[Phase-1] HIP-36 Extending the registration period to avoid gas costs

DAO
#1

Soon the first registrants will have to reapply. At the moment gas costs on the ETH network are very high. That makes it very expensive to reapply. The proposal is to extend the registration period to avoid these expenses.

@clesaege summed the pros and cons nicely:

The pro of asking everyone to renew:

  • May help find other sockpuppeteers we missed.
  • Remove people who died during that time (assuming 72 years of life expectancy that’s 131 members of the registry which should have passed away).

The cons:

  • Lot of gas cost.
  • Some people may not renew so less PoH registered users.

Some math. Suppose the gas cost for renewal is something like $200 than it would cost 2,4 million dollars for 12.000 people to renew.
Suppose you want to pay with UBI for that than it get’s even worse. I’d have to sell some UBI for ETH incurring another $200 in gas costs. Alltogether you would lose close to half of the UBI value you received in the past year.

This can be avoided by postponing/extending the renewal. The registration period is now 1 year. After that you need to renew. The proposal is to prolong that period. There can be several variations:

  • Make the registration period 1.5 years in stead of 1 year
  • Make the registration period 2 years in stead of 1 year
  • Make the registration period 3 years in stead of 1 year

Of course, this is just a temporary solution. Sooner or later accounts need to be renewed. But this buys us time to work other ways to bring the gas costs down, like moving to layer2 solutions.

Some people already mentioned they are in favor of extending the registration period in the forum:
@NTP
@0x4af2544a82f4c505b38a91d27ebc09f27019ef20_Ethereum
@Nachobr
@0xa0766028f1712c641a9a7d34535b9caa10f5b496_Ethereum
@NingFid

What is your opinion?

8 Likes
#2

Santi had an idea to stake $ubi to prolong the registration period. Maybe an alternative or complimentary solution? This year extend the registration period for all by 1 year, and possibility of staking in the future? Maybe staking 12 months of $ubi extends registration 6 months? x amount of $ubi for y registration time extention. Not sure about the optimal x:y ratio.

3 Likes
#3

That is an interesting suggestion. That would be another good use for UBI, staking it to prolong the registration period. Staking is sort of “proof” that it is still an active account. Important for this would be that the staking and unstaking does not use a lot of gas. Otherwise it defeats the purpose. Would that be possible?

#4

HIP: 36
title: Registration Validity Extension and Change of Renewal Period
author: @senryu @NingFid
status: Phase 1
created: 2022-01-18

Simple Summary

The validity of a registered profile is 1 year. This proposal aims to extend the duration of each profile to 2 years and change the renewal period duration to 3 months.

Abstract

To prevent high attrition in the registry due to renewal cost and simultaneous $UBI sell-off to fund renewal, we propose a change on the validity of the registered profiles through a change of the parameter submissionDuration to 2 years.
Moreover, the current setup to remove registered profiles is halted for the entire renewal duration of 6 months which is too long of ‘immunity’ period for possibly missed non-conforming and/or suspicious profiles. This can be done through a parameter change of renewalPeriodDuration to 3 months.

Motivation

In order for the Proof of Humanity protocol to maintain the momentum in registration and remain as the largest on-chain identity system, we need to address the pain points in submission primarily the total cost to register and renew.

While the average gas price recently is the same as it was at the inception of Proof of Humanity almost a year ago, ETH value back then was only around 1000 USD - a third of ETH price at current, thus making transaction costs in USD 3x than before.

Moreover, there are few other preceding submission requirement alterations being proposed like HIP-32, HIP-33 and HIP-27 that are yet to be voted and implemented, and may be enforced at the same time as many profiles need renewing. We therefore need more time to re-educate users and curators of the new process as we strive to balance fair incentivization and high-quality curated sybil-proof list of humans.

7 Likes
[Phase3] HIP-36: Registration Validity Extension and Change of Renewal Period
#5

Thanks @NingFid for turning this into a solid clear proposal format. This sounds really good to me. Much appreciated.

2 Likes
#6

We can also consider altering the proposal as just a temporary change.
But in that case, there will be a need to specify registration dates that will be included- of which will be unfair to the rest.

Making 2-yr registration validity for all seems more reasonable.

1 Like
#7

In the long term, when the user base grows it might become necessary to revise the registration period once more. But for now I think it’s fairer to have the two year term for everybody. Also to keep things clear/straightforward.

#8

I’d vote in favour of this proposal

3 Likes
#9

I just stumbled accross this tweet. https://mobile.twitter.com/santisiri/status/1484571203763376137
I am not sure what the status is, but if we can renew on the Gnosis chain that would be better of course. On Gnosis gas costs are very low.
@santisiri Can you let us know wether renewals on Gnosis will be possible for the upcoming renewals in the coming months?
If yes, that would make this proposal superfluous.
Thank you.

#10

hi everyone, this proposal had been moved to phase 2

4 Likes
#11

@NingFid if you want the space at PoHGov to explain this let me know.