Discussion of the Proposal to remove Tron Genesis Representatives
Earlier this week the Tron Super Representatives (SR’s) voted on the proposal to remove the 100 million hard-coded votes the Genesis Representatives (GR’s) were given when the Tron main net launched.
Before any SR’s were elected, the GR’s ran the main net. One by one, they were replaced as the Representative candidates surpassed the 100 million vote threshold and became Super Representatives. Currently, 30 Tron Representatives have more than 100 million votes. The GR’s are unnecessary and it was requested by Tron Foundation that the SR’s vote on the proposal to remove the GR’s.
16 SR’s voted to remove the GR’s, 11 SR’s abstained from the vote, and the vote was disapproved without the 19 votes needed for passage.
While Community Node is not an SR and therefore unable to cast a vote in this matter, I have been involved with the Tron blockchain project from its inception and I would like to voice my opinion in this matter. I am firmly behind the approval of this proposal, and none of the arguments presented to me have swayed my opinion.
Lacking in this discussion has been any hypothetical scenarios presented where the GR’s would be needed again. We have heard arguments that the decision is irreversible and that the consequences are unknown. While this is true, it should be the burden of the dissenters to provide a hypothetical situation where any of this is applicable. Simply citing the fear of the unknown does not hold water as an argument. It shouldn’t be difficult to conjure up exactly what these “unknown consequences” could be. It’s just that doing so would reveal them to be absurd and illogical.
What situation would require the participation of the GR’s again? That is the question we would like to see answered. Instead of fully formed logical arguments, all we have been given are premises to an argument: “It would enable a 51% attack,” “It would make it easier for whales to hold several SR nodes,” “It would lower the threshold to becoming an SR.” How so? With 30 Representatives in contention for the SR spots it is hard to imagine a situation where any of them would just give up. With the amount of frozen TRX increasing daily, what would compel the voters to remove votes and lower the barrier to entry? As far as lowering the barrier to SR, would the #27 SR be less capable or inclined to produce blocks if they only had 90 million votes? None of these so-called arguments have been followed through to a conclusion. They are all “tilting at windmills,” or attacking an imaginary enemy.
Remember, if there was a sudden failure of our current Super Representatives, the GR’s would not automatically take over. Voters would have to abandon the currently elected SR’s in order for the GR’s to begin block production. It would take several voting cycles for that to happen. If somehow there was a change or a problem with the Tron protocol that resulted in the failure of the SR’s, it would also affect the GR’s. I think it would be better to have 27 SR’s each fix one node apiece, than to have Marcus and Hutchin at Tron Foundation fix all 27 GR’s in a crisis.
There are some valid arguments against removing the Genesis Representatives. One argument is that the ratio of burned TRX vs. newly issued TRX has not converged. It may not be known to all but the Representatives’ rewards are newly issued TRX. You can see the daily fluctuations in TRX supply here:
https://tronscan.org/#/blockchain/stats/supply
The shared reward that is split among all 127 Tron Representatives is also shared with the GR’s, and since they are not able to withdraw this allowance those rewards are essentially burned.
But the amount of newly created TRX is about 504 million TRX per year, or about 0.5%. SR block production rewards account for about 336 million of those TRX, and the vote-based shared rewards are about 168 million. Removing the GR’s would decrease the ‘burn’ by about 50 million TRX, and so the effect on the price of TRX is negligible at 0.05%. Or to put it another way, at the current price of $0.0224 it would mean $0.0000112 price difference. However, removing the GR’s would increase the rewards for the last SR with 110 million votes by 7%, and increase the rewards for the #1 SR with 675 million votes by 23%. It would also increase the rewards for the SR candidates, that is Representatives 28–127 by 50%, and it’s those candidates who should be the back up plan, not the GR’s.
Instead of having GR’s as the backup, we should be implementing requirements of the candidates 28–127 to ensure that they are ready to start producing blocks with a benchmark tested node. Perhaps we can have a proposal to let each candidate produce 1 block per day as a test.
There is also a psychological barrier that the GR’s impose as they separate the candidates at the top from those with less than 100 million votes. Many voters do not consider voting for these lower-tier candidates. They see voting for those candidates as “throwing their votes away.”
I welcome your comments, and we hope that the SR’s will revisit this proposal after so much discussion.