The Control of The Cosmos, protecting the hub from centralization

Tendermint Byzantine fault tolerance has been a revolutionary step forward in the decentralization of money and finance by the simple nature that it allowed more participation than just proof of work ledgers. Cosmos changed history upon genesis, but we still have a long way to go to manifest further decentralization, as well as proper incentive structures for stake holders. There is a veneer of decentralization among the Cosmos Hub, as 15 validators control the deterministic outcome for stake holders. All though we cannot discount the revolutionary aspects of Cosmos, we also cannot accept stagflation of virtues which act as pillars to the ethos of the crypto currency ecosystem. The quest to further decentralize the ledger and bring incentives for stake holders has just begun. Governance centralization through the validator monopoly There is growing disdain among the Cosmos about the centralization of governance. Cosmos stake holders should be forward thinking and see what the SEC is hinting at by targeting large stake pools run by centralized exchanges, such as Coinbase and Kraken. A large validator with majority stake is no different from an exchange, at the end of the day…

Excerpt (1195 of 4384 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

Ok, so what is the proposed solution to this that we would be voting on?

Our goal is to start the discussion within the cosmos community, and see if the problem is worth addressing in the first place, and brainstorm with the community on possible solutions.

You discuss here and then you make choices on the hub.

At least, that’s the norm.

I am a fan of freeform governance but I’d likely:

• Vote no on the prop if it is just to discuss
• Be happy to discuss here

My tldr on this topic is that validators choose nothing; stakers choose validators.

In all honesty I dont think a signalling prop is a bad thing. I think its a great idea to discuss things here, then have a signalling prop such as this onchain, as any off chain discussions do NOT represent the chain fully

by definition stakers must choose a validator. As a consiquence of the inability of stakers to withhold voting rights, voting validators choose roughly everything…the CP tax, CP spends, base txn fees, implementing the LSM to centralize VP to top validators by selling LSD delegations at 250delegations:1validator bond, etc. The issues that were enumerated by @fossFORfreedom are observably driving a significant amount of negative sentiment within the ecosystem and repulsing participants considering entry into the ecosystem. given validators very apparent control of governance and ability to arbitrarily add, remove, mint, and change any rule or parameter that benefits their bottom line, it seems like defining stakeholder’s rights would be good place to start a conversation that gets the cosmos past the aforementioned negative sentiment. I asked GPT to help start such a conversation and it suggested here: Right to Transparent Governance: 1.1 Delegators have the right to access transparent and up-to-date information about the governance process, including proposals, voting mechanisms, and changes to chain parameters. 1.2 Validators must provide clear and comprehensive…

Excerpt (1190 of 3255 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

I wish that you had informed chat GPT, that the obvious appropriate venue for dispute resolution in cosmos is edny

very forward thinking of you. I think conflict resolution through social consensus is preferable, but I agree, it seems increasingly likely with any meaningful adoption that conflict resolution will eventually be relegated to the courts.

I apologize is sarcasm is not easily detected online, we have a perfectly good dispute resolution mechanism here on the cosmos hub.

There are some parties who do not believe that though, and they believe that EDNY is a perfectly good place to settle their beefs.

ETH the chain. 10000 Cosmos makes you eligible to be a validator. And no one is required to run hardware anymore. We decentralize the 175 validators into thousands whether they like it or not.

Yeah, 60 minutes to send IBC packet using Eth consensus. Sounds great.

yes we need to tackle this problem. And an on chain prop can be a good idea because at least it will make people acknowledge that the current system needs improvements.

fix a limit to the validators voting power

Sorry. I was not being serious. I apologize for using the board improperly. I just don’t see any way of expanding decentralization unless some power that was given is voluntarily given up by groups that I don’t believe will ever or are seeking decentralization further than absolute bare minimum passible for smell test of average passer by.

Jacob got me going. His fault. Lol

I think this proposal is misleading and therefore shouldnt go on chain.

Its not true that 15 validators control the outcome of governance proposals. That would only be the case if none of their delegators would overwrite their validators vote.
A lot of Delegators take an active part in votes which we can see from recent proposals (Prop 801 ~60k votes). It would be interesting though to analyze which percentage of vp comes from delegators and validators.

I understand the criticism of the community pool spending. I would love to see a seperate proposal that defines requirements and payment plans for community spending proposals.