 100,000 tez to Foundation Baker 1 |
To vote for the Mumbai variant:
tezos-client submit proposals for YOUR_ADDRESS PtMumbaiveNjgvoAng9E3AtNqtBtCQWqpXJdPEdAanAYCZbCgey
If you have no opinion and want to pass, you can always vote for both Mumbai Initial and the Mumbai variant:
tezos-client submit proposals for YOUR_ADDRESS PtMumbaiveNjgvoAng9E3AtNqtBtCQWqpXJdPEdAanAYCZbCgey PtMumbaiiFFEGbew1rRjzSPyzRbA51Tm3RVZL5suHPxSZYDhCEc
Or use browser-based voting tools tezocracy.xyz or tezgov.app .
Note that if you have already voted for one proposal, you can still vote for another one later, but it won’t cancel your first vote. It will just add to it.
The past two proposals (Kathmandu and Lima) paid on-chain invoices directly to contributors:
- Kathmandu paid 3,000 tez for the testnet dictator feature ,
- Lima paid 25,000 tez for the consensus key feature.
Mumbai does not contain any such invoice but I want to keep this momentum going.
The process of paying people on-chain for features delivered is not optimal:
- it can be difficult for bakers to evaluate the merits of one given proposal,
- the price fluctuations make it hard to come up with a good number,
- this process is limited to core protocol work.
The Tezos Foundation has been good stewarts of the 2017 ICO funds, however the ICO was a long time ago and this money is slowly running out.
I believe that the Foundation has proven themselves as a responsible spender of the ICO funds by:
- fostering an ecosystem built from scratch, by funding the development of protocols, clients, wallets and dapps, among others,
- delivering and evaluating grants based on a vision,
- funding various initiatives to increase adoption.
It is in the baker’s best interests that the Foundation is able to continue doing its job.
This amendment is to be used at their discretion towards advancement of the ecosystem. Besides, it acts as a “vote of confidence” in their work.
The amount proposed is small - 100k tez is less than one day of baking-reward inflation.
For more information about the Tezos Foundation, I encourage you to download their reports: 2019 - H1 2020 - H2 2020 - H1 2021 - H2 2021 - H1 2022 - H2 2022 .
Q&A
The foundation bakers already have a large share of the network, I don’t want to make it bigger.
The foundation assets consists of tezos and other assets. Their tez currently constitues 12% of the baking power , which is far from 33% required to affect the network. The current proposal will not meaninfully affect this.
When the foundation is holding tez, it makes sense for them to bake. Otherwise, their tez would be worth less over time.
Why not have an on-chain DAO to grant money directly to contributors?
This is not realistic. The work of the foundation can not be replicated by on-chain processes just yet. It makes sense for bakers to defer this duty to the foundation, since it has several years of experience in supporting the ecosystem. Besides, the foundation has established a network of relationships (with vendors, auditors, regulators and so on) to fulfill its duties. Recreating this from scrach and on-chain is a difficult task.
What about independent teams building on Tezos without the help of the foundation? How do they benefit from this?
Blockchain is a layered ecosystem. Everyone (including independent teams) benefits from the base layer being developed and keeping up with the state of the art.
Are there precedents in other ecosystems?
Yes. Other decentralized blockchains are commonly using inflation to fund their technological development.
- Cosmos funds a “community pool” funded on a per-block basis. The contribution was recently increased to 10% of staking rewards, or 4.2M ATOM per year (currently, 50M USD for a 3.5B USD market cap)
- Polkadot has a treasury pool of roughly 38M DOT (currently 228M USD) but it is regularly burned if unused.
Disclaimer
I am Nicolas Ochem, I have been building on Tezos since 2020. I am making this proposal in my name only.
My company MIDL.dev has received about 120,000 EUR of grants from the Tezos Foundation since 2020, that went towards fostering the ecosystem through development of cloud infrastructure software, and more recently the Flashbake project. We have also received a 10,000 tez invoice for the consensus key contribution in the Lima proposal.
