KIP-40 Parameter Updates (March 2021)

[William]

I propose to update the parameters in the following courts. These propositions were generated with this calculator: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1MN-l2dOuY44eTYvwgv636v6vInzfumO5?usp=sharing So I invite people to use the calculator to play around with the assumptions that went into these calculations and, indeed, use the calculator to propose future parameter updates.

Most of the changes since the previous update are a response to changing crypto-prices and particularly continued increases in gas prices. As you can see in the calculator, the parameters are calibrated for “typical” gas prices of 150 gwei (and are constrained so that even at 200 gwei, average rewards are at least as high as the required gas to vote, etc). While these are lower than the highest peaks of gas one has observed recently, note that the voting periods are generally several days long, and these gas prices are relatively conservative compared to what has been recently necessary for non-instant confirmation times according to https://www.gasnow.org/

Note that I also propose reducing the jurorsForCourtJump somewhat in the Blockchain and Blockchain Non-technical courts to make appeals to the general court somewhat more viable. In doing so, keeping in mind the historical rates of appeals in these courts, one can better take advantage of the security associated with the larger amount that is staked in the general court in case of attack.

General Court

Proposed juror fee : 0.03 ETH
Proposed minstake : 700.0 PNK

Blockchain

Proposed juror fee : 0.034 ETH
Proposed minstake : 2100.0 PNK
Proposed jurorsForCourtJump: 63

Non-Technical

Blockchain->Non-Technical

Proposed juror fee : 0.028 ETH
Proposed minstake : 2500.0 PNK
Proposed jurorsForCourtJump: 31

Token Listing

Blockchain->Non-Technical->Token Listing

Proposed juror fee : 0.14 ETH
Proposed minstake : 14000.0 PNK

Technical

Blockchain->Technical

Proposed juror fee : 0.14 ETH

English Language

Proposed juror fee : 0.036 ETH
Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK

Onboarding

Proposed juror fee : 0.023 ETH
Proposed minstake : 700.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 1

Curation

Proposed juror fee : 0.028 ETH
Proposed minstake : 3100.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.5

Curation (Medium)

Curation->Curation (Medium)

Proposed juror fee : 0.028 ETH
Proposed minstake : 3100.0 PNK

Spanish-English Translation

English Language->Spanish-English Translation

Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.4

French-English Translation

English Language->French-English Translation

Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.4

Portuguese-English Translation

English Language->Portuguese-English Translation

Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.4

German-English Translation

English Language->German-English Translation

Proposed juror fee : 0.029 ETH
Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.4

Russian-English Translation

English Language->Russian-English Translation

Proposed juror fee : 0.029 ETH
Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.4

Korean-English Translation

English Language->Korean-English Translation

Proposed juror fee : 0.031 ETH
Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.43

Japanese-English Translation

English Language->Japanese-English Translation

Proposed juror fee : 0.031 ETH
Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.43

Turkish-English Translation

English Language->Turkish-English Translation

Proposed juror fee : 0.031 ETH
Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.43

Chinese-English Translation

English Language->Chinese-English Translation

Proposed juror fee : 0.031 ETH
Proposed minstake : 3900.0 PNK
Proposed alpha : 0.43

Corte General en Español

Proposed juror fee : 0.031 ETH
Proposed minstake : 1700.0 PNK

Humanity

Proposed juror fee : 0.028 ETH
Proposed minstake : 1200.0 PNK

I also propose to update the following arbitrable application parameters:

Curate Kleros High Impact Storytelling: submissionBaseDeposit : 0.08 ETH

Curate Kleros High Impact Storytelling: removalBaseDeposit : 0.08 ETH

Curate Kleros High Impact Storytelling: removalChallengeBaseDeposit : 0.058 ETH

Proof of Humanity: submissionBaseDeposit : 0.14 ETH

[n1c01a5]

I confess that I don’t understand everything about the proposed calculator.

I made a naive calculation of the price of a vote on the humanity court:

• gas unit vote: ≈ 140000 gas
• gas price: 150 gWei
• proposed reward: 0.028 ETH

tx = 140000 * 150 = 21000000 gWei = 0.021 ETH

so tx 0.021 ETH ≈ reward 0.028 ETH (so the incentive to vote seems low, only ≈12$ as reward)

By default Metamask displays ≈ 230,000 of gas limit (i.e. 0.0345 ETH/ tx) which in this case is quite disturbing as a juror because the transaction price seems higher than the reward.

[William]

Yeah, as you correctly point out, Metamask seems to be overestimating the gas required to vote. A vote in the Humanity Court has been taking between 95,000 and 140,000 gas based on historical transactions, see for example,

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x98a392894b8c69c7b118c1218dce292a7cc2e306bf14ae228467c399383c1d2f

and

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xa62f5932507e745d4bb0ef71f0e74a2e3ba578e56deb9aebc18dd3cf73a9080f

The calculator is indeed estimating a $10-ish after gas target average reward for voting in the Humanity Court. (Note that this is an average/the minimum reward possible for a coherence vote, as in cases where people are incoherent the reward for those who are coherent is higher.) As one might notice looking through these parameters, a consequence of the current gas environment is that a lot of the “lower effort” courts have very similar proposed fees because gas has gotten to the point where it is the dominating factor for those courts. The amounts of effort required to evaluate typical cases that the calculator uses are: efforts=[12.2,16.7,7.2,158,158,14.3,17.1,14.3,2,2,13.5,45,5.4,7.7,7.7,7.7,9.6,9.6,12.2,12.2,12.2,12.2,12.2,7.2] expressed in euros and ordered by court number. (So 12.2 EUR of effort on average in the general court, etc.)

Another point to note that is a consequence of the high gas prices is that jurors are forced to take somewhat larger risks than they would be taking if gas prices were lower - an incoherent juror is out not only their minstake*alpha coherence penalty and their time and effort to review the case, but also the gas they spent to vote. The calculator takes this in to account when trying to set parameters so that the average fee is high enough to incentivize participation, but for a risk adverse juror it might not be enough that their average return stays the same if their risk has substantially increased. There is a risk aversion factor that is built into the calculator to account for this effect by discounting uncertain potential rewards compared to potential losses; however for the moment the calculator is assuming that jurors are relatively risk neutral: it is only discounting uncertain rewards by 5% compared to uncertain losses, i.e. that a juror with this risk profile would be willing to take a 50-50 coin flip where she gains $1.05 if she wins and loses $1 if she loses.

If people have thoughts on the estimations for the efforts or for the risk aversion factor, I would be personally be interested in hearing them. These are quantities that ultimately depend on the profiles of people in the community, how difficult they find cases to be, etc. So if there is a sense that the above estimates are out of step with the community, they can be adjusted and we can see what the calculator gives. More generally, if there is just a sense that the fees are too low (because of the effect of Metamask overestimating the gas on juror psychology or for whatever reason), it would be helpful for people who feel that way to express that point of view. However, remember that as the fees go up that also has an effect on the “demand side” for this type of dispute resolution, for example increasing the required deposit sizes for proof of humanity in a way that might slow down adoption.

[kleros]

This proposal has been put to vote.