Every Value Function is a claim about what a society should reward, and somebody wrote that claim into the code. Governance can update a VF, which is good, the definition is meant to move rather than sit frozen from genesis. But Governance weight is itself handed out by VFs. So the thing being measured ends up selecting the people who define the measure.
That is the part I keep circling. A ride-sharing rating works because everyone already agrees what a good ride is. There is no equivalent shared prior for “valuable contribution” across a plural set of communities. Someone has to write the first version, and that version will reflect whoever wrote it.
So my question is genuine, not rhetorical. Is there a point in the loop where the definition of merit can be revised by the people the current definition scores poorly? Or does a Synchronized State always encode the value system of its founders and then reward whoever resembles them most? Curious how the team thinks about drift here.
This is a very good question. I agree that some sort of weighted voting needs to be incorporated. Not all voters are equal; contributions vary. The VF may want to incorporate prior weighted contributions (I.e., trailing four calendar quarters) to avoid opportunists overrunning the OGs. Consensus is needed here. System design follows.
Hi, this is a slightly incorrect conceptualization of Society Protocol…
Governance weight itself doesn’t necessarily need to be handed out by VFs, (this only relates to Governance power models which are based on Energy). SP supports a massive range of Governance models, many of which don’t depend on Energy at all…and has 5 domains (Constitution, Protocol Parameters, Laws, Disputes, Distributed Courts), each of which can rely on a different model for decision-making.
For example, a Synchronized State may rely on a Governance model that looks like this:
Only Genesis Actors and their Children who have 2+ Children and have committed at least X amount of Energy to the Hunting VF can make Governance decisions to change the Protocol Parameters
Only Actors who have been alive in the protocol for over 1 year can participate in resolving disputes equally.
Energy voting can be used by anyone to resolve disputes between Actors, but not to change the Protocol Parameters (which control the VFs).
So, Governance weight itself is not handed out by VF’s necessarily.
That dynamic only applies to a subset of SP instances where that holds true (some form of Energy voting controls VF functionality).
The way to look at it is more like: Governance is always the brains of an instance and ultimately controls the instance. Without Governance, we can’t have anything, because there’s no brains (can’t steer or make decisions as a group). So we need Governance and throughout the 5 Governance Domains that Governance must be able to control all the knobs.
How we limit the powers within that Governance, is up to each instance.
The first version of a value system will definitely reflect the value of whatever group wrote it… and it can evolve what the State values over time with Governance, that’s pretty standard.
How it evolves is perceived by the entire population clearly in the codebase…and so whoever controls the Governance is generally incentivized to keep it perceivably benefitting a large coalition of participants, but that whole dynamic is relative (the Governors always try to gain a little more for themselves).
Sometimes there’s a thing called “Governance capture” where that dynamic turns out to be so skewed (Governance minority/majority has total control and takes away value from everyone else)
There’s ways to deal with that, like setting high thresholds and limits on important decisions (i.e. 80% of the Energy votes must agree to form a quorum and pass critical changes to VFs (in the Protocol Parameters domain.)
The way to conceptualize it, is: Governance always controls the entire State…structure (it must, there’s no other way), but how the group defines the Governance threshold, criteria, and participation parameters is what we can tune. SP provides a lot of precise algorithmic “tuneability” and separation of powers (each Domain can have a different governance set; each set can be algorithmically tuned to choose precision in Governance) there…
Yes, it just depends on who has control over which Governance domain at each point in time…it’s meant to certainly be able to grow and evolve past the founders at any point in time (depending on Governance power)
Or does a Synchronized State always encode the value system of its founders and then reward whoever resembles them most?
It depends on how the Governance power evolves over time, both ways can happen, depending on how the founders encode Governance power…and how it evolves at each stage in time.
They can hold on too tight (value system won’t evolve past themselves), too loose (their value system will be eroded/erased), or just right (power gradually will evolve over time to those who add valuable things and keep the system surviving).
All of this is possible, weighted voting can be incorporated into the system and isn’t a difficult variant of voting to code. That’s pretty much what we already use in the Web3 Outpost with Governor badges. Any community can get weighted voting with a badge system there already.
It’s up to each instance to decide for themselves what constitutes merit (as far as Governance decision-making power and how it evolves at each point in time). It’s a balancing act, it’s ultimately within the Governors responsibility to evolve voting power to where it accues to the right people over time.