This blogpost will explain how the general subnet and the Community Validator platform works and how you can participate.

https://validator.communeai.org/

The general subnet s2

This subnet is unique in that it has no consensus mechanism limiting it to a singular validation mechanism. Weights translate linearly to incentive, allowing users to manually decide which modules they’d like to incentivise. The subnet is fully flexible to any diverse set of modules. Modules can be anything that you can put behind an endpoint or link to an identifier. Any piece of software, compute, data or X account, community initiative etc.

The economy of the general subnet is simple. Modules can create a condition of how much stake-weight a key needs to allocate to it, in order to access it at a certain bandwidth. The more demand Stakeholders have for a Module, the higher its rewards.

S2 Module Curation DAO

In order to protect against dishonest weights on junk modules, we introduced the s2 Module Curation DAO. This DAO has to approve Module’s applications to join a “legit module“ whitelist, and can remove Modules from that whitelist anytime based on 2/3 majority rule. The DAO follows these evaluation criteria. Weights can only be set on whitelisted Modules, meaning other modules cannot receive rewards.

You can create a s2 Module application via the Governance Portal.

Propose Change → Create new S2 Application

You can also register a Module to s2 fully through the Governance Portal.

Propose Change → Register a Module → S2

https://governance.communeai.org/

Community Validator Platform

The concept of the Community Validator is simple. Holders can delegate their stake to the community validator and fully control it through the user-friendly web frontent, to participate on the general subnet s2 and the rootnet s0.

This gives you the power to determine how your stake influences s2’s module landscape and the protocols subnet landscape. This works by obtaining the validator weights by merging user weights together weighted based on their delegated stake.

First you select which Modules and which Subnets you’d like to allocate any incentive at all. Then you determine how much % of your influence should be allocated to them.

You can see, how other users have allocated their influence.

When new human-centric subnets launch, we will expand the frontent to them.

Coming platform updates

• Once Commune allows validators to delegate their weight setting on specific subnets to other validators (child keys in Bittensor), we can enable existing validators to delegate weight setting to the Community Validator on s2. This will enable their delegators to utilize the s2 platform without directly delegating stake to the Community Validator.

• We will provide an API for s2 Modules allowing them to easily retrieve how much stake-weight delegating keys have set on their module. This will allow them to create a pricing model, limiting access based on stake-weight.

• We will add a Module-idea section to the frontent, where potential modules can be suggested and users can allocate weight to them based on their real stake. This will allow people to express their interest for certain ideas, making it easier to gauge what will likely be successful and what not.

Read this article to understand the present flaw in Commune and how the Global Stake Proposal solves it.

Here is a rundown of what this update means, how it changes the landscape of Commune and how it affects you:

The way you have to think about stake in Commune fundamentally changes. Before stake was local, meaning it could only exist and participate in one subnet at a time, limited to one locality. With global stake, this changes. You can stake to a key and register it to any subnet, using the stake in every subnet simultaneosly. Enabling you to participate and access every subnet with your stake at the same time

This means, that the proportion of stake active within a subnet can no longer determine its emissions. This is where the new rootnet (UID 0) comes in, where validators dont assign weights to modules, but to subnets. This makes the subnet emission allocation process easier to track and interpret. Rootnet weight set on UID 0 (itself) will recycle emissions.

The rootnet applies the first version of Yuma Consensus, which in short requires a majority of stake to set a non-zero weight on a subnet before it can effectively gain emissions.

The DAO treasury receives the rootnet UID 1, meaning allocated emissions will flow directly into the treasury. The general subnet (currently UID 0) will be migrated to UID 2.

Commune participants have to consider a couple of implications of this coming update:

Validators

The role of a validator becomes more intense, before you had to only pick one subnet to validate in order to receive the maximum possible APR. With global stake, maximizing APR means validating on every subnet, operating and maintaining the required validation infrastructure provided by the subnet founder.

If a subnet has 10% of the total emissions, then 10% of the total dividends you can earn are tied to validating on that subnet. This will lead to a vast increase in validation activity and decentralization.

Subnet Founders

As a subnet builder, you have to be prepared for this by ensuring your subnets validation is fully open source and compatible with validator decentralization, meaning the number of active validators can scale horizontally.

This enforces subnets to live up to the decentralization and trustless ethos of Commune. Also, you can plan with a big increase in validators joining your subnet and your architecture should manage to handle this uptick in traffic.

Delegators

Ensure that the Validator you are staked to, is active on enough subnets to provide an attractive APR.

Also, you can select validators based on how much their rootnet weights align with your opinion of how much each subnet should be rewarded. After deploying to mainnet, we will prioritize updating the CommuneX Explorer with an easy overview of the rootnet.

For the rest (miners, modules) nothing changes.

Conclusion

The global stake update is a significant step forward for Commune and lays the foundation for all further Protocol developments. It is also the first time, that Commune is in a stable place without any severe flaws. We strongly believe this will cause material improvements to the ecosystem landscape. We fully understand the inefficiencies and shortcomings of the rootnet as a subnet pricing mechanism and consider it an intermediary solution. After Commune and the ecosystem has adjusted to this update and stabilized, our development focus will go towards superseding the rootnet with something new.

CommuneX team

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This means voting on proposals is now financially rewarded in bi-weekly intervals, sourced from the DAO treasury. Also, validators can now vote onbehalf of their delegators unless they revoke the permission to vote for themselves.

This is an important change to increase the participation rate in the governance process. Here is why its so significant:

Commune is fully community driven. Ever since the DAO has been implemented, every update to the protocol has been executed through passing a proposal. Almost all proposals were submitted by community members like us.

How fast an proposal gets approved or rejected is how fast everyone can move forward. Its like a clock for the ecoststem, and if it ticks faster things can move faster. So this update should increase the speed of progress by reducing the waittime for proposals, giving everyone earlier clarity to plan their next steps and contributors earlier permission to execute their ideas. We at CommuneX know for sure that this will enable us to work more efficiently.

Here is how the Governance incentives work:

First of all, the reward calculation is quadratic, meaning smaller holders get more rewards per vote than larger holders, making it worthwhile for holders of any size to participate. Small holders might feel insignificant, but together they make up the majority! So giving them a disproportionate amount of the voting incentives will stimulate their participation.

Every new proposal within an interval add an amount to the reward pool, but the added amount diminishes with each additional proposal to avoid incentive to spam.

The share of total votes (1 token = 1 vote) across proposals a key has, is its share of the reward pool. Note that the votes are calculated quadratic as described earlier, meaning the more votes you have the less each additional vote is going to increase your rewards.

For a more technical description, see the proposal

The result should be a more agile DAO with increased participation rate, an important improvement that allows Commune to move faster, increasing the protocol velocity.

Lets move move faster.

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To learn more on the general subnet and its DAO read this.

Follow these steps to apply to the DAO in order to be approved to the Subnet 0 whitelist:

1. Structure your application message in the following JSON format:

{
  "discord_id": "your_discord_id",
  "title": "your_title",
  "body": "your_content"
}

Please refer to the evaluation criteria to ensure your application meets the criteria set by the DAO members.

1. Format the body of your application using Markdown.

2. After structuring your message into a valid JSON format with all the required keys, upload your application to an IPFS hosting provider of your choice. We recommend using Pinata Cloud.

3. Copy the IPFS CID hash of your uploaded application.

4. Submit your application to the network using the CommuneX CLI:

comx subnet submit-general-subnet-application <key-name-paying-for-application> <key-name-applying-to-get-included> <ipfs cid hash>

important note:

Making a whitelist submission costs 1,000 COMAI. If the submission is approved, the full amount will be returned. If its rejected, the full amount is burned.

This command will automatically notify all DAO members and give you a role on the official Commune AI discord granting you access to communicate with the s0 Module Curation DAO members for the approval of your request.

By following these steps, you will be able to properly apply for the Subnet 0 whitelist and engage with the relevant parties for the review and acceptance of your application.

Note that once you are part of the whitelist, the DAO can vote to remove you anytime if it thinks you are no longer contributing value to Commune or act outside of what you claim to do.

lets get this bread

If you want to apply to the subnet 0 whitelist follow this guide.

7 foundational evaluation principles for whitelist applicants:

• the value proposition of the module to Commune has to be clear, transparent and verifiable

• every s0 module needs a visual representation, like a website or a github repository depending on what it is, that explains it in detail and collects all relevant sources.

• if the module is an endpoint, it needs to be functional and work as claimed

• if the module is an endpoint, it needs to be accessible through a frontend

• if the module is an endpoint that is intended to be integrated into applications, such as an oracle, it needs fully-equipped API documentation

• the module owner needs to be active on the Commune AI discord, telegram or twitter (optimally all) to represent the module and answer questions

• if the module represents the funding of a in-development project or bounty, there should be a clear milestone based public plan that sets expectations for its progress

5 foundational evaluation principles for modules already on the whitelist:

• if a module starts violating the above evaluation criteria after its approval, unless there is good reason it should be removed

• if a module stops working and the owner is not seen actively working towards restoring its functionality within 3 days, it is removed

• if a module (including validators) is ever caught engaging in malicious acitivty misaligned with the collective interest of Commune, it is immediately removed

• if the module owner is inactive and ignoring the communities questions, it is removed after trying to personally contact them first

• if the module represents the funding of a in-development project or bounty, there needs to be a progress update at least every 3 days and show transparency on use of funds

  note that these guidelines are not ultimate laws, they are strong suggestions but DAO members always have to evaluate based on the context and decide what makes the most sense for themselves.

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However, access to such data remains limited for the broader Open-Source community. The Synthia subnet aims to change that.

Synthia leverages the Commune protocol to create a permissionless mining market around extracting knowledge out of closed-source model APIs into a public dataset to accelerate the OpenSource AI space. We will adapt targeted models and strategy based on the present state-of-the-art.

The subnets output is a continuously growing aggregate of validated synthetic explanations of subjects picked from the Claude Opus latent space based on varying esotericity in a vast general list of technical and scientific fields. The explanations are varying in their target audience, level of detail and abstraction while incentivized to target Claude3-grade quality.

Validated miner outputs above a quality threshold are automatically uploaded to the public Synthia dataset on Huggingface.

We also have a Huggingface Leaderboard of miners and their rewards.

You can start mining or validating by following our docs.

Synthia aims to create the largest reliably high-quality synthetic knowledge dataset in the world and make it a public good that will serve as a catalyst for innovation in the Open-Source AI space. It will be a foundational resource available to Commune to build further data processing mechanisms such as a finetuning subnet on top.

We are excited to expand the breadth of synthetic data generation markets beyond explanations, building ontop of this foundation.

onwards 🫡

After the incentives v1 update, subnet 0 will be the only subnet where generality is technically possible. This is because Yuma Consensus is enacted on all other subnets, forcing them to specialize on a focused mining competition. Giving subnet 0 a unique and important role in Commune as the "general subnet".

However, without Yuma Consensus we are vulnerable to malicious actors and hence are introducing the Module curation DAO to continuously filter and cleanse them from the system. This blog will dive into the details behind this change, the power of the general subnet and the role and functioning of the s0 curation DAO.

Yuma Consensus prevents selfvoting and ensures honesty is the optimal strategy for participants, it is a vital tool to create healthy and effective subnets and in retrospect its implementation will likely be viewed as a pivotal moment in the history of Commune.

However, it comes at the cost of flexibility. If you want the protocol to incentivize something, you first need to design a robust autonomous validation system around it and create a subnet, rather than just straight directing the incentive towards it. This limits and slows the protocol's ability to incentivize and support things it needs especially if they are difficult to represent in the form of a mining market. For example an individual making valuable community contributions through educative content, a helpful discord bot or contributions to the core codebase.

The general subnet is unconstrained in its ability to incentivize things on the fly. Anything can be associated with a module and registered to the chain. It could be a collective initiative to fund a public good such as a website, exchange listing or public tool, or it could be someones niche text2image model with a frontend. Whatever the incentives of yuma subnets cannot reach, the general subnet can.

Mining on the general subnet

The approach to mining on the general subnet will be very different from yuma subnets. Weights are allocated manually and linearly by the Stakeholder community, so you are rewarded to the degree that the community understands your value either to them personally or to Commune as a whole. Meaning whatever you do will depend on getting the attention of the community. This makes marketing of varying forms a core component of s0 mining and should accelerate community growth.

If you are not producing a public good for the ecosystem benefitting Commune as a whole, you are offering a certain utility such as access to a private model, API or tool. For those, the standard business model will likely become granting access only to users who have set a certain minimum stake-weight on their module and the more stake-weight the higher the rate-limit for user requests. Creating a direct relationship between the organic user demand for a Module and its reward.

So to mine on s0, ask yourself, what does Commune or the people of Commune need? What can I do for Commune? What would be interesting and useful for Commune as a whole or its individuals? Then provide it, register it as a Module and start advertising it to the community to bring their attention towards it. Naturally, those who also advertise Commune itself and regularly provide good content to the community will have an advantage in getting its attention and favor.

You see, mining on the general subnet is open-ended and leaves all the room for ideas and creativity. It will be interesting to witness what people come up with and what succeeds over the coming months.

The Module curation DAO

Now of course, everyone could just register a useless module and start setting weights on themselves. We have no Yuma Consensus stopping that. But the power of having a general subnet is so vast, that its worthwhile to look for alternative solutions that work in its context. This is the role of the s0 Module curation DAO.

The DAO continuously curates a whitelist of legit modules that have a clear value proposition and reason to exist. Every existing and new Module will have to apply to this whitelist and get approved by a 2/3 majority agreement of the DAO. Similarly the DAO actively critically evaluates whitelisted Modules with help from the community to remove them if any malicious behavior or loss of value is detected.

To learn more about the functioning and process of the DAO take a look at the 2.2 section of the Incentives v1 proposal. After the whitelist is populated enough, it will become a condition to be registered on subnet 0, making it impossible for valueless Modules to gain rewards.

The DAO is experimental, but if it works well we can expand its functioning towards wider protocol incentive curation, as well as giving weight penalties on s0 incase of obvious mispricing of Modules. In the future, the DAO should have its own embedded incentive structure to drive participation rather than relying on contributors.

Conclusion

The general subnet has the potential to bring incentive to things we previously could not reach, that are greatly beneficial for the growth of Commune. It allows non-technical members of the community to monetize their contributions and puts no constraint on creativity of what those contributions could be. We will see individuals making great profit by adding value to Commune which previously was not considered as something that could be rewarded financially. Once this is deeply understood, we should see a vast increase in community contributions.

onwards 🫡

• creating a proposal costs 10,000 tokens. if the proposal passes, the amount is returned. this is to incentivize thinking proposals through and anti-spam.

• proposals can only mature (get approved or rejected) if at least 50% of protocol Stake has participated in the voting

• if >50% participated, the proposal matures after 3 days

• moving stake to another key after voting, will remove the vote to avoid the same stake voting multiple times from different keys

You vote either through the governance portal or the CommuneX CLI

Here is how to create a proposal in 10 minutes

Here is a general perspective on this update

https://mirror.xyz/0xD80E194aBe2d8084fAecCFfd72877e63F5822Fc5/-c_3HZDkcY319wUGuXe3DmYQZ6ux5A4hlwVotNdwl9I

This is the first version, the mechanism will adapt and expand in the future.

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Yesterday 3 of the 5 multisignature sudo keys performed a runtime update to implement an onchain proposal-based governance mechanism. Today CommuneX, a independent group of community members, finished an accessible governance UX to create and vote on proposals onchain through a simple interface. The CommuneX CLI also supports all governance features.

This makes onchain governance participation widely accessible, laying the foundations for the decentralized stakeholder community to take increasing control over the governance of Commune.

All future changes to Commune should first have to pass as a proposal. As the mechanism matures and the workflow becomes familiar, the goal is to remove the multisignature sudo key fully from the protocol.

Todays update marks the beginnings of a new era in the evolution of Commune, giving comrads a platform to implement their ideas no matter of their origin without relying on approval by a central authority, or equally reject ideas the majority disagrees with.

We believe Commune is primed to be the first actually fully decentralized AI protocol. Another important component to that is full chain decentralization. Currently the Commune blockchain, similar to Bittensor and other decentralized AI protocols, runs on proof-of-authority mode. Meaning there is a central authority that has sole control over what blocks get finalized and what transactions get accepted. No project is actually decentralized as long as this is the case.

Because of this, CommuneX is very interested in transitioning the Commune blockchain to proof-of-stake mode allowing every Stakeholder to participate in blockchain validation based on a PoS consensus. One thing after the other, but we plan to submit a proposal and if it passes ensure a clean and secure implementation.

We are excited about the future of Commune, if the incentives v1 proposal passes it can be implemented immediately as the code is already tested and ready. We are making fast paced steps towards a prosperous ecosystem and want to encourage anyone reading this to realize the opportunity of positioning themselves early as a builder within it.

Forward 🫡

For further documentation, you can check the CommuneX Github. You will need 10,000 tokens in your balance, which will be returned if your proposal passes. This encourages honest and thought-out proposals.

Custom Proposal

Custom proposal data is hosted on IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) for performance reasons. To upload data, you'll need to register with a hosting provider of your choice. We recommend using Pinata Cloud.

The process is streamlined through the governance portal.

https://governance.communeai.org/

First, click New Proposal:

Fill in the Proposal contents (markdown supported) and check the preview to ensure it satisfies your expectations. Then download the file.

Save the file and upload it to the IPFS cloud (i.e. Pinata). After uploading, you will receive a hash of the document, for example: QmPsc5bhoMBhw88Pt9mY6Umzb....

Upload The Proposal Document

After obtaining the hash, execute the following command through the CommuneX CLI:

comx network add-custom-proposal <key> <ipfs hash>

Congratulations! You have now created a custom proposal.

Global Proposal

To create a global proposal, use the propose-globally command in the CommuneX CLI.

comx network propose-globally <key> --<parameter> x --<parameter> y etc

Here is the list of parameters you can propose to change.

--max-allowed-modules
--max-registrations-per-block
--target-registrations-interval
--target-registrations-per-interval
--unit-emission
--tx-rate-limit
--vote-threshold
--vote-mode
--max-proposals
--max-name-length
--burn-rate
--min-burn
--burn
--min-stake
--min-weight-stake
--adjustment-alpha
--floor-delegation-fee
--max-allowed-subnets

Subnet Proposal

Important: You can only create proposals for Subnets that run on "Vote" mode, not "Authority" mode. Otherwise, you will encounter an error.

To create a proposal on a specific subnet, use the propose-on-subnet command:

comx subnet propose-on-subnet <netuid> <key> --<parameter> x --<parameter> y etc

Here is the list of parameters you can propose to change:

--name
--founder
--founder-share
--immunity-period
--incentive-ratio
--max-allowed-uids
--max-allowed-weights
--min-allowed-weights
--max-stake
--min-stake
--tempo
--trust-ratio
--vote-mode
--max-weight-age

Replace the placeholders (<netuid>, <key>) with the appropriate values for your proposal as well as include any parameter with the proposed value you’d like to change.

Custom Subnet Proposal

You can also create a custom proposal on a subnet by following the custom proposal structure and using the add-custom-proposal command:

comx subnet add-custom-proposal <netuid> <key> <IPFS>

By following these steps, you can easily create global, subnet, and custom subnet proposals using the CommuneX CLI. Remember to have the required token balance and for subnet proposals ensure the subnet is in “Vote” mode.

Thats it. thats all there is to know about creating Commune proposals.

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