Pinned post
Generating enough transaction fees for Cardano to sustain itself is one of the toughest challenges we face. But there are two sides to the equation. Network revenue is just the numerator. The denominator is operating costs. And reducing operating costs is arguably the only other way we have to meaningfully affect self-sustainability.
minPoolCost prevents pools from competing to lower operating costs, and it props up pools that cannot operate as cost-efficiently. That’s likely one reason we still have roughly 3,000 registered pools and over 1,600 active pools even though stakePoolTargetNum is set to 500. Having a minimum margin instead (CIP-23) fixes the issue as well, but at the cost of time. It is at least two hard forks and another parameter change governance action away, but our endeared community SPOs are already being forced to close left and right.
Personally I want as many honest pools as possible to be successful, and the original incentives structure was beautifully designed to do exactly that. But we have to give the parameters some tender loving care. To get where we want to be, successful pools should be able to compete primarily on pledge, and then on operating costs, without sacrificing performance. Lowering the minimum fixed fee is the first step to get there, and I'm putting my own money where my mouth is to see it through.
If we want Cardano to last, we need to attack the problem from both directions and let SPOs fairly compete to lower costs.
Vote to lower minPoolCost to 75.
minPoolCost prevents pools from competing to lower operating costs, and it props up pools that cannot operate as cost-efficiently. That’s likely one reason we still have roughly 3,000 registered pools and over 1,600 active pools even though stakePoolTargetNum is set to 500. Having a minimum margin instead (CIP-23) fixes the issue as well, but at the cost of time. It is at least two hard forks and another parameter change governance action away, but our endeared community SPOs are already being forced to close left and right.
Personally I want as many honest pools as possible to be successful, and the original incentives structure was beautifully designed to do exactly that. But we have to give the parameters some tender loving care. To get where we want to be, successful pools should be able to compete primarily on pledge, and then on operating costs, without sacrificing performance. Lowering the minimum fixed fee is the first step to get there, and I'm putting my own money where my mouth is to see it through.
If we want Cardano to last, we need to attack the problem from both directions and let SPOs fairly compete to lower costs.
Vote to lower minPoolCost to 75.
