Cardanoの生きがい - Ikigai

Governance info action “Cardanoの生きがい - Ikigai -” 59fd353253eb177e2104e8f23ea4c63e3d32ef95c7865d03e90d3884424dc1db#0

Summary

The info action “Cardanoの生きがい - Ikigai -” is constitutional.

Understanding of facts

The format of the proposal is valid.

It is an info action per technical standards of CIP-1694 and article 3 section 5 of the Interim Constitution. The Interim constitution does not directly say there is a requirement for the language a governance action is given in, but Article 3 section 6 suggests any governance action should require standardized and legible format including an URL and hash linked to documented off chain content. The info action uses the @language tag as per the CIP-0100 and is otherwise also standardized and in a legible format.

Constitutional languages as related to the task of judging constitutionality of a governance action.

To make the interim constitution accessible it has been translated into several other languages with the note that “This version of the Cardano Constitution has been translated from the original.” Only the version that matches the on-chain hash is the “official” Cardano Constitution. The Intersect Council uses the language in the official hash of the Interim Constitution (currently English) to judge the constitutionality of the proposal.

The info action as the Intersect Council understands it.

The Intersect Council notes that the info action is in Japanese, with supporting material submitted with a CIP-0100 language tag that the Intersect council understands to correspond with Arabic, Bengali, German, Greek, English, Spanish, French, Hindi, Bahasa Indonesia, Italian, Korean, Maori, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Urdu, Vietnamese and Chinese.

Based on the supporting material in english, and matched with translation tool to the original Japanese proposal - the Intersect Council understand the proposal to be about the gratitude and respect to IOG, Emurgo and Cardano Foundation. It acknowledges they brought Cardano to the world and that this embodies the essence of Ikigai (sense of purpose or reason of being) and a pledge that the Cardano community will build on this foundation with such a common sense of purpose and with collective wisdom, passion and energy.

That this info action is an expression of community sentiment also seems clear from the ending of the rationale, where the supporting materials seem to match the Japanese submitted info action version: “This governance action is intended only to offer congratulations and to vote on the community’s sentiment, and does not directly or indirectly request any specific changes within the Cardano ecosystem, either off-chain or on-chain. DReps and SPOs should vote YES if they share this sentiment, NO if they do not, or abstain if they are unsure.”

In short the info action is presented as a community statement in regards to this expression of gratitude and spirit of purpose and in line with the requirements in article 3 section 5 of its intended purpose as a community sentiment.

The Intersect Council is examining the constitutionality in terms of the requirements for such an info actions in the Interim Constitution. The first question is if an info action that declares itself to be having no intended effect on-chain or off-chain is something the Intersect Council should vote on, even if only in terms of its constitutionality. The other questions relates to the multiple languages in the supporting material as well as the Japanese language used for the governance action itself, which raises a principle question of the constitutionality of info actions in multiple languages and in other languages than the official hash version of the Interim Constitution.

Is an info action declaring itself to have no intended on-chain or off-chain effect something the Intersect Council could vote on?

Article 6 section 1 describes the Constitutional Committee limits: “The Constitutional Committee shall be limited to voting on the constitutionality of governance actions. The Constitutional Committee shall comprise a set of Ada holders that is collectively responsible for ensuring that on-chain governance actions prior to enactment on-chain, are constitutional. (..)”

“Prior to enactment” could be interpreted to mean that only actions that are going to be enacted should be judged for their constitutionality from a textual interpretation. It could also mean from a textual interpretation that any governance action could be judged but the criteria is that the judgement should happen “prior to enactment” thus not excluding info actions that are not enacted. This seems to have support in the previous sentence “shall be limited to voting on the constitutionality of governance actions” especially when info actions is defined in the constitution in article 3 section 5 as “A special form of governance action exists to allow community sentiment to be gauged without committing to any on-chain change. Info actions have no on-chain effect other than recording the votes on the action.”

From a logical and consistency standpoint it would make sense for the constitutional committee to also be able to vote on all info actions given that they are included in the constitution as a governance action, the constitution committee can vote on them and that the limitation described is for governance actions. If not then you have a segment in the Interim Constitution defining what info actions are, without being able to uphold that info actions adhere to that definition.

In conclusion to this question the Intersect Council believes that this info action can be judged for its constitutionality.

Is an info action in Japanese a valid info action when it is in another language than the official hash version of the Interim Constitution?

As noted in the understanding of the facts the Interim Constitution does not directly say there is a requirement for the language a governance action is written in and thus the language in itself of the info action does not go against the Interim Constitution. However the Interim Constitution does express a principle of openness in Article 1 section 1, and this has to be held up against technical capabilities in how it makes governance open and transparent for the whole ecosystem, this can be seen as a question of accessibility.

A question of accessibility

First, the Intersect Council note that Article 2 Section 1 expressess that all Cardano community members are the beneficiaries of the Interim Constitution and entitlement to its rights, privileges and protection - and this expresses globalization of the Cardano Interim constitution as it relates to the Cardano blockchain. The Cardano blockchain is for everyone no matter their race, birth place or language spoken.

Secondly, for true globalization you need accessibility for any consensus to form in a global blockchain. Accessibility needs to be held to the standards of what the governance ecosystem is capable of. The burden of making governance actions open and transparent lies on the proposer of governance actions, it is a collective decision making process with consensus thresholds as described in Article 3 section 3. Without accessibility consensus thresholds described in its collective decision making process could lose legitimacy and overall transparency could decrease.

Thirdly, the standards for what the community is capable of making accessible might evolve over time as tooling and processes enables more accessibility through translation. The usage of tooling to help facilitate governance is expressed multiple places in the Interim Constitution such as for the Constitutional Committee in Article 6 section 5 and that the community creates off-chain processes as necessary to ensure awareness of and opportunity to debate and shape all future governance is expressed in Article 3 section 7.

Is the info action accessible?

English is the language of the official version of the Cardano Interim Constitution as it is published with a hash posted on-chain. Therefore, any info action being considered in governance will need to be examined in English for comparison to the Constitution.

In this specific case the tooling to understand the proposal was sufficient given the governance action text was written in Japanese, but matched to an English translation in the supporting material. The info action has no effect on subsequent actions and states that it does not directly or indirectly request any specific changes within the Cardano ecosystem, either off-chain or on-chain. Because of this it is only a question if the sentiment is sufficiently accessible both the info action itself but also a question if the supporting material is accessible as well:

Is an info action that has supporting material in multiple other languages sufficiently accessible?

Conflicting translations in supporting materials One issue without a standardized supporting material is that of conflicting translations and/or nuances in the supporting material languages compared with the language of the governance action itself. A wider interpretation of “standardized and legible format” in article 3 section 6 includes not only the technical standards, but the standards as it relates to languages of the constitution and its governance system in terms of its legibility/ability to be read.

For governance actions with on-chain effects such as parameter changes you risk having differences across translations in supporting materials. The same risk is related to info actions that has an effect on subsequent actions such as the budget info action. This can cause potential misunderstandings or hurt transparency. In this case the info action has no on-chain effect as the understanding of facts of the Intersect Council.

Another related issue is that community sentiment info actions should be an open and transparent process protected from undue influence and manipulation per article 3 section 6 that also relates to the special form of governance action of the info action. One could imagine a sentiment polling with nuances in the different language supporting material causing undue influence or manipulation, even at the level of the community being gauged on different sentiments on different topics.

At the same time even a community sentiment expressed in a single language can be interpreted differently by how people read the proposal as a whole, so this standard cannot be judged too strictly.

This standard should always be judged relative to the balance necessary between openness and transparency compared to the possibility of manipulation or influence on governance participation. In example, a budget proposal Info Action that has effects on future treasury withdrawals will likely require a high degree of accessibility and transparency, given the effects it will have on the Cardano community. Polls of community sentiment are of less risk to the community, as they may not bind future action.

Precedent Discussion

Historically most of Cardano governance development such as CIP-1694 has used a common language (English) and this has been practiced as having sufficient accessibility but CIP-1 does not require english but an ISO 639-1 code of the target language and a method for translated files to be related to an original source language. This can also be seen as the expression of openness (any language allowed) vs accessibility issues such as understanding what is the source material vs supporting translation material.

Counter Argument Discussion

While there is nothing wrong with using an Info Action to make a declaration, it appears that this issue is not “constitutional” in nature. Therefore, while this governance action is not “unconstitutional” and therefore undeserving of a “No” vote by the Intersect Council, it is reasonable to take the position that it is “non-constitutional” in the fact that it does not apply to the operations of the Cardano network. It in fact declares itself to be purely an action of sentiment.

There may be future declarations like this proposed as Info Actions. Some of them may be controversial and express values that not all members of the Cardano community agree with. In these cases, it may be tempting for members of the Constitutional Committee to attempt to divine from the Constitution whether or not the declaration is in line with Cardano’s values. Therefore it may be wise to consider Abstaining from all such votes.

Conclusion

The info action presented in Japanese with an English translation is sufficiently accessible. The info action is constitutional.