Rules of Practice for Validators

[oitots]

As mentioned before in Discord.
Suggestion for Validators:
I went through a whole lot of research on cosmosvalidators for the airdrop genesis files. I noticed it before on other chains but only when you dig-in you really see the magnitude of it. It was actually concerning to me, how many validators have Cosmos or very close terms in their moniker, but also how many of them have been actually jailed. It's very misleading for delegators, especially people who don't follow everything every day or are not on twitter constantly, that they think those validators are part of the "team". The same like people thought about Wosmongton on Osmosis chain.

People put trust in the name and many get harmed by doing so.
I hope that GnoLand will consider those misleading names and actually don't allow, monikers or names that come close to Gnoland, Gnomes, .... or other close references to be used by validators.

I hope people will finally start seeing that decentralisation is not as easy to accomplish, especially if not every person uses their own voting power.

I know that we'll have a different voting system on GnoLand but with rumours of a second chain being launched, I urge people to think about this.

With the launch of Teritori, I see exactly the same, where I seriously have my questions about the Teritori core team running 2 official validators. If there are some extra insiders or "friends" running a validator, Sybil attacks are very likely to happen and votes can be easily manipulated if stakers don't use their own voting power.
They are planning to implement a voting cap of 3-7% as they mentioned but if a core team is running multiple validators, that won't help a lot.

I'd like to see suggestions here on how we as a community can accomplish more decentralisation and what do you expect that validators do or you don't want them to do, besides keeping the chain safe, voting and keeping your tokens safe.

[oitots]

A big problem is that most staking platforms and wallets use a different UX/UI design, hence why I'm in favour of a chains with their own staking platform with a clear UX/UI design that is geared towards information and ease of use.

The way Kujira made their diagram is one of the best I've seen so far. Even the red colour of the top validators has a psychological effect to not stake with them. The hoover function is great,( I don't know if it works on mobile)

But I'd like to see more info on the Validators

1. Validators should have 2-3 or more ways of communication they need to add to their profile. This could be Twitter, Email, Telegram, Berty, .... it's up to them to choose but this should be mandatory imo. They should make announcements on these channels on voting, slashing, being jailed, ....

2. Validators should let people know what language they communicate in and also make sure they keep their word on doing so. This could be shown with little flags or Unicode on their profile.

3. Personally I think validators should be doxxed with a minimum of information that would be shared with a core member of the chain, a DAO but there's no need to bring that publicly if they don't want to. Is it 1 person, is it a company, VC, member of a core team, white-label, .... I believe we have the right to know that as delegators.

4. Validators claiming slash protection, should also be able to show the proof that they actually have that liquidity, this again doesn't have to be in public but can be done the same way as the point above. This could also be set on their profile with a symbol.

5. Validators endorsing other validators can lead to "gang mentality". You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours is not wrong and definitely not when it's technically but helping their "friends" getting more delegations from the community is leading to more centralisation. If they want to help other validators, they can use their own stakes for that.

6. Validators with promises of extra incentives? This is a very tricky one if you want to keep a free market. I don't know what the best solution is to that. Validators can bring out NFT's for example but if projects decide to airdrop more to the holders of these NFT's, who's to blame for that? As we've seen with Orbital Apes, it can lead to serious centralisation and security issues if people (by a way of a thank you) all delegate to the issuer of those NFT's.

7. Validators that are part of the core team of a chain or project, should be known and also have a symbol on the profile. It can be a positive thing but it can also have a negative impact on decentralisation. If 2 core team members run a validator and are highly ranked, they can just vote for profit instead of the good of the community. It wouldn't be the first time.

I ask everyone to discuss these points, add some more points or tell people why you disagree with something.
We're only trying to come to a draft consensus that we can then bring forward to chains and more people.

You have the power to establish something, use it!