Nov 30, 2023

The Parameter Committee (interim state) meets on a tri-weekly basis. It discusses all parameters relating to the Cardano protocol including network, technical and economic parameters, providing technical advice and recommendations on updatable parameter settings.

Updated list of the Members (interim state):

Chairs: Chair: Kevin Hammond Vice- chair: Alex Moser Vice- chair: Vijay Bhuvangiri

Advisory Group Heads: Network group: Neil Davies Technical group: Markus Gufler Economic group: Samuel Leathers Governance group: Adam Rusch

Advisory Group Members: Network group: Karl Knutson, Matthias Sieber, Marcin Szamotulski Technical group: Ruslan Dudin, Michael Peyton Jones, Ashish Prajapati Economic group: Sergio Sanchez, Philip Lazos, Giovanni Gargiulo, Sheng-Nan Li

Other: Communications: Tommy Kammerer, Nathaniel Acton, Addie Girouard, Matthew Capps Domain experts: Martin Lang, Andrew Westberg Observers: WIP Secretary: Joaquín López

Remit

The purpose of the Parameter Committee is to provide technical advice and recommendations relating to the updatable protocol parameters, taking into account economic, security, network and other technical considerations, as appropriate to protect the long term sustainability of the Cardano blockchain.

Agenda and Updates:

Agenda:

• Welcoming new committee members

• Discuss Parameter Guardrails with the Civics Committee

• Feedback on Change Request “CR 107 - Min Pool Cost reduction”

• Update on PCP-002

• Communications: Parameter Committee explainer ready to be posted

Updates:

• The Parameter Committee is onboarding new members for the already existing advisory groups and for the new Governance Advisory Group. We welcomed the new members and made a short round of introductions.

• The Parameter Committee has started a collaboration with the Cardano Civics Committee and some members of this committee were invited to the PC meeting to discuss Parameter Guardrails.

• The Cardano Civics Committee has created a working group focused on Governance Guardrails and they have started defining some time-based limits for treasury withdrawals. They asked some questions to confirm that these limitations are technically enforceable by the ledger and the two committees agreed to continue this collaboration.

• After the implementation of CR 107 - MinPoolCost reduction, the Parameter Committee has been gathering feedback from the SPO community and analyzing the on-chain effects of this parameter change. In summary, we saw that around 290 pools have reduced their pool costs and we see less effects than expected. The next step is to analyze the stake flows and confirm the hypothesis that the reduction of MinPoolCosts helps smaller pools grow and attract more stake.

• Each advisory group has been participating in the PCP discussions on Cardano Forum and we provided an update on each one of them:

  • PCP_K-Parameter_EarnCoinPool 2: the network advisory group participated in the discussion and asked for more information but we didn’t get enough responses. Before progressing with this PCP we would like to understand the intended results of increasing K.

  • PCP_utxoCostPerByte_ShawnMcMurdo 3: the technical and economic advisory groups have been discussing this PCP. There is an association between this parameter setting and the Guardrails document and it’s related to the security of the system. Before we engage with this particular PCP, we would like to confirm the threshold settings in the Guardrails document are the correct ones.

  • PCP_TreasuryTax-tau-parameter_EarnCoinPool 3: The request for a recommendation hasn’t been formalized so we expect the discussion to continue on the Cardano Forum.