Expansion of Current Validator Set

Background on current validator set and thought process

pSTAKE’s architecture mirrors the underlying PoS protocols’ staking mechanism as closely as possible, hence pSTAKE has partnered with some of the best-performing and most-reputed validators securing the underlying networks - Cosmos (ATOM) and Persistence (XPRT).

The validators securing the delegations received through pSTAKE are chosen from the active validators on the underlying chains. These validators receive the delegation through independent instances of the pBridge for both the supported networks. Current validator set on pSTAKE includes:

These validators were initially chosen for the following reasons:

  • User security:

    • pSTAKE required a set of experienced validators to bootstrap the product and ensure safety of the funds deposited by our users onto the platform.
    • Being the first liquid staking protocol issuing cross-chain representative assets through pBridge, we needed to ensure that the validators have the capability to support our sophisticated infrastructural requirements.
  • Multi-chain support:

    • pSTAKE has been built with a multi-chain vision, and we required our first set of validator partners to be experienced in securing multiple chains.
    • Our 6 validator partners actively validate on 40+ networks with a collective AUM of ~$9.5B and have actively engaged with the team to help us implement best practices and build a superior multi-chain user experience.
  • Protocol Security:

    • These validators are some of the best-performing validators with highly decentralized infrastructures and have established a trusted user-base on both the networks that pSTAKE currently supports and plans to support in the future.

Reason for expanding the validator set

pSTAKE has always strived to be at the forefront of innovation when it comes to ensuring the security of the supported Proof-of-Stake networks. While the current validators have helped us bootstrap the application, we realize the challenges faced by the Proof-of-Stake networks with respect to maintaining the decentralization of voting power.

Education around choosing the validators for delegating the assets has also been a challenge resulting in a lot of stake on most of the networks end up getting concentrated with the top 10-20% validators on the network, hurting the network’s decentralization goals.

pSTAKE addresses this issue by automatically distributing the received delegations equally amongst all its validator partners, without the user having to decide the validator to delegate to. Moreover, we will consistently keep increasing the validator set for individual networks, while making sure that all validators onboarded meet the minimum performance requirements. Hence, the delegations will be distributed amongst an increasing number of validators, furthering the decentralization of the underlying network.

Next Steps

Over the next couple of weeks, the pSTAKE team will be actively looking to add more validators to the existing validator sets (for both stkATOM and stkXPRT) and will be using this forum to transparently discuss the onboarding process.

In the future, with the launch of governance token $PSTAKE, the validator onboarding/removal process will be made governance-driven, where users/validators will be able to put in proposals to add/remove a validator to/from the existing set of validators for a particular supported network.

There are efforts being made to introduce a mechanism to score validators’ performance based on parameters like uptime, latency, data center decentralization, commission rate, existing delegation, etc. This scoring mechanism will complement the governance outcomes to take the final decision on adding/removing a particular validator.

Moreover, the scoring mechanism may also be used to rank the active validator partners and change the delegation distribution strategy from the current equal distribution strategy.

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This is very exciting, we at Lavender.Five Nodes have been following the development of pSTAKE for quite some time.

I look forward to seeing how this will play out!

Great news guys. We’ve been looking for this for quite long time. :wink:

Excellent news. Will be following with interest. We help to run the testnets over on Juno and can also recommend/vouch for some highly competent validators who have worked closely with us while we’ve gone through a rigorous series of testnets.

I already see a couple on this thread :wink:

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Great news! But make it possible for private validators to participate as well, not only for big ones!)) Take a look at Solana delegation program - it allows thousands of validators from different parts of the world to take part in their project through validation. Thank you!

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Fully agree with Sandyscalper - without private validators there will be no true decentralization.

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Completely agree with you. I support pStake from the very beginning. I am also LP provider. It would be great to become a validator for pStake.

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Totally agree with Sandyscalper! This will engage thousands of enthusiasts to participate in the project, making them loyal partners and active users of pStake.

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This is a great news. This way we can also increase the network security. We always ready to support you guys.

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