Change the initial number of validators to 50

[1xCL]

Given the number of currently active participants on Game of Stakes, I propose that we change the initial number of validators on mainnet launch to be 50 from 100.

[1xCL]

This proposal has been submitted as a Proposal #7 on Game of Stake 6.

[zmanian]

I think the plan was always for 100 validators at launch.

[1xCL]

Yes and this is to change the plan.

We will have leaner start to anticipate early changes and bugs and 50 will bring a good competition for spots. I'm afraid 100 will bring one team operating multiple validators.

[zmanian]

Why do you want to reduce the number of validators?

[zmanian]

The validators won't have equal voting power.

[zmanian]

We should always aim to have slightly more validator slots than credible validators.

[1xCL]

I think 100 is more than slight. 100 was set long time ago without any data. Now we have data from GoS and 100 looks too many.

[zmanian]

You haven't explained what about Game of Stakes tells you that 100 validator slots is too many.

[adrianbrink]

I don't see the advantage of changing from 100 to 50.

It won't make mainnet more stable to launch with 50, because stability is a factor of selecting good validators through delegation. We can easily have 50 shitty people as long as they only get little delegation.

The downside though is that we are making this way more restrictive than it needs to be and are simply excluding a lot of potential smaller validators that want to prove themselves. I would actually be in favour of increasing the number of validator slots to 200.

An increase comes at almost no cost but has potentially many benefits, such as giving more power to individual atom holders to run their own validators.

[1xCL]

On GoS6, we currently have 90 "active" validators and among them we have about 70 validators who have been bothered to develop and use an auto-delegate script. And among them, I personally believe one team operating more than one validator.

[adrianbrink]

You are stating the facts from GoS6, but you are not giving any arguments to support your claim that we should launch with 50 instead of 100 validators.

What are the benefits of this change?

[gbunea]

I personally don't see any advantages at the moment in reducing the number from 100 to 50. Also Adrian has some very valid points

[adrianbrink]

Just a clarification on the technical side.

We can launch with 100 validator slots, but we don't need to fill them all in order to start the network. This means that we can have 100 validator slots of which 30 are filled with active validators and 70 are empty. The chain still starts and makes progress and over time the remaining 70 slots can fill up.

[fkbenjamin]

I'm also against this for all the points mentioned above. Also, I don't see any reason a proposal on GoS6 can be used to decide anything for mainnet since voting power on GoS doesn't represent stakeholders in the actual network. So no matter the result, Proposal #7 on GoS should just be discarded.

[zmanian]

Yes GoS proposals are only binding on GoS

[cfl0ws]

100 feels about right to me. I hear the argument for starting small, then expanding. However, this would encourage stake centralization.

For example, in other networks where the validator number started small, the stake became quickly dominated by a small number of validators. Those validators are many times large stake holders who are simply staking to themselves.

Once that starts to happen, it's hard to slow it down or stop it. This makes it harder for smaller validators to break into the network.

[iammelea]

i am totally disagree in this because this is for centralization.=
change the initial number of validators on mainnet launch to be 50 from 100.

i am agree in this too. =
Adrian says : I would actually be in favour of increasing the number of validator slots to 200. =

and
I dont see any problem in running for mainnet 3 validators
meleaTrust-A
meleaTrust-B
meleaTrust-C

If tokens holders want to delegate to any of my validators, its your choice.

how can be sure than running only one validator can cover the expences for your validator service?

I do not see where it says one validator only for validator service.

i cant run 3 validators or more for my Cosmos validator service?

[1xCL]

Okay. I think I see good points here. But what if one well funded with a good team attemps to be multiple validators and hide their identity? (Which I think is the best case for the maximum profitability) With good infrastructures and PR team and easy early spots, they can secretly aggregate voting powers.

I agree with Zaki on "We should always aim to have slightly more validator slots than credible validators." But how many is slight and credible validators?

[sunnya97]

among them we have about 70 validators who have been bothered to develop and use an auto-delegate script

@winslyn There are valid reasons why a validator has not written auto-delegate scripts. Sikka chose not to run one as we preferred to use Game of Stakes to practice operational security and not keep our validator operator's account key hot.

[wimel]

I think lowering the number of validators from 100 to 50 would be worse, it would break a little decentralization and it would be easier to make certain types of attacks, I don't see it, more validators is better, but less I think isn't a good option

[1xCL]

Thank you guys for your valuable opinions. I'll close this issue.

[adrianbrink]

I'm also against this for all the points mentioned above. Also, I don't see any reason a proposal on GoS6 can be used to decide anything for mainnet since voting power on GoS doesn't represent stakeholders in the actual network. So no matter the result, Proposal #7 on GoS should just be discarded.
Yes GoS proposals are only binding on GoS

For that matter no proposal, even on mainnet, is binding. In the end any proposal is simply just signalling, but validators will still have to manually upgrade and can simply refuse to do so.

@fkbenjamin