Thread by @Thyborg_

We're starting a community effort to build an strong unbiased ranking of active Cosmos validators based on a set of agreed-upon quantitative & qualitative criteria

A statement of purpose and an invitation for all community validators to join the effort 🧵

In Cosmos and other PoW blockchains, validators play the critical role of signing transactions and securing the network

However, a major issue all networks currently have to deal with is a massive concentration of economic and voting power in their validator set

In most Tendermint chains, a small group of validators hold a very significant portion of the supply

The Cosmos Hub is one of the most decentralised chains of the network, yet 15 entities hold over 51% of the total voting power

Over time, that kind of skewed distribution will lead to the same oligarchic financial regime observed in TradFi and that crypto is supposed to fight against

For instance last month on Terra, just a handful of validators was able to coordinate a chain halt, disabling of staking & disabling of the market module (in an attempt to prevent a governance attack)

https://twitter.com/Thyborg_/status/1531953714247786497

The fact that the coordinated action of a small group of entities can have such a massive & instantaneous impact on investors is a warning sign that corrupting the network of billion-dollar chains like Terra isn’t impossible with the current power distribution

While chains like Ethereum enjoy a much higher validator count, they are still being run by a limited number of powerful entities that are able to create multiple nodes and distribute their coins across to get around the network-imposed restrictions on centralisation

The economic power issue is even more real: on the Cosmos Hub, the biggest validator has close to 500x more $ATOM than the smallest validator in the active set

That issue is consistent across most of the other Cosmos chains

https://twitter.com/ThyBorg_/status/1521146907791265792

It creates a situation where the top validators manage to capture a very large portion of the block rewards while bottom validators barely break even

See that thread for an idea of the costs involved for them

https://twitter.com/Thyborg_/status/1530141785560731648

As a consequence, top validators are consistently increasing their control over the chain, while bottom validators are more likely to throw in the towel or fall out-of the active set, creating a vicious circle that exacerbates the issue

We believe the root cause to be a lack of trust and awareness from the general public for smaller lesser-known validators.

And sometimes for good reason, as we’ve seen recently with the #Osmosis exploit by a network validator

The lack of trust is exacerbated by the impracticality of picking smaller validators within popular staking interfaces

Since the default Keplr ranking is based on the # of coins delegated, it presents the bigger validators first & unintentionally prompts users to delegate there

Our proposed solution to solve both issues at once is to provide Cosmos delegators with an efficient way to voluntarily distribute political & economic power across reputable community validators

Our goal is to build a new ranking that accurately reflects the value each validator brings to the networks in which it participates

The value score will need to take into account both quantitative and qualitative metrics

While this is far from an exhaustive list (& we'll be integrating ideas from the community), quantitative metrics may include:
- Validator longevity
- Validator uptime
- Slashing events
- Packets relayed
- Voting participating history

Qualitative metrics are a bit harder, but we will build upon the Thyborg Cosmos Validator Ranking
datastudio.google.com/s/msjj-w1RQLo

We'll provide the community w/ detailed information on validators, so that qualified delegator wallets are able to grade them on-chain for a set of criteria:

Contribution: Helping the growth of the ecosystem through technical expertise

Participation: Being active in governance, e.g voting & communicating proposals clearly to delegators

Alignment: Displaying general good behaviour & acting in the long term interest of the ecosystem

Some research will need to be performed to determine the conditions under which a wallet qualifies for voting and avoid abuse (e.g collusion, sybil attacks etc.)

We will also consider a basic "code of conduct" for validators that wish to be included in the community ranking

That would involve some requirements around the implementation of good security practices (such as double-sign protection via TMKMS or Horcrux for instance)

The actual validator ranking is the project's core feature, but other modules will complement it:

- A grade module for delegators to vote on-chain for their favourite validators
- An history module to show how the score of each validator has changed over time

- An integration with the Restake app for automatic re-delegation to top ranking validators
- A “delegation score” per wallet, based on the ranking of the associated validators

That delegation score is especially interesting as it would somewhat "gamify" the experience while promoting network decentralisation

It could be something that new Cosmos projects could factor in their airdrop distributions, like @coslend & @CronusFinance are doing on @EvmosOrg

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg In addition, we’re planning to allow multiple sorting options, e.g:
- Sort by overall score
- Sort by qualitative / quantitative metrics only
- Sort by overall score weighted by delegation size

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg The purpose of that last option would be to display deserving “smaller” validators before the bigger ones, thereby encouraging a better distribution of delegations across the entire active set

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg We’re planning the first version of the ranking and the grade module to be first accessible on the cosmosvalidators.org website

However, the ranking data will be made fully available to third-party applications through a public API

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg One such third-party would be @eco_stake's Cosmos Directory cosmos.directory which already provides the APIs and a simple UI to surface on-chain information

Another would be Ecostake's Restake restake.app app for the automatic re-delegations

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg @eco_stake @SparkIBC & @InterchainInfo could display the ranking as well and reward users that decide to use it for their delegations with their Spark points

We'd also love it if the teams at @OmniFlixNetwork, @Disperze_ and @EvmosOrg would integrate it in their staking interfaces

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg @eco_stake @SparkIBC @InterchainInfo @OmniFlixNetwork @Disperze_ The end goal for the ranking is to be displayed in the @keplrwallet or the @ibcwallet as this is the primary way delegators pick their validators at this time

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg @eco_stake @SparkIBC @InterchainInfo @OmniFlixNetwork @Disperze_ @keplrwallet @IBCwallet But another potential use is to inform the delegation programs of important Cosmos ecosystem coins holders such as @ignite_com, @interchain_io & @osmolabs and bring transparency to that process

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg @eco_stake @SparkIBC @InterchainInfo @OmniFlixNetwork @Disperze_ @keplrwallet @IBCwallet @ignite_com @interchain_io @osmolabs Similarly, it may help liquid staking protocols like @quicksilverzone, @PersistenceOne, @Shade_Protocol or @lidofinance to build their whitelisted validator set

Definitely no shortage of use cases

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg @eco_stake @SparkIBC @InterchainInfo @OmniFlixNetwork @Disperze_ @keplrwallet @IBCwallet @ignite_com @interchain_io @osmolabs @quicksilverzone @PersistenceOne @Shade_Protocol @LidoFinance The project is currently being scoped by @ecos_take, @WhisperNode and myself

An option to formalise it is to form the “Cosmos Validator League'' as a DAO advocacy group that would fund its development

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg @eco_stake @SparkIBC @InterchainInfo @OmniFlixNetwork @Disperze_ @keplrwallet @IBCwallet @ignite_com @interchain_io @osmolabs @quicksilverzone @PersistenceOne @Shade_Protocol @LidoFinance @WhisperNode In the meantime, we’re inviting all active community validators to join us on Discord 📣

Any validator can help by either contributing to the development effort, or simply participating in the Discord server to provide feedback on the ranking criteria, weights & parameters

@coslend @CronusFinance @EvmosOrg @eco_stake @SparkIBC @InterchainInfo @OmniFlixNetwork @Disperze_ @keplrwallet @IBCwallet @ignite_com @interchain_io @osmolabs @quicksilverzone @PersistenceOne @Shade_Protocol @LidoFinance @WhisperNode If you're a validator who would like to join the effort, we invite you to signal that by commenting below or quote-retweeting this thread, so we can get in touch individually

If you’re a delegator committed to decentralise the ecosystem, tag your validator to let them know!