Ethereum Due Diligence Committee Call #4

Transcript

um just a thought I don't disagree with the binary and I and I don't disagree with Colin's comment about maybe yellow could mean something but I do think you'll need to think about are all Auditors created equal yeah in other words there's these deep reputations that are happening in the crypto industry over the last three years and I suspect we could name the big Auditors on a on a on one hand or maybe a little more I don't know um or maybe a little less but I don't think everybody who says I an audit and there's a new company it's going to be the same because you can certainly see I'm I'm I I think it's this through Game Theory and you could certainly see gaming somebody setting up a pretty sophisticated con where they're going to you know do the rug pull going to do the

exit scam gonna exit with funds at some point and they've put a sophisticated auditor now maybe that auditor is uh you know coming from somewhere we don't know so anyway be be aware of that that could be a it could be a yellow could be maybe even a red I don't know how we rate the Auditors so I just want to put that in there others should say something yeah I would I would strongly agree with that and I think in addition to the credibility of the Auditors uh I believe that us getting to actually review the audit to some extent has a lot of value um because just in my experience I think few Auditors sort of give a sign off where they're saying we believe this to be Ironclad and its

security um they're really more publishing a a dispassionate view on these are the things that we identified as as possible issues um and so I think just having a bit more depth of understanding but um I would likewise say that applies to to nearly all of these categories like even looking back at on this row at something like somebody having three years of of staking uh experience like that's fantastic but I would want to you know really understand what their track record is over over that time period um because three years experience can either be um Be A Plus or or a neutral or a negative depending on uh how those

three years went for for their customers yeah so these are excellent points and I'm glad that Michael just joined because Michael actually posted something within the Discord he posted a video that's very much in line with the comments that were just made so Michael do you just want to quickly kind of go over what your overarching point was and I can summarize it too if that's easier you just tell me yep e

yep uh just to quickly summarize both James and Michael believe that we need to do further checking of the validity of the answers and effectively their expansiveness uh rather than just taking them at face value and would you guys agree with that summary awesome the way you know this is this is one suggestion we have to approach because exactly as Michael said we're balancing getting this out quickly so people can start using some information even though it might being imperfect while also having the most comprehensive in-depth uh analysis for each of these answers um this is the way I think we could move forward is we keep

on going through like we're doing publish it say very clearly at the top these are initial results they are going to be changed we haven't finished our due diligence process but we wanted to get something out there after initial look and while we are doing that in the process of getting that ready of even publishing it initially we have people going in and really digging deep and dissecting these answers potentially they could even those answers that we published initially could change prior to them even getting published but much more likely they will change in the first couple weeks after we publish it and so that balances getting the information out there with large disclaimers and also you know getting the most accurate information as quickly

as possible the alternative approach would be waiting until we can get the most comprehensive information and then publishing and then the third alternative would be um effectively publishing and not worrying about the more comprehensive information if there's a fourth option let me know what do you guys think about uh the first one what do you think jares um in in my view I I would say that um you know I think keep in keeping with uh some of the communication that that super has put out uh in recent past really generally describing these staking Services as uh sort of yellow at this

point in time um you know I think we're probably not going to be in a position to necessarily like strongly endorse or say any of these are fully vetted uh in the next like several weeks um just kind of given the the time Horizon and so I think giving the General that these are not yet vetted um but all of our discussion around them is available online that's adequate but what I would you know like to try to focus on is you know I think protecting the the home Staker the End customer of these guys from um major pitfalls should really be our primary focus and so while we can

flag all of these as not yet fully V I think if we find like a confirmed hard red on any of these um I think that's something that we have uh a necessary duty to the community to to kind of disclose um if we have something that we would say this is like definitely the case that this is like there's something flawed in the model of this that we see um everybody should be aware of that and we should have sort of a clear policy on you know if if they can disprove that we'll we'll change our uh our thoughts but I think that that's that would be far more important to get out in a

timely fashion than any sort of a green light yeah so so let me sumarize just to make sure that I'm understanding it correctly you would suggest we either don't put out a red yellow yellow red excuse me green red yellow rating yet or maybe put them as all yellow but then disclo before still we have all the information we need but do disclose the answers that we you as red and try to prompt them to get those you know change those you know effectively make the changes needed to make those answers yellow or green is that correct yeah if not every single answer that's read then at least ones that we think are are material like if there's something where

you would look at it and say if it were if it were a friend of mine who was looking to use this service like this this red is something that I would definitely counsel them against using this service at this time um I'm just suggesting that while we're seeing like all of these are uh not fully vetted yet um if there's something like that that exists I think that uh it would be hard to justify in my view uh not disclosing at least that in a relatively prominent way I have a I have a recommendation maybe maybe this is a a third alternative to to this but I think that having three color categories is great maybe we should uh think about not

using the color red and maybe using orange red is associated with like negativity uh to the user so so maybe we can do that I also think that just having a simple disclosure um to kind of protect ourselves that says like hey like this is a living and breathing uh ongoing assessment uh just because something is not there today doesn't mean that it won't be there in the future and you know our job is to help update the community as to the status of these providers and and their infrastructure you know we can protect ourselves with with some type of disclosure that says this is not set in stone this is living and breathing uh and and maybe we we don't you know just because they don't

have their contracts audited yet um using the color red could be pervasive towards them um and and may you know actually create centralization too uh is another another thing that that we should think about right with the effort is if if we're putting out this source of Truth and and we're kind of pushing people unfortunately we're we're not trying to but they will probably get pushed in a certain direction like we could be responsible for centralization of Provider Choice as well um so kind of maybe just to summarize maybe changing the color from red to orange and then having a a disclosure statement that says this is not final this will be updated on a weekly basis um so tune tune back in all right super fiz Us Saw first and then Kirk um I would like so

that is a great suggestion uh two quick points I don't I don't feel personal liability for these decisions or a or as if there's any recourse against someone against well-intentioned members of the community who were trying to in a good faith effort support other users um I find it hard to think that we could have any actual uh liability in that and uh secondarily um gosh it's going to take me a while to to form this um so I do not think that we're promoting centralization for and I I don't expect anyone to consume the stuff that I put out but I I generally tell users that there are three bands

the top band is green and that is solo staking and please go ahead and stake solo right now the middle band is yellow and that's cautionary and I would say that all of these are in that cautionary band no matter how high or low they rank because they are not gold standard solo they are less than that and then the Red Band below this it's exchangebase staking which I do believe is a is a severe threat of not a severe threat it's a real threat of central centralization um so I again I don't that's just to put in context what what I as you know a spokesman or a talking head put out very frequently and what

many people in the community are likely to understand thank you uh Kirk yeah quick just a question for Colin and then I have a comment to make after that Co Colin were you thinking about the red the red moving to uh a different color were you thinking of that in terms of what I'm going to call the column by column rating or in the overall rating or both uh great question um I would say column by column um I would I would switch it out or I mean we can like that's I mean that's a good point one way it could be done is we could leave it red column by column and then you know we could have them come out as orange green or yellow but but I think

if we do decide to change a color it should potentially be uniform just so it's less so it's less confusing okay thank you that was what I wanted as a quick question to clarify what you thought the comment I would make and it's just really for all of y' all to think about is I kind of like the idea of this column by column thing not being identical to the same colors that we're going to show the people at the end because I like James comment if if we would fundamentally if you went around the room and and I'm I'm recusing from the individual company rating but if you were to go around the room of all of those on the committee willing to put a thumb up or a thumb down you know a color uh you kind of want to say red on

some if they stink to high heaven and and and that's kind of a role we have as a committee and it can be something that came from but that's a different thing than I think the column by column thing we're doing right now where we're saying we're not even sure and so I just wonder whether you you as a committee really want to use the same identical colors when you're doing this column by column sort of tentative rating versus what you're gonna put out in whatever Michael and we decide to put out at the end so that's my comment awesome so it seems like just to summarize we got a couple different proposals thanks Colin uh Colin had to hop off but you know specifically the

two ones that are slightly contrasting are are James and Collins proposals Collins's proposal is as follows change the color from red to orange um also get it out there with disclaimers and say that we're going to update this on a weekly basis but you know prioritize getting the information out there James suggested hold on Philip is trying to join I just admitted philli uh James suggested that we uh put out the information that's read on these various different colums um and um and and then as we get more confidence and do our due diligence further and get more research on these answers we then

release a more comprehensive answer set so educate people on what we think is wrong first and then get the more comprehensive answers uh afterwards and then then um you know in Kirk's side point which aren't quite as contrasting to these two but an overarching point would be you know let's not go the column by column rating can be different from the overarching rating and Kirk would you believe in getting that overarching rating out as soon as possible or and then updating it over time or waiting on that I I think it was James who made the point that if we saw something that was scary we'd want to put it out quick

quicker and I agreee with that okay um I I I hesitate on the fine gradation if we're not so sure about whether that whether how much we're helping to get that out early so sorry my answer has complexity but you guys who know me now know that I see the world in such a comp such a complex system and it's hard to I don't simplify very easily so I think the best path forward we do two different ideas is uh to vote on these two different proposals real Qui quickly uh what do you guys think about that my my last comment would be as a user I think seeing a very clear in case there's anything that doesn't pass uh or

as Kirk said stinks to high heaven I believe that to me as a user that would be the most important thing to be aware of so obviously that's not quite the same thing as the column by column ratings you know this shade that shade Etc but uh you know if the overall formula could reveal whether or not something is real sketchy again I just figure most users would care about that primarily all right so do does everyone understand the two options first of all and how they differ okay now let's vote who would like to go with James's option which is getting the information about what's bad