Presented at Ethereal Summit by MetaX Product Manager, Eddy Muñoz, and ConsenSys Lead Engineer, Mike Goldin.

Written by Eddy Muñoz, MetaX Product Manager

On Saturday, May 12th, 2018, Mike Goldin and I took the Lab Stage at the 3rd edition of Ethereal Summit. The purpose of our hour-long slot was to to discuss observations of how the token-curated registry (TCR) idea is performing in practice. In this case, the token-curated registry we focused our observations on is the adChain Registry, the first and only TCR on the Ethereum Mainnet. The paragraphs below bring forth some insights, thoughts, and data on the adChain Registry as discussed in the TCR slot.

Transaction Fees

The adChain Registry requires users to submit Ethereum transactions in order to interact with the registry (apply, challenge, vote, etc.). When testing on the Rinkeby Testnet, we were confident that transactions would be mined within a minute or two, while only requiring users to pay cents on the gas fee. Unfortunately, the average cost to submit a transaction has risen to about $0.50, with a 4–5 minute wait time. Therefore, in order to minimize transaction wait time to a minute or so, I’ve found myself increasing the GWEI by 3 and paying upwards of a dollar to have my transaction mined. Luckily, within the adChain Registry user dashboard, we empower users to pre-approve ADT for applications and challenges. Also within the dashboard, we allow users to convert their tokens to voting rights in order for users to not have to pay 3 transactions, and instead only have to pay 1 transaction. Therefore, from within the user dashboard, we have empowered users to minimize their transaction fees.

“We empower users to pre-approve ADT for applications and challenges”

Delegated Voters

Now, because all of these voting processes seem like a lot of time and effort is needed, we foresee large amount of ADT holders transferring their tokens to voting delegates who can do the hard work for a fee. With your tokens sitting dormant in your cold storage wallet, you are doing your tokens and the registry a disservice in not utilizing them to vote. As a voter, your ADT is not at stake if you vote on the losing side. You are only subject to win ADT if you vote. Sometimes, though, the amount of ADT you win after a vote can be worth less than the gas fee you’ll have to pay to claim it. This is unfortunate because a smaller ADT holder will not be profitable. Through delegated voting, though, the delegated voter would evenly distribute the fee for the 1 transaction it took to claim the pool’s voting rewards. Thus, with delegated voting, you not only minimize transaction fees, but are also able to win more ADT while not having to worry about the complexities of voting.

Public Forum

Even with a delegated voter, you as a token holder want to have a space where you can converse with other token holders whether the domains applied are fraudulent or not. There needs to be a public forum for everyone to bring forth evidence regarding to a domain’s validity. Therefore, within the UI, we have implemented a feature where every application and challenge automatically creates a post in the registry’s subreddit. From within these posts, anybody can come forth with their shared research and reach a consensus regarding a domain’s quality. However, there comes a question into how far we should focus our resources to creating and maintaining this community. Through our partner’s efforts, there is a possibility for us to implement a feature where Reddit usernames are highlighted with the token amount they own. This is a pretty cool feature because it focuses on token holders who have a major stake in ADT and drowns-out the trolls who have no ADT and don’t care about anything but spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). As you can see, there are many other opportunities to upgrade the registry forums. But once again, to what extent should we, as creators of the registry, maintain such a forum?

Governance

The adChain Registry has a governance module where DAO-characteristics exist. Similar to the domain application process, anybody with ADT is allowed to govern the adChain Registry. The governance section of the adChain Registry allows for anyone to create parameter value proposals, challenge those proposals, and vote on their validity. This is unique to the majority of other DApp in production because the ADT community has full control over the price per application, the application period length, and the percentage of votes in favor of an application to be admitted.

The adChain Registry currently has 12 parameters, all permissioned to be configured by the ADT community. As of now, the ADT amount needed to propose a new parameter is 500,000 ADT. The reason why we launched the registry with this hefty amount is because we want to avoid having a novice apply new parameter proposals without knowing the impact it can make to the registry. If a new parameter value is agreed upon by two-thirds of the community, it overrides the existing value and is enacted as the new parameter value. If someone is able to stake 500,000 ADT, or collects a pool of ADT to do so, and proposes a new parameter value in which two thirds of the ADT community disagree with the proposal, they forfeit their staked 500,000 ADT to those who challenged and voted against the proposal. Therefore, if you see a parameter proposal in voting after being challenged, we highly encourage that EVERYONE votes because voting on the winning side awards you with a special dispensation of the 500,000 ADT from the losing side. Once again, all parameter values are configurable by the ADT community, and if you believe that the necessity to stake 500,000 ADT when proposing a new parameter value is too high, you can create a proposal to lower that number to 100,000 ADT. You’ll need to first stake 500,000 ADT and provide sufficient reasoning as to why your proposal should pass and not be challenged.

“The adChain Registry has a governance module where DAO-characteristics exist.”

Conclusion

As you can see, the TCR talk between Mike Goldin and myself focused on the usability problems and the major questions we have now that the adChain Registry is on the Ethereum Mainnet. We look forward to upgrading the registry to better satisfy our users and to building the necessary technology to bring value to the listings in the adChain Registry.