Hello fellow researchers,

I do not normally write articles, but the recent delist of Moo! Wrapper and the repercussions motivated me to touch this sensitive subject. Please note that this problem will be most likely alleviated when the project greylisting and/or manual claims ideas come online, but that may take a lot of time and by then, even more damage to the system could be done. The purpose of this article is to point out the problem, propose a solution and justify it.

After the recent Moo! Wrapper delist there was an uproar that you automatically lose magnitude (as well as already owed and/or future GRC?) right after the subsequent superblock. In other words, no matter how much you crunched a project, you lose everything you have gained the moment it is delisted if you did not stake a block that one specific day (between poll results and superblock). This issue did not touch me personally (I did not crunch on Moo! Wrapper), so I can not speak for myself. Nevertheless, I am asking this question: is that true?

Because if it is, then I must remind you of one universally agreed rule: lex retro non agit, known as Intertemporal Law - the law does not work backwards. How it applies to cryptocurrencies? Naturally, any major change to the system can not affect the users' past. Maybe some of you remember the infamous DAO hack, Ethereum rollback and subsequent split of the community. As we know, it ended with hard-fork and two cryptocurrencies being formed: Ethereum ETH and Ethereum Classic ETC. All of this happened because a large part of the community believed in the lex retro non agit rule, which was also supposed to form the grounds of cryptocurrencies (all transactions are final).

Naturally, the solution to this problem that I decided to put forward is as follows:

After project delist is voted:

State clearly when the project will be removed, taking into account grace period mentioned in point 2. Provide grace period of one week (up to debate) - so that people have time to switch to different projects and finish their current tasks (which sometimes take a lot of time, even a few days for those extra long tasks). After the grace period ends, freeze magnitude gain. Do not allow more magnitude to be gained from the project. Let magnitude decay naturally, while providing normal payouts to the researchers.

Point 4 is obviously the core of the solution. I believe that rewarding the researchers for the work done even after the project is delisted is completely in line with yet another universal economic rule that all work deserves to be rewarded.

Sources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gridcoin/comments/7wigs0/moo_whitelist_poll_complete_remove/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertemporal_law

https://www.coindesk.com/understanding-dao-hack-journalists/