Vote on the Amaru Budget

I am voting to abstain on the Amaru Node Development budget info action with hash bd488931f792651fefa9c6fda185a2c6cec83245b51d994e33090ce36e29cc26#0.

The metadata for my vote is located here, and this blog serves as a more human-readable form of that justification.

Justification

I am abstaining because of a potential conflict of interest. I am one of the scope owners on this project, and Sundae Labs will be one of the development teams employed to help deliver on the goals of the project, and so I cannot in good conscience vote on this proposal. That being said, I believe very very strongly in the need for Node Diversity. Beyond just the added robustness to the network, reimplementing the Cardano protocol in another language is a forcing function: all of the design decisions, implementation details, and protocol trivia must be opened and re-examined in order to build a node. As we do so, we are making sure to document these things clearly, making them accessible to any who want to build on Cardano, from nodes. The beneficiaries of this effort extend far beyond those building alternative nodes, but to those building tooling, dApps, and interconnectivity solutions. Building an alternate node will help decentralize not just the network, but the brain trust of the entire protocol.

Additionally, while some hold reservations about how it may impact delivery timelines of other projects, I’m actually quite optimistic. I believe that having a fresh, lower risk code base to experiment in may ultimately accelerate some of these roadmap items like Leios or Starstream.

So, while I am abstaining on a matter of principle, if you are looking for guidance on how I would have voted absent that conflict, it would be a resounding yes.

As a reminder, you can find my values here.

Here is how I evaluate this proposal against each of my values, attempting as best as I can to correct for my inherent bias on this proposal:

Integrity - Because I would be a recipient of funds for this project, my integrity compels me to abstain. In the future, if I amass a significant delegation, I will instead select a high-integrity community member without the same conflict of interest to choose how I vote, and will be transparent about this selection process.
Freedom - This proposal increases the freedom of choice available to stake pool operators and developers building on Cardano.
Social Good - Increasing the robustness of both the network and the development of the Cardano protocol helps deliver on the wider social good that I believe Cardano represents.
Technical Soundness - The collective team is technically solid and approaching the task responsibly. They have a demonstrated track record, both in other projects the team has undertaken, and in providing consistent demos for the last 6+ months of development.
Economic Soundness - In my professional opinion, the budget is reasonably priced for the caliber of team they have assembled, and the complexity of the tax demands a team of that calibre.
Effective Discourse - The proposal is well argued, clearly structured. The wider Amaru team has consistently engaged with the community in discussions about the value and need for the node, contributing to a healthy forum of constructive feedback.
Transparency - The Amaru team has consistently sourced their proposal ahead of this vote, and solicited feeback from the community. They are being clear about how the funds will be managed, who is responsible for delivery, and what those deliverables are.
Flexibility - This proposal has very little bearing on the value of flexibility.