Validators.. The Cancer of Cosmos?
Three words that come to my mind when I think of validators: cancer, gangrene and viruses. Cosmos, the internet of jeeters. Validators are largely responsible for the slow draining of all the blockchains in the Cosmos. They receive a free allocation, delegations from holders, delegations from the foundation. Stake, claim and sell indefinitely. They don’t care about security and are only active when it comes to pushing proposals to: extract value, set a minimum commission, receive incentives for themselves, allocate money to their friends and redirect the rewards of holders to the community pool to extract more money. Cosmos has about 107 blockchains right now and probably 90% of them have no viable business model, huge inflation, few users, and also they share more or less the same validators. In an ideal world, validators should have evaluated the business of each chains and refused to validate the ones that were not viable. The reality is that they take the airdrop and validate all the chains, regardless of the economic viability, just to extract value. Defeating the sole purpose of ATOM which is to provide security and liquidity. Just look at the list of Atom…
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Ineresting… Great insight, and an even better realistic solution.
Yes like you’re 9 words reply are any better. Why even responding at all if it’s for not addressing any concerns or give zero argument trying to prove me wrong ?
Can you at least explain why validators are validating chains with sub 300 users MONTLY ? Why those chains even exist in the first place if there is zero business ?
Hi, thanks to post on the forum. Tagu: validators should have evaluated the business of each chains and refused to validate the ones that were not viable. As validators, we often question if we should or shouldn’t join a chain. You mention the fact that some chains have less than 300 users monthly and are still validated. Maybe at the early times of the project, the chain had a real potential and could deliver a new experience to users. Maybe some chains didn’t fully delivered for now. You highlight SEDA which is a very good example and didn’t yet delivered his main product after the token migration from Ethereum to Cosmos. Tagu: They receive a free allocation, delegations from holders, delegations from the foundation. Stake, claim and sell indefinitely. I seems to forgot a things. Validators are, or should be, professional peoples working to provide the best infrastructure in order to keep decentralized project running safelly and efficiently. Most of the validators doesn’t seel most of the commissions, and i they do, it is to be able to pay the costly inrastructure they are running. If we take a commission on the rewards, it is to be…
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I’ve been checking out Polkadot’s OpenGov recently. I think their curve-based Support and Approval concepts are very interesting and likely can be ported over. Even the concept of “Vote with Conviction” - i.e. lockup your votes if you really believe in this, is quite interesting.
Check out: OpenGov | Polkadot or a proper deep-dive here
Hello David , thank you for your reply David_Crosnest: Maybe some chains didn’t fully delivered for now. You highlight SEDA which is a very good example and didn’t yet delivered his main product after the token migration from Ethereum to Cosmos. I’m agree at the beginning of their life, chains cannot have many users… → unless they successfully attracted users through testnet and incentives. But my point still stands, I look map of zone again and this time up to 1000 users monthly, which is still low for a full fledge chain, and there is 36 chains bellow that numbers… 36% of the entire Cosmos is micro chains with very low, if any, economic viability. And we could easely go up to 5000 to actually show some community and users engagement, which is then, 65% of the Cosmos being gosht chains; This is hurting all of us, by fragmenting the ecosystem into new dead chains every few weeks or so. It is the responsibility of Validators. Who els if not? David_Crosnest: Most of the validators doesn’t seel most of the commissions, and i they do, it is to be able to pay the costly infrastructure they are running. What about lame proposals to allocate millions…
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Tagu: What about lame proposals to allocate millions of dollars for useless stuff and they all vote yes ? They only participate when it benefits them (money wise). We try to pretend Validators are some good heart and altruist people who just want to provide good infrastructures for the love of Cosmos. I agree with you some proposals are just waste of money. Many validators are using bot to vote on the proposals, and yes, this is bad. But for many chains, the governance participation is taken into account for foundations delegations. And without this delegations, you loose a lot of chance to maintain your validator in the set i you are not a big company or a youtuber. on another hand, in a general way, if the chain teams ask to vote on a proposal, may validators just vote YES without review. this is bad a well. It is the same with delegators, many are just looking at the trend and follow it (if the graph is green, why does I need to vote NO ?) At Crosnest, on very disscussed proposals, we are using weighted-vote based on the delegators vote. if 10% abstain, 40% vote yes and 50% vote no, we will weight our vote with the same values. Tagu: I’m fully…
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Some validators such as GeoStaking, CrosNest, CosmosRescue, and many others I’ll refrain from listing have been incredible. I’ve actively been working as a community manager in the space for about 3 years now and I can confidently say that they’re some of the most experienced, sophisticated and educated contributors. However your point still stands - some are just leeches. I suppose this is somewhat expected and natural as in any ecosystem there are top performers and there’s “everyone else” to put it bluntly. I’ve often wondered if there’s a need to introduce more sophistication at the level of the SDK. Potential features such as: Val specific inflation derived multipliers for top tier contributions. Instead of paying uniform block rewards, the chain could incorporate a secondary factor (based on metrics or chain contributions). For instance, if a validator is running the IBC relayer essential for your chain, they get a small multiplier in block rewards. If they maintain full archival nodes or supply oracles, they get additional compensation, etc and a community voted “x-factor” like indicator for cases like CosmosRescue which are just a tremendous security asset on top of…
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Tagu: Are you reffering to a model where Validators do not take delegators power vote? If yes, I’m agree and think we need to move to this direction, or at the minimum, put some hard quadratic systems that nerf significally delegated stake in governance. I remember seeing some discussion going this way last year, but it went silent ever since. So on Polka gov, the key differences to our gov for me are: • Governance is split into different tracks. Say “Software Upgrade Track”, “Contract Launch”, “Small Spend” • Depending on the track, the voting period and approval thresholds are different • So Software Upgrades could have a voting period of 5 days, Contract Launch 30 days, etc • Also, depending on the track, the support (quorum) and approval rate differ: e.g., Software Upgrade needs 90% quorum, with 90% supporting it. Whereas a “Small Spend” track of $500 funding prop could have a 30% quorum and a 50% support • They also have a Curve-based approach to approval - i.e. if 99% of the network votes yes in the first hour, the prop could just pass within the hour (think security). • But the thresholds go down based on a curve - e.g. Day 1, 99% need to vote in order to…
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Tagu:They don’t care about security and are only active when it comes to pushing proposals to: extract value, set a minimum commission, receive incentives for themselves, allocate money to their friends and redirect the rewards of holders to the community pool to extract more money.
Thank you for drafting this post as I think it may lead to some meaningful discussions. With that said, I would say this is a misrepresentation of the work that validators do - at least I can speak on behalf of Stakecito where we have made it our core mission to make information and education as accessible to the entire Cosmos as is possible with the limited human resources that we have.
Validators do do a lot of work behind the scenes to support infrastructure too, working closely with core teams. For us, it actually goes beyond doing just that, we invest in some of the networks we are active on, in addition to supporting networks wherever we can facilitate networking, user onboarding from our large community etc.
@Tagu agree on most of points. most of validators bring no value to the ecosystem. it takes very little time to get one up and running, and with community allocations from the chain you get into the active set right away. another thing is that oftentimes to get the allocation from the chain devs you kinda agree to vote “yes” to any proposal that they push through…
David_Crosnest:Most of the validators doesn’t seel most of the commissions, and i they do, it is to be able to pay the costly inrastructure they are running.
dude, it costs a couple hundred bucks a month to run a validator. when was the last time you checked hardware requirements for running a validator and the infra pricing?
viv:when was the last time you checked hardware requirements for running a validator and the infra pricing?
Almost every month 
we have thousands of dollars’ worth of infrastructure to keep operational.
Gaia is not the higher requirement but could ask much more with increase of block rate and more cosmwasm contracts.
But as soon as we increase the number of chains we operate and achieve economies of scale, we can spend much less per channel for the same efficiency.
David_Crosnest:we have thousands of dollars’ worth of infrastructure to keep operational
I assume thats the total worth of your infra, not the monthly payment.
David_Crosnest:but could ask much more
do you have any specific numbers in mind?
afaik you can get a server with 2x the requirements for any of the existing cosmos chains for $200 - $400 per month depending on where you get it.
viv:I assume thats the total worth of your infra, not the monthly payment.
monthly, for all the chains we operate.
David_Crosnest:monthly, for all the chains we operate.
yeah, a few hundreds a month per chain surely adds up to a couple of thousands considering you operate on many chains. but you know, thats not much compared to what you make off $240m TVL, so it’s not like you’re against all odds to be profitable here 
the point is that most of validators have no idea about the software they are running, no knowledge of the codebase of the underlying chain, etc. they just rent a server and cast a vote once in a while, being the top avenue for the value to leave the chain. thats the main reason why every single cosmos token inevitably goes to zero.
viv:the point is that most of validators have no idea about the software they are running, no knowledge of the codebase of the underlying chain, etc.
I’m totally in line with you on this point
You’re onto something valuable here. Continue.
I’ve been checking out Polkadot’s OpenGov recently.
It’s good. better than ours even.
Tagu:An easy fix could be that all validators from those useless chains shut down their validator all together, forcing the chain to either redeploy with a smaller set and inflation parameters with PSS or simply as a Dapps or a protocol. But no… why would they do that ? They would loose their precious rewards to dump. So they will not.
Eh overall I see this as a so-so analysis.
But the ideal model for Cosmos or anything doesn’t have validators. Every user validates.
I wonder if people understand how much of their own time and money some people spend on running validators. How many working spaces do they create. The fact, they literally drive the first economics of a chain. And are literally the only businesses that put the money back in the economy, by paying salaries to people that develop apps, security, etc. on top of the chain. These people often stay in the ecosystem and keep their money in it too. I can tell you that not all validators are equal. Some do it purely for money, yes. Some validators don’t care about the chain. It’s not actually that difficult to tell them, once you DYOR a bit (btw, building a tool to help with that as we speak). Sure, validators also should not participate in political consensus. They are self-interested. For profit, centralized entities. But architectural software mistakes (due to sociological factors telling us that we need voting leaders) do not take away what the once that work create. They start up and keep up going the wheel of economics of chains, which in many cases, alas - would otherwise have no other use cases (apart from printing out inflationary tokens). Long story short, IMO, there is…
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I will say now that I have submitted a proposal it is really dishearteneing to have validators ask 0 questions on my multiple posts, then vote no or no with veto (to confiscate my deposit) with absolutely no explanation or feedback. I feel like validators at the very least should participate in the forum if they’re going to shut down a proposal.
reasonant:will say now that I have submitted a proposal it is really dishearteneing to have validators ask 0 questions on my multiple posts, then vote no or no with veto (to confiscate my deposit) with absolutely no explanation or feedback. I feel like validators at the very least should participate in the forum if they’re going to shut down a proposal.
let me translate this: this prop is crap as it wasnt accepted. people disagree with me. bad people.
I think this idea is something worth trying. Validators I would like to know how much time you might be able to contribiute to the real world management of different consumer facing services as a way to generate positive cash flow and with laborers wearing branded clothing doing some of these manuel services?
Want to have a more robust discussion on this?
This is the kind of framework that is necessary to facilitate some of the other kinds of businesses I’ve previously outlined in an ecosystem managed kind of way. I’m of the opinion that projects that generate positive cash flow that is funneled back into the ecosystem, and that serve as a marketing/community relations tool - is a net positive multiplier for the ecosystem. What is the general consensus in investing in businesses other than online blockchain apps? I think there is a huge opportu…
Ah, the usual dunce. Try re-reading what I wrote slowly. Unsuprising you’re a val. People who don’t program, or contribute any code whatsoever to the eco. You run bash commands and pretend you’re contributing. Validators are surely the cancer of cosmos. Now go troll someone else with your non-existent skills.
Thank you for bringing this discussion back to the forefront of the forum.
Validators provide essential services, no question. However,
Tagu:the fact that they take the voting power of all delegators
is one of the biggest issues we face currently RE Hub governance.
Tagu:We need to find a way to stop all of this.
In additional to your suggestion, proposing decoupling delegated voting power from Validators and requiring to have more self-stake.
Hey everyone, We GATA HUB, a Cosmos validator since 2022. We’ve been part of this ecosystem for a while now, across multiple chains, and we’ve seen the ups and downs. The conversation around validator incentives and behavior is important, and we want to add some perspective from the ground. Most Validators Are Operating at a Loss Let’s be real: the majority of validators across Cosmos chains are running at a net loss . Only a handful usually the top 10 to 15% by voting power are consistently profitable. On some chains, none of the validators are profitable. So while it’s easy to point fingers, the truth is most of us are funding infrastructure out of pocket because we care about the future of this ecosystem. We are validating keeping Future aspect in mind, validators collectively has spend Hundred of thousand USD to keep Nomic running, if they decide to shut down today who will be at loss? and this is just one example. It’s Not Just About Selling but Who is selling The idea of “responsible selling” only really applies to those with enough stake to matter. On most chains, 66% of the voting power is concentrated in fewer than 30 validators . That means any real…
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I will write slowly, so you can read letter by letter my friend. Go open our GitHub and try to learn what we do first. Then come back and tell us that we dont contribute code. Thats one.
Two. people such as yourself are people i dont get upset with. Its hard enough not to pity fools such as yourself that a) cant use the internet top find info about who they talk to, b) do not understand the underlying concepts of blockchains following A, and c) fools that try to jump into attack, even though, discussing a subject they have 0 knowledge about.
serejandmyself: I will write slowly, so you can read letter by letter my friend. • The speed at which you type has no bearing on the speed at which someone reads what you wrote. • People don’t read words letter by letter, and the way in which typed words are recognized has no relation to the speed at which the author types. Does any of this matter? No. But, when you call other people fools and fabricate serious code contributions, it’s a little silly to make no sense. serejandmyself: Two. people such as yourself are people i dont get upset with. Its hard enough not to pity fools such as yourself that a) Your post is littered with grammatical errors calling me a fool. serejandmyself: cant use the internet top find info about who they talk to, This is such an incoherent sentence I’m not even sure what you’re trying to say. You make dashboards and run infra, you have contributed nothing of importance in any way, shape, or form. serejandmyself: do not understand the underlying concepts of blockchains following A, Again, just a really incoherent sentence; but, this is a silly remark once again. I’m sure everyone…
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Tagu:Can you at least explain why validators are validating chains with sub 300 users MONTLY ? Why those chains even exist in the first place if there is zero business ?
Why does this need explaining? I can validate whatever chain I want for whatever reason I want. It’s permissionless.
Then you tweet about it an hundred times hoping some naïve retails fall for it, buy the token and stake on your node. Then you vote YES on 5% minimum commissions to pAy FoRR tHe sErveRs cOst 
, stewardship, foundation delegation, incentives…! meeh permissionless
You do this on 100 useless chains that all look the same then wonder why Cosmos isn’t attractive to anyone els
Yes, if you look at Ping.pub, there is very low activity — only about 10.5 users per day, making 1–4 transactions per block.
Cosmos Hub is already practically inactive, and most companies using Cosmos Hub are more interested in launching their own EVM chains where they deploy their DApps.
Do I? Will you show me?
10.5 users per day? This sounds made up. Where is this stat from?
Here is the explorer that give you all the stats you want. 3,000 daily active users.
Map of zones - Cosmos network explorer