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Welcome to CodeGov, LLC
There are several NNS known neurons that are currently controlled by Wenzel Bartlett including Synapse Original, Synapse New, CodeGov, and Arthur's Neuron. They were each set up over the last 4 years for pragmatic reasons that helped achieve specific decentralization goals using the NNS governance framework that existed at the time. Recently, DFINITY has updated the known neuron framework to improve the features of known neurons and enable removal of known neurons that no longer wish to be known neurons. This provides an opportunity to consolidate the number of known neurons that are controlled by Wenzel. Therefore, a neuron merger plan has been developed as described below. A primary goal of this plan is to give current followers ample opportunity to discover the plan to consolidate these known neurons and for each follower to respond according to their own best interests without missing any governance rewards. This could include switching their following to the Wenzel known neuron or it could include selecting a different known neuron to follow.
The Synapse Original known neuron will be renamed to Wenzel and updated to reflect committed topics and url links. This neuron has been configured as shown here. The plan is to follow a wide variety of people who actively participate in NNS governance on each of the proposal topics. These will be the people who Wenzel considers to be qualified, reliable, credible, and sensible with their governance decisions and are known to conduct themselves in professional and diplomatic ways. Most of the Followees who will be chosen will be grant recipients, but some of them will have other incentives that make them qualified for the role. The configuration for this neuron will be actively managed based on the vote history of each Followee and the quality of their engagement in governance discussion on the forum. The committed topics for this known neuron will include almost every topic because Wenzel is very experienced and aware of all public participants in NNS governance and is intentional about managing the Followees to ensure the neuron is making reliable and credible decisions that are always in the long term best interest of the internet computer and help advance decentralization.
The control of this known neuron will not be decentralized, but the Followees that are chosen for each topic will be qualified and active in NNS governance and they will normally trigger the vote for this known neuron based on natural consensus. In rare cases where consensus cannot be reached among Followees, the vote may be triggered manually based on the majority decision of the Followees.
The Synapse Original neuron was the very first known neuron to exist (even before DFINITY since they were originally hard coded instead of approved by the NNS). Wenzel was the founding member who organized and managed the group. He created the neuron, recruited the voting members, developed our policies and work processes, and created the Motion proposal and the RegisterKnownNeuron proposal that was approved by the NNS. Since he created the neuron, he has always had full control of this neuron. However, it has always been managed according to the will of the Synapse group. The Synapse New known neuron was eventually created because it offered decentralized control of the known neuron, but there was no way to remove the Synapse Original known neuron from the known neuron framework. Hence, both neurons have co-existed for the last couple of years. Over that timeframe, enthusiasm for participation in the Synapse known neuron went down. This is a natural consequence of there being a lack of incentives for a group of people to participate publicly in NNS governance. Since Wenzel has always managed the Synapse neuron and is trusted by the voting members, Wenzel was eventually granted full control of the Synapse neurons by unanimous decision on proposal 139004. Fortunately, the Synapse Original neuron was never deprecated. Wenzel plans to manage this neuron long term in the same reliable and active way that he has managed the Synapse and the CodeGov neurons for the last 4 years.
The Synapse New known neuron will be renamed to Synapse (see neuron merger plan with the Wenzel known neuron). The url links are updated to ensure information about the merger plan can be easily found. This neuron has been configured to follow the Wenzel known neuron as shown here. This Synapse neuron will be deregistered in early 2027, which gives all current followers two full cycles of Periodic Confirmation to recognize that the Synapse neuron will be deregistered so they can take action to change their following. The neuron will still exist after deregistration, so any remaining followers will continue receiving voting rewards even though they will only see a neuron ID instead of a neuron name in their Followee list. There will not be any committed topics set for this Synapse neuron in order to discourage new followers for this neuron. It is recommended that people follow the Wenzel known neuron instead of the Synapse known neuron.
The Synapse New neuron was set up originally in order to provide fully decentralized control of the neuron. It was a lot of fun at first and decentralization of a known neuron works well when everyone is motivated to participate. However, over time enthusiasm for participation in this neuron has waned. The incentives for active participation in a known neuron that focuses in Governance and the SNS & NF topics are not aligned with the amount of work it takes and nobody likes being the target of attacks from the community when they disagree with our decisions. For the last 4 years, Wenzel has been responsible for recruiting all voting members, recommending policy and work process changes, monitoring our voting participation, and notifying people when we still need their vote for the Synapse neuron to reach consensus. Eventually this became enough of a time burden that the Synapse group granted Wenzel a hotkey so he could cast votes according to the majority of vote on the last day of the voting period. Finally, the Synapse group granted Wenzel full control of the Synapse neuron after discussion in our private chat group and unanimous voting on proposal 139004. This includes the right to change the name, consolidate neurons, and fully control and manage the Synapse neurons moving forward.
This Synapse neuron carries the majority of the total voting power that is currently triggered by the Synapse neurons that are controlled by Wenzel, which means deregistering this known neuron will help ensure that any neuron that continues to follow Wenzel is doing so by choice and not by historical legacy or set and forget inactivity.
The CodeGov known neuron will be renamed to CodeGov.org and updated to reflect our committed topics. This neuron has been configured as shown here. It is fully controlled by Wenzel. It will follow the CodeGov team members on each topic where we have received a grant for reviewing technical proposals. For all other topics, this neuron will be set to follow the Wenzel known neuron. The committed topics for this known neuron will include the topics where CodeGov has received grants that fund our proposal reviews, which are IC-OS Version Election, Protocol Canister Management, and Subnet Management / API Boundary Node Management.
Wenzel founded CodeGov, LLC for the purpose of recruiting people to review technical proposals. The goal was to pay developers who are building on ICP a supplemental income in exchange for a modest amount of work that helps advance decentralization of the NNS. This helps ensure there are people in the community who are paying attention to the changes that occur each week. It also provides an opportunity for people to learn more about the internet computer codebase and think more critically about the policies and work processes that define our infrastructure. It motivates and incentivizes true active participation. Very few people will do this type of work for free. This work is critical for decentralization, yet it was not being funded by any large organizations, node providers, or whales in the ICP ecosystem. Hence, so far this work has always been funded by grants from DFINITY.
The future of the grants for voting neurons program is currently unknown and there is currently no sustainable way to incentivize people to perform technical reviews other than the grant program. Hence, if the incentives remain available long term then the CodeGov known neuron will remain active. If the incentives become unavailable then we will not be able to maintain a CodeGov team and the known neuron will be deregistered. Either way, the followers for the CodeGov known neuron will have at least 2 cycles of Periodic Confirmation to recognize if there will be changes and to modify their following accordingly. This kind of change would be posted well in advance and every effort would be made to ensure maximum voting rewards for all followers.
Arthur's Neuron will be deregistered. This neuron has been configured to follow the Wenzel known neuron as shown here. The neuron will still exist after deregistration, so any remaining followers will continue receiving voting rewards even though they will only see a neuron ID instead of a neuron name in their Followee list.
Full control of this known neuron was granted to Wenzel by Arthur Falls as stated in this post on the forum. A description of how Wenzel became the owner of this neuron can be found in this post on the forum. To make a long story short, Wenzel was an original member of cycle_dao. He saw that Arthur was an influencer who was motivated by NNS governance in the early days, but his team was full of people who were early DFINITY employees and seed investors. There were no new community members or ICP enthusiasts that came to know the project at genesis and afterward. Hence, Wenzel simply asked if he could join the cycle_dao group to add a different perspective and Arthur said yes. Over time Arthur's participation in the ICP ecosystem waned. However, Wenzel remained aware of his voting patterns and noticed when it stopped voting after periodic confirmation was implemented. After helping troubleshoot the problem, Arthur decided to grant Wenzel full control of the neuron.
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