Moniker spoofing

It seems to me like moniker spoofing is a risk, to node reputation at the least.

A possible way to address this may be to have monikers registered to an address and require signing from that address to associate the moniker to a node.

The risk would still exist because spoofers could use similar spellings, etc to the real validator’s moniker.
e.g.
real validator’s moniker: engineer_x
spoofer’s moniker: engineeer_x

Maybe ask delegators to check validator address (or something else that is derived from the private key) before believing spoofer’s story.

Staking commands use “account_cosmosaccaddr” already, and not moniker, so this risk is somewhat mitigated.

Good ol’ Zooko’s Triangle:

Zooko's triangle

Zooko's triangle is a trilemma of three properties that are generally considered desirable for names of participants in a network protocol: Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn conjectured that no single kind of name can achieve more than two. For example: DNSSec offers a decentralized, human-meaningful naming scheme, but is not secure against compromise by the root; .onion addresses and bitcoin addresses are secure and decentralized but not human-meaningful; and I2P uses name translation services which are sec...

One solution would be to use an existing naming system like DNS for monikers. Then it would be possible to tie a domain name to a key, using e.g. a TXT record (an approach not too far off from the DV method for issuing X.509 certificates)

luigi:

Staking commands use “account_cosmosaccaddr” already, and not moniker, so this risk is somewhat mitigated.

I see. Thank you luigi, makes sense.

Zooko’s triangle I love being involved with a group of smart people