The Routing Protocol is a mechanism to gradually decentralize the network. There are two main types of decentralization that the Routing Protocol allows. There is the decentralization of the operation and there is the decentralization of decision making. It is about the latter that Charlie Child, from Human Protocol, provided details through the official blog.
As he explained, it should be remembered that HMT token holders will be able to lock their HMTs into a voting smart contract to receive vHMT, which represents voting power within the network. This is a way to encourage community contribution to the network.
Voting power will be related to reputation and participation. He also reminded that staking cannot increase reputation infinitely. This is done with the intention of “deterring malicious behavior”, and to “ensure that any attempted whale attacks cannot buy their way in”.
Voting Basics
The Foundation proposes an alternative model of voting by conviction. Voting power increases with each submitted vote that adjusts to the result. This model also includes reputation as a determinant of voting power. “For example, if you submit valuable projects to the ecosystem, solve tasks, or contribute to the overall development of the network, your voting power can increase,” Child explained.
The routing protocol can take advantage of reputation oracles to adjust voting power based on reputation. “Hopefully this can encourage some great community input,” Child said afterwards.
When a vote is in progress, conviction voting does what its name describes: it encourages the voter to vote with conviction. It does this by decreasing voting power if the voter changes their mind. “This, coupled with the fact that voting power is not applied immediately, but increases over time, means it is less prone to last minute and whale attacks,” he specified.
What is the “alternative” conviction vote?
It is the adjustment of the regular conviction voting model. The alternate has two key distinctions:
Reputation Oracles – use oracles to assess contribution, assign reputation, and weight voting power accordingly.
HUMANITY test – prevent bots from voting
The Magistrate of HUMAN-RP
The HUMAN-RP Magistrate is a council of experts that receives, drafts, evaluates, and ultimately submits proposals to be voted on by the community. “The first Magistrate will function for only one year, and the council will be chosen by Metahuman. After that year, a community vote will decide whether to confirm members for another year, or elect new members to the council,” said Charlie Child.
Road to decentralization
Over time, the community could submit proposals directly, in addition to the proposals coming from Metahuman. One of the conditions of the proposals is to reach the minimum threshold of proposals (1% of all voting power), which could also be achieved through delegation.
voting process
Charlie Child detailed: “Before the vote goes out into the community, a snapshot of voter weight is taken. Voting will be active for 14 (or 30) days. If at least 10% of the voters agree with the decided outcome, the proposal will become a CTA, either for the community or for the Metahuman, depending on the type of proposal. We will use an adaptation of Proof of HUMANity for users to sign a vote, or their delegation.”
About Alternative Conviction Voting
A voter is presented with all the options at the beginning of the vote and can spread their voting tokens among several options according to their preference. They can put 100% in one option, or split it into several, which would allow for a less binary and more sophisticated voting model.
“The weight of tokens in an option grows as conviction holds. The weight of the tokens grows according to a half-life decay curve. This means that your preference gains weight over time, but only up to a certain point. The same decay curve can be used to reduce the weight of your tokens if you change preference, and lose conviction,” Child wrote.
“This introduction of time is very useful,” he added later.
He then stressed: “Most importantly, it protects against last-minute voting attacks. In that sense, it also helps prevent collusion. Since reducing voting power upon a preference change reduces voting power, we don’t need to introduce token locks on a vote.”
In Alternative Conviction Voting, voters cannot use their tokens to vote on multiple propositions at the same time.
“Because the voting model includes reputation and contribution, it reinforces community inclusion and participation,” he said.
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