We do not see the lottery situation of unresponsive verifiers as a problem that needs to be fixed. If an individual is following the current rules to be in the lottery, then that person should stay in the lottery. The proof of diversity has not been compromised. IPv4 addresses are still scarce, there is no evidence that a single entity controls greater than 50% of the lottery, and there is certainly no evidence that a single entity has gained an appreciable portion of the cycle.
Also, it is important to note that even an elimination of the scarcity of IPv4 addresses would not compromise the proof of diversity. It would only necessitate finding a new source of scarcity for admission into the cycle. The proof of diversity is a provable (and disprovable) system regarding the evolution of a malleable democracy, and it could be based on any scarce resource as a factor for admission, including KYC (know your customer) to provide for a one-person, one-ticket probability of entrance. As many community members will remember, the initial entrance scheme was a FIFO entrance queue, not a lottery, and this was still (minimally) sufficient to support the proof.
As we have stated many times, we hope to see competing implementations of Nyzo arise. We are glad to see verifiers running code that we have not written. We think this is a huge step forward in the progression of Nyzo.
We also recognize the value of improving the default solution that is present in our version of the code. We think that the linear IP ideas presented in Open-Nyzo/Nyzo-Q are especially suited to improving diversity.
NTTP-7: we propose changing the lottery calculation space from verifier identifier to IP address
This dramatic of a change should not be performed without thorough consideration. As our implementation of Nyzo is currently dominant in the cycle, we should assume that the changes we make will have a significant impact on the behavior of the cycle in the near future.
We cannot and do not know the effort expended to obtain current positions in the lottery. However, two assumptions are reasonable:
These two items are related, and "other forms of diversity" is deliberately vague. It is reasonable to assume, due to the complex history of IP address allocation, that favoring dissimilarity among IP addresses will favor dissimilarity among the people who are able to enter the cycle. To the extent possible, we want the Nyzo cycle to be as diverse as those using Nyzo for transactions. As we hope for every person on this planet to use Nyzo in some fashion, this requires an exceptionally diverse cycle.
So, while this change will possibly disfavor some people who have a large number of lottery positions, we feel that it is justified and fair because this relative disfavor will be more than offset by the increase in overall value of the system due to increased diversity.
In fact, we assert that diversity is so important to Nyzo that increasing diversity always increases the trustworthiness of the system so significantly that it actually benefits those who have less control of the system due to increased diversity. An example we have presented many times to illustrate this is that of the Genesis cycle: we controlled 100% of it, and Nyzo was valueless because we controlled 100% of it.
We recommend awarding a bounty to the creator of Open-Nyzo/Nyzo-Q in relation to this issue. The address id__87aN7L5sP8ka77khzwXdN3vYDqhmIsb3GaxEaXWQG-1vqKT~jfaV was provided for a potential bounty.
This NTTP, changing the lottery calculation space from verifier identifier to IP address, will be implemented if ∩14,700 is sent to address id__88Mc9LBXMD9EKvzPQC5~Gyfhwz3JTgtw5U25mvfyx.DCMNkh_NT7.
16 days
A ∩14,700 payment was sent to id__88Mc9LBXMD9EKvzPQC5~Gyfhwz3JTgtw5U25mvfyx.DCMNkh_NT7 at block 8846221. At this time, impelementation of NTTP-5 was in progress. Implementation of NTTP-5 completed on 2020-09-21. We plan to implement and release the code for NTTP-7 by 2020-10-07.
The software changes were implemented in version 605, released 2020-10-04.