[Proposal Idea] Casper Association Delegation Policy

Proposal Discussion Proposal Ideas
1

Background

The Casper Association (CA) habitually stakes much of its treasury in sub-divided allocations amongst community validators that meet certain criteria. In the past, certain shortfalls have been identified in the way that CA manages these delegations. For example:

  • The exact requirements of how validators are selected are not clear to the full validator community
  • Stake was sometimes given to validators that were generally not deemed “worthy”, whereas other “worthy” validators never received any stake from CA
  • Periodically stake would remain on validators who became in-active, or whose fees were adjusted to amounts outside of a generally accepted range

Intentions of this Proposal

CA would like to formulate a Delegation Policy in collaboration with the broader validator community, which should address the following minimum topics:

  1. The total amount of stake CA is committing to community validation, as expressed in a percentage of CA’s public treasury, which may go up or down over time
  2. The duration of each Delegation Round
  3. The number of validators selected in each Delegation Round
  4. The minimum criteria for a validator to be considered for delegation by CA, and to keep delegation from CA during the Delegation Round
  5. A mechanism to become aware of the need to redelegate from a certain validator to another, in case such validator no longer adheres to the minimum requirements or becomes inactive

Specific Proposal

Please note that the below are placeholders in order to kick off the discussion with the validator community. Upon conclusion of the discussion, the consensus proposal will be put forward, and the validator community can then vote on this.

1. The total amount of stake CA is committing to community validation, as expressed in a percentage of CA’s public treasury, which may go up or down over time

Answer to be owed by CA after consulting internally regarding operational constraints and necessities

2. The duration of each Delegation Round

CA proposes 90 days per round

3. The number of validators selected in each Delegation Round

CA proposes 30

4. The minimum criteria for a validator to be considered for delegation by CA, and to keep delegation from CA during the Delegation Round

CA proposes:

  • having been a validator for 3+ months minimum
  • having maintained a 99% or higher performance score for the last 30 days (as seen on CSPR.live)
  • having identified with the Casper Account Information Standard
  • being a member of the Validator Guild Telegram Room
  • having direct contact information available to the CA in case of need of escalation (e.g. downtime detected)

5. A mechanism to become aware of the need to redelegate from a certain validator to another, in case such validator no longer adheres to the minimum requirements or be
comes inactive

CA doesn’t have tooling available for this. I know there were proposals from the community around monitoring and alerting. I hope to see more concrete proposals in this context, and as mentioned in the Validator Guild, small grants can be available for this.

2

My extended thoughts on this:

  1. select 50 random validators
  2. filter out 30 or less with criteria checks
    a. 3+ months validator
    b. 98% or higher performance score?
    c. CA validator identified
    d. 1% - 10% commision rates (0% skip)
  3. select 10 lowest weighted validators
    a. allocate 60% of CA stake
  4. rest validators
    a. allocate rest 40% of CA stake
2 Likes
3

Thank you for bringing this topic into light:
My thoughts on the topic are:

2) The duration of each Delegation Round

  • 90 days seems very reasonable

3) The number of validators selected in each Delegation Round

  • Since we don’t know the exact public treasury available it would be hard to assess the number. But 30 seems reasonable or maybe even lower. The only concern I have is to not make this someone’s full time job. It should be easy to manage for the association.

4) The minimum criteria for a validator to be considered for delegation by CA, and to keep delegation from CA during the Delegation Round

  • having been a validator for 6+ months minimum - 3 months seems to be a little time to be an experienced validator.
  • having identified with the Casper Account Information Standard - agreed.
  • being a member of the Validator Guild Telegram Room - agreed.
  • having direct contact information available to the CA in case of need of escalation (e.g. downtime detected) - agreed.

Bonus:

  • excluding top 10 to support decentralization.
  • excluding 0% fees to support decentralization as 0 ones already attracting greedy delegators and i believe it hurts the quality of the validators.
  • excluding >10% validators
  • i know it’s hard to accomplish but would love to have a geographical decentralization as well so favoring different location validators would be great to have.
  • excluding 1200+ validators as they’re impossible to stake on(stating the obvious but sometime people expect the most obvious rules)

Plus
5) A mechanism to become aware of the need to redelegate from a certain validator to another, in case such validator no longer adheres to the minimum requirements or be
comes inactive

I already have a grant application which sort of covers this topic. We can extend it and deliver what is needed for the assocation.

What I have in my mind is:

Exclusively monitor and track association wallets(delegations) and the outcome of rules out of this topic can be the alerting mechanism for the association and public. We can have both UI and a telegram channel or even dms to receive these notifications.

Notifications could be:

  • CA’s delegations/redelegations and their amount
  • Delegated validator’s performance drops below given threshold or about to go below it(to warn the validator to take necessary actions or assocation to be prepared for redelegation)
2 Likes
4

Hello,

I think it depends on CA cspr budget. But 30 nodes seems reasonable.

I’m ok with these rules :

  • excluding 0% fees
  • excluding > 10% fees nodes

We could also add these, but not sure how to measure :

  • commitment to project (like being present at Validator calls and active in telegram channels/helping node ops, seniority in mainnet chain)
  • Having CA verified status , an official website and contacts infos

Now i’m not ok to exclude any node as far as it has less than 1200 . Every node should be treated equally if it fits into these criteria above, we are all committed to this project since day one.

1 Like
5

I appreciate that. We have someone assigned to managing this on a recurring basis. With a 90 day rotation on 30 slots, that should not be an issue.

1 Like
6

I think these are all good clarifications that should be considered/included

1 Like
7

I’m aware. Let’s discuss this when the validator community settles on the parameters of this proposal, and then we can refine your grant application to cover these needs as well.

1 Like
8

Yes, I was also thinking about this. I would like to incentivize active participation amongst validators, which could include:

  • participation in the Validator Guild TG
  • participation in this forum
  • participation in the monthly Validator Connect calls (perhaps keep track of attendance and you have to be in 1 out of 3 meetings? But hard to enforce, especially given time zones etc.
  • participation in on-chain votes (only 55% of stake participated in the first vote)

I definitely that account info standard usage and links to contact info etc. should be mandatory.

9

First, in my opinion, we shouldn’t move forward until the amount of CA delegation is established.

Also, if the point of the CA delegation program is to attract new validators/talent, then we should add some limitations on who should be able to participate. For example, besides what is stated above, we could:

  • participants should only be running a single validator node (Again, assuming this is an opportunity to attract talent/decentralization to the community, and not just to fill the pockets of current validators).
  • Add a minimal self stake (The validator has to have some skin in the game)
  • Validators who have a overall total stake (minus CA delegation) of more then ‘X’ (for example, 120 million) do not qualify to participate (Currently, this would exclude the top 15, but, more importantly, it sets a fixed number of cspr to not be eligible for the program).

The above recommendations were some of the policies that the ‘Polkadot Validators Programme’ implemented when I was a participant. They have other policies, but those policies takes into consideration other issues we haven’t encountered, yet.

2 Likes
10

I think these rules are agreeable, and I agree with the other validators proposals of >0% <10%

I would like to extend that a chosen validator should be excluded from the next round
E.g. Validator1 meets all criteria and is chosen in Q1, they should not be available to be chosen in Q2,

There should likely be some flexibility on this if the pool of validators that aren’t excluded from a given quarter on this criteria is too small for the 30 choices.

2 Likes
11

We agree with all points originally raised but would like to suggest a few extras and/or changes to the following:

:white_check_mark: Having been a validator for 3+ months minimum.

:small_red_triangle: Having maintained a 98% or higher performance score for the last 30 days (as seen on CSPR.live)

:white_check_mark: Having identified with the Casper Account Information Standard.

:small_red_triangle: Being a member of the Validator Guild Telegram Room. Plus this forum with signed validator status.

:small_red_triangle: Having direct contact information available to the CA in case of need of escalation (e.g. downtime detected) - Clarification of proposed contact medium? Email/TG?

:small_red_triangle: Add a minimum healthy validator fee - example 2% to 10% (No 0% or 1%)

12

I see two possible approaches for CA delegations. The first is to encourage and reward active validators, while the second aims to balance the delegations more evenly.

First approach: Delegation as a reward for involvement

I believe this delegation should be seen as a recognition for committed validators. Those to be prioritized are the ones who show active engagement, whether through participating in the guild Telegram group, being active on social media, or attending meetings. The delegation should not be based solely on performance or fee levels.

A presence of at least 3 months as a validator on the network and a performance score of at least 98% seem reasonable, while a 90-day period for each delegation round seems appropriate.

Additionally, for validators who have multiple nodes, only one node should be eligible for a delegation to encourage broader participation.

To reinforce this approach, I suggest that each validator submit an application to be considered for a delegation. This would emphasize each validator’s commitment, regardless of their fees or ranking.

Second approach: Balancing the delegations

Another option would be to distribute delegations more evenly, aiming to target nodes ranked around the 30th to 50th positions (indicative numbers). This would encourage validators to climb the rankings through active involvement, with the potential to reach higher positions.

Nodes below a certain threshold of delegated tokens and those that do not meet the initial requirements (performance, presence, etc.) would not be eligible for CA delegations. This would encourage validators to meet these criteria through their work and community engagement.

Regardless of these approaches, each validator has the opportunity to increase their visibility, engage with the community, and add value to attract more delegations to their nodes. This would strengthen the validator community’s image and demonstrate the project’s unity.

14

I have a concern about CSPR.live performance. The newly joined validators would show their performance directly rather than 360 era summary. So lets say my performance starts with 80 and boom I’m disqualified. This is also very true about testnet and maybe even more important for it.

Also when a validator is out of the active set it doesnt get a performance rating so this raises the question my node can go offline 0% for an era and have no performance for 10 eras and then become a validator again but my performance wont drop below 98% because I wasnt a validator for 10 eras. Maybe we should set a rule about maximum concurrent inactive periods like 2-3?
Just raising awareness @kara @michaelsteuer

15

I have been considering a solution that could utilize CA delegations to strengthen the quality of services provided while contributing to the proper functioning of the blockchain.
At times, we encounter issues related to servers, which impact the rewards for validators and delegators. These disruptions can compromise the network’s stability and reliability, directly affecting performance and the trust of delegators.

To address this, it is essential to strengthen our network of nodes and prevent outages.

Some proposals have already been made, such as introducing mandatory minimum fees for all nodes to cover server-related costs.

If such an option is adopted, it would aim to ensure that validators can provide a high-quality service that benefits the blockchain’s operation. For instance, each node could receive a monthly delegation from CA equivalent to $150 in $CSPR rewards.

These allocations would help cover the costs of primary and/or backup servers. While some servers are significantly more expensive, most of us currently use more affordable configurations. This flexibility could encourage validators to invest more in robust and redundant infrastructure.

This allocation could be granted to anyone meeting the criteria defined in our earlier discussions. These criteria, established in collaboration with validators, will ensure a fair distribution aligned with the network’s needs. Additionally, the allocation could be adjusted every three months based on the value of $CSPR.

This measure could be implemented as part of the transition to Condor. It may provoke some dissatisfaction, particularly among certain delegators (including mine, as I am not particularly inclined to increase my fees). However, it is clear that the validator node network must become more robust and responsive. This initiative includes the ability to seamlessly switch from a primary node to a backup node in case of issues, ensuring continuous service that benefits the entire ecosystem.

1 Like
16

" 1. Participation in monthly Validator Connect calls."

This requirement is a bit hard - since many (myself) may not be able to attend the calls because of timezone differences?

1 Like
17

tiebreak performance sscore, ie running two three testnet nodes Solana has something simillar

1 Like
19

The vision of decentralization and the proposed commission limitations are highly valuable, as they emphasize the importance of empowering smaller validators. However, it’s equally important to acknowledge the significant contributions of top validators. Completely sidelining them could undervalue the critical role these validators play in maintaining network stability and performance.

A balanced approach might involve prioritizing larger delegations for smaller validators to support their growth, while still offering smaller delegations to top validators as a gesture of recognition. This would promote fairness and inclusivity, ensuring all validators have the opportunity to benefit from CA’s delegations, while keeping decentralization at the forefront.

I hope this perspective can also be taken into account, as it seeks to establish a more comprehensive delegation policy aligned with the network’s overarching goals.
A balanced approach could be to allocate larger delegations to smaller validators to support their growth, while still providing smaller delegations to top validators as a mark of recognition. This approach would reflect fairness and inclusivity, giving all validators a chance to benefit from CA’s delegations while prioritizing decentralization.

I hope this perspective also can be considered, as it aims to create a more holistic delegation policy that aligns with the network’s goals.

1 Like