GAME Validator is messing with other validators "uptime"

Can anyone explain why many validators are marked as “missing a vote” when the GAME validator is the block proposer on the next block? Can someone reach out to them? This is affecting all of our validator block rewards.

Game Validator1607×965 145 KB

Just watch this on Cosmos Outpost … super fun

they are messing with their timeout settings

Validators can modify the source code and run proprietary validation logic. It could be several things. I’m guessing you hate the GAME.

That’s our guess. But it’s a guessing GAME at this point

… unless they respond here

Occam’s favors the former, but sure they could be running modified code. Just as, they could have a faulty network interface driver delaying packet exchanges.

BTW, I see validation more as coopetition than competition, but that’s just me.

Hi there, super cool and helpful post.

There are in my opinion two things that can be causing this:

1. GAME has reduced their timeout

I don’t think that it is this one because there’s not a whole lot of reason for game to do that.

1. GAME is suffering from poor network connectivity

I think that it is number two. We are already aware that it is possible to force the hub to partition it’s network under various circumstances. In fact, on numerous chains, the default setting for a number of peers to connect to, has been increased, as well as the number of peers allowed to connect. Comet measures peers like:

• inbound allowed
• Outbound to seek

This pull request would have raised the defaults and may have prevented this issue:

• fix: possible netsplits and chokes by faddat · Pull Request #2635 · cosmos/gaia · GitHub

I will reopen it, and update it if needed.

I will not go on a crusade to get it merged, as that’s already been attempted.

Yes, this is a security issue as it obviously has the potential to affect both block regularity and timing and overall liveness.

Thanks for finding the PR that points to a potential fix for this. Our devops pointed out about a potential network delay and/or timestamp delay on the validator as well when they sign blocks

I’ve tried reaching out to the founder over Twitter DM but have not gotten any response yet.

Sure thing – it was easy to find because I wrote the PR and have been tracking this and related issues for years now.

Once I’m sitting down, I will post the issues that I have opened on Gaia related to this since 2021 or maybe 2020.

• p2p is choked · Issue #2182 · cosmos/gaia · GitHub

the parameter change proposals absolutely do not address this issue, as those cannot affect the underlying p2p network.

• Need more seed nodes, run by more validators · Issue #968 · cosmos/gaia · GitHub

• Default inbound connections · Issue #927 · cosmos/gaia · GitHub

This is the same issue but from 2021

• Generalized bloat · Issue #704 · cosmos/gaia · GitHub

Well, the vision of Cosmos would say:
Delegators should move their delegation away from this validator.

I’d suggest moving to CrowdControl validator, it is very good, but small and struggling

What are the unique advantages of crowd control?

We are building an awesome game with Cosmos-SDK ( CrowdControl ). We are using Cosmos SDK for years now and have reported bugs. In 2022 we realized we need an Unity integration, but we thought, we just wait. Mostly because in the past we have build stuff ourselves like our own wallet code for the website, but then came CosmJS and offered a great solution. So we thought there will come CosmCS, so that C# can be used. This is necessary to make Cosmos transactions in Unity, which means the game client. Needless to say that those things exist in Ethereum, Solana etc. However it never happened, I asked around all the other games that build on Cosmos, but nobody has it and the answer was mostly like “We are not there yet, we are first building an audience and then we start building the game client connected to the chain etc.”. So then we build this ourselves and asked for a small grant. Mostly because if Cosmos is interested in onboarding games, then this is absolutely crucial software. Most game devs will not have the time and resources to dive into Go and the SDK in order to integrate their game into Unity. Our ask for a grant was small ($20k) and we wanted to make the CosmCS code…

Excerpt (1199 of 2117 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

I don’t know if you’re better, but I can tell you that I’ve always wanted to be able to connect Cosmos and unity or unreal.

I’ve done it a few times. Been over a year since I last made something that way, but it’s actually pretty easy with Unity. Not sure if it’s still working (on my phone atm) but here’s a 3d dragon flying world thing that was a sort-of mini-game for Levana: https://temp-levana-perp-3d.web.app/ (If it’s broken, I could dig up a video somewhere… but the point is that there’s js interop with Unity’s wasm export, so you can do everything, limit is just imagination and user’s patience for download time. Unity asset store can be an affordable way to knock stuff out quickly). What’s a bit more interesting to me is using Bevy and sharing functions between the game engine and contract… I’m going to dabble with that a bit in the not too distant future, could share my progress if anyone’s interested. No, that won’t work with Solidity Imho the real problem is having game ideas that actually benefit from blockchain tech. I don’t mean where there’s a financial underpinning… like, trade resources and earn crypto, or battle in an arena and earn crypto… I mean, like, where the actual incentive is the gameplay itself, and it’s not a glorified trading game, yet it benefits from blockchain…

Excerpt (1197 of 2036 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗