SIMD-0084: Disable rent fees collection

[HaoranYi]

Add simd for disable rent fees collection.

[apfitzge]

Without rent payments, can we eliminate the concept & term of "rent" entirely?

• How confident are we with the current minimum balance calculation(s)? If we remove rent, it seems this would become more difficult to change in the future.
• If the concept of rent goes away, should the Rent sysvar continue to be available?

[brooksprumo]

Without rent payments, can we eliminate the concept & term of "rent" entirely?

• How confident are we with the current minimum balance calculation(s)? If we remove rent, it seems this would become more difficult to change in the future.
• If the concept of rent goes away, should the Rent sysvar continue to be available?

This only eliminates rent collection (and distribution), so the concept of rent still remains. We could rename it to "Minimum Balance", since that's what it effectively will be now.

(But renaming is probably not worth it; I imagine the Rent sysvar address is used in programs.)

[HaoranYi]

Yeah. We still want to enforce that all new accounts are rent exempt.

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On Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 16:53 Brooks ***@***.***> wrote: Without rent payments, can we eliminate the concept & term of "rent" entirely? - How confident are we with the current minimum balance calculation(s)? If we remove rent, it seems this would become more difficult to change in the future. - If the concept of rent goes away, should the Rent sysvar continue to be available? This only eliminates rent *collection* (and distribution), so the concept of rent still remains. We could rename it to "Minimum Balance", since that's what it effectively will be now. (But renaming is probably not worth it; I imagine the Rent sysvar address is used in programs.) — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#84 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABVSJGZJPC6ADLXCQCRGF3YE2KQLAVCNFSM6AAAAAA65D54GCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMYTQMJVGQ2DCOJWGI> . You are receiving this because you were assigned.Message ID: ***@***.*** .com>

[apfitzge]

This only eliminates rent collection (and distribution), so the concept of rent still remains. We could rename it to "Minimum Balance", since that's what it effectively will be now.

Right I was essentially asking this. If no one pays "rent", it's not really "rent" but a minimum required balance. I was definitely not suggesting we get rid of the minimum balance.

That still leaves my other question about if we're comfortable with the current minimum balances we have now.
Right now, if we decided the minimum balances were not sufficient to cover storage costs, we could increase these. Some accounts would become rent-paying again. They'd eventually get drained and we'd go back to not having rent-paying accounts.
But if we get rid of rent-paying, then it's more difficult for us to make this increase.
So we should be confident that the current values are correct.

Does that make sense?

[HaoranYi]

With disks going cheaper and cheaper in future, I think, most likely, we will only lower the minimum required balance in future.

[brooksprumo]

That still leaves my other question about if we're comfortable with the current minimum balances we have now. Right now, if we decided the minimum balances were not sufficient to cover storage costs, we could increase these. Some accounts would become rent-paying again. They'd eventually get drained and we'd go back to not having rent-paying accounts. But if we get rid of rent-paying, then it's more difficult for us to make this increase. So we should be confident that the current values are correct.

Yep, definitely agree. I wrote up some thoughts adjacent to this last year (#8), but haven't done more work since. Tl;dr is that I'd rather have a fee market for storage and have people pay at allocation time instead of carrying a minimum balance.

[ripatel-fd]

It's probably worth noting the specific protocol changes:

• Slot boundaries no longer do eager rent collection
• Slot boundaries no longer do lazy rent collection
• The rent_epoch value of all accounts in the network is 2^64-1 (which would allow database implementations to repurpose this metadata field)

[brooksprumo]

Should any of these points be addressed still?

[HaoranYi]

These are good observations and notes. But I don't think these points are relevant to the simd design changes. I prefer not to include them in the content of the SIMD.

[brooksprumo]

Works for me.

The part about rent_epoch is interesting, as we'd like to reuse that field as well. I agree isn't not directly related to this SIMD, since this SIMD purposely does not touch/change accounts. While all the accounts likely have a rent epoch of MAX, we do not guarantee that (yet), and this SIMD is not meant to address that change.

[ripatel-fd]

@HaoranYi Looks like there is consensus on the technical changes installed by this SIMD. All the remaining review comments are regarding terminology. We can fix terminology later, I am therefore approving.

[lheeger-jump]

I think this change looks great. If we can get an approval from Anza, we can get it merged ASAP, as it does not have any new comments.

[HaoranYi]

@brooksprumo @jeffwashington What do you think about this SIMD? Can we merge it?

[brooksprumo]

nit: Please standardize on rent paying or rent-paying. Since we already use rent-exempt, I'd lean towards rent-paying.

[brooksprumo]

Should any of these points be addressed still?

[brooksprumo]

Some grammar nits, but overall looks good.

[HaoranYi]

@jacobcreech We have received approval for this SIMD from FD and Anza. Do you mind merging it?

[0xSol]

Seem this SIMD reaches consensus. All please take a final check,. Will merge if no objections commented by May 14. Thanks for great collaboration!