A critical decision about the future of dPOS — About Juno proposal 16

Preamble

Hi, we are CryptoCrew Validators, and though we are not Juno-whales we have supported the network with various contributions since it’s very early (pre-launch) days.

We run production validators on:

• juno-1 (mainnet, current rank #47)
• uni-2 (current testnet, current rank #28)
• juno-lucina (pre-launch testnet)
• juno-hera (mainnet launch test)
• juno-uni (decommissioned testnet)

…and have already processed a total of 339,005 IBC transactions from and to juno mainnet since the launch of the chain in October of last year:

https://www.mintscan.io/juno/account/juno15md2qvgma8lnvqv67w0umu2paqkqkheg0c6h0r

https://www.mintscan.io/juno/account/juno1yvejj22t78s2vfk7slty2d7fs5lkc8rn9ejfzq

As some of you might know, relaying IBC transactions isn’t a must-do for any validator, those who actively relay are doing it at their own expense as there are no mandatory IBC transaction fees implemented in the current version of the IBC protocol. (Disclosure: we have received a relayer subsidy for our work from the core-1 multisig DAO https://daodao.zone/multisig/juno19nccy4t3wf27pu7pa68u2amkf9ecwk7w9600cqrqrfp0y24fzp4sf8eza3/proposals/4)

Additionally we helped debugging the Junoswap frontend and are actively participating in on-chain governance and community discussions. We love Juno for what it is and are deeply grateful for every contributor, validator, delegator, liquidity provider, contract-creator, DAO, or simple holder involved in shaping this beautiful ecosystem.

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It is out of this love that we feel obliged to publish this article, since we are convinced that the outcome of proposal #16 on Juno could have a drastic impact on the future of POS as a whole, but particularly delegated POS chains.

The main case

We don’t want to dive into the background story or accusations surrounding proposal 16 for the sake of the scope of this statement. It doesn’t matter if “the whale” did or did not game the initial JUNO distribution rules. Neither does it matter how “the entity” acquired their coins in the first place or if the method was deemed legal (also, you might wanna ask, by which legislation?).

What matters is the integrity and legitimacy of protocol-governed POS blockchain networks in terms of claiming to be immutable distributed ledgers.

It’s not the responsibility of any blockchain to decide about legality of funds or to execute such steps, but the one of the respective national legislation and executive.

In a decentralized autonomous organization it is absolutely right that the general “rules” or “laws” of a specific ecosystem are laid out by governance decisions. But governance can only go so far. Proposal 16 effectively breaks the standards of immutability and trustlessness, endangering the integrity of the whole Juno network.

We cannot change account states on a blockchain: that would violate the very base of ground-rules and standards that this whole industry has been built upon.

Vocal claims about “pseudo-decentralisation” of POS and dPOS are for sure following this closely at this moment…

Some facts:

• “The entity” has never staked with, or approached us (CryptoCrew Validators)
• The 50k airdrop “whale cap” was per address per design and has been enforced on every wallet staking more than 50k ATOM at the time of snapshot, also the “whale’s” accounts
• You cannot define “an entity” on-chain
• You should never change account balances on any blockchain for any reason
• Code is law
• we’re having this discussion only because “the whale” merged his funds, if they wouldn’t have been merged the whole thing would have gone undetected
• 10% total voting power is not enough to break governance
• “the entity” obviously doesn’t want to harm the Juno ecosystem (balance-, staking-, selling-history clearly shows this) and has even already voted ABSTAIN on proposal 16 to not interfere with community decisions

Conclusion

If proposal 16 passes it might mark a turning point for the future of the integrity of Juno and the whole Cosmos ecosystem, even all protocol-governed chains. Where would the borders be for governance to go, what would be the next step? Could we just “change” anything that is deemed as “problematic” because we think so? Would DAOs go so far to propose to “correct” the “problems” on other chains as well? How about “the whale’s” funds on osmosis, the hub, elsewhere? If we go beyond this line we can never go back.

Verdict

As a multichain validator we see it as our responsibility to vote on Juno proposal #16 with NO_WITH_VETO and will do so shortly after this article is published. If you are delegating with us and don’t share our opinion please vote yourself, as your own vote overrules the validator vote for your stake.

…Even before publishing this statement (and without a vote from our side) we lost about 10% of our voting power due to various delegators losing faith in the Juno protocol and unstaking right after the proposal came out

Proposal 16 claims that Core-1 plan to reimburse validators that “the whale” has delegated to — who will reimburse us?