Lido on Solana: Validator's Set Vision

Lido applies the same mission to all blockchains they participate in - to make staking simple, secure, and decentralized. Each of the networks has its own specifics when it comes to "what a good validator set means”.

We propose a new way of developing the Lido validator's set on Solana and in our opinion, a sustainable and solid set should follow 3 principles:

1. Validator set should be decentralized

According to Solana Beach, there are currently 1,788 validators on Solana, giving the network a Nakamoto Coefficient of 25. This means that the top 25 validators control enough staked Solana to collude and attack the network. The staking pool program emerged with the goal to redistribute the stakes more evenly across the network. In our view, to create a decentralized set, we must adhere to the following rules:

Increase the number of independent entities that create and maintain infrastructure for the network.
Increase censorship resistance by reducing the concentration of stake in the same data centers and jurisdictions.
Not distribute stake to the superminority group of validators.

To make the Lido on Solana validator set more decentralized we plan to:

Not add validators nodes from the superminority group to the Lido validator set
Increase the number of distributed nodes in the pool by removing barriers in the form of 100% commission nodes.
Bring in validators from other ecosystems and non-crypto projects.
Train new operators to configure and run nodes.
Assist validators with server configuration and data center location.
Onboard independent validators into the Solana cluster and Lido pool

2. The set must be attractive for validators

To ensure a highly available and secure staking infrastructure, it is critical to consider the long-term sustainability of the operator and the ability to fund new equipment. Operators are responsible for managing risks, maintaining their node, ensuring the highest uptime possible, troubleshooting errors. To make the set more attractive to validators, we must adhere to the following rules:

Operators must earn well enough to build a profitable, reliable staking business.
Validator nodes must be able to participate in subsidy programs (ex. SFDP)
Operators should receive marketing support to attract stakes.

To make the Lido on Solana validator set more attractive to validators, we will do the following:

Change the smart contract by removing 100% of nodes and adding the ability to use a public node in a cluster to participate in the Lido program
Create a P&L tool to calculate validator yield and share it with the community.
Provide marketing support to validators in Lido’s set to increase the stake on their public node and help to build a profitable staking business.

3. The validator set has to bring value to the network

Validator performance metrics are, in our opinion, one of the most important criteria for developing the Solana ecosystem. The faster, cheaper, and more sustainable the network, the easier it is to attract investments, partners, and NFT/DeFi/P2E project developers, leading to the development of a sustainable community and product ecosystem. For DeFi users, speed of transactions is important; for oracles, the ability to quickly provide more detailed data on a large number of quotes; for developers, a better user experience; for stakers, greater rewards on average and higher SOL price growth potential.

To make the set more productive and sustainable the following rules should be adhered to:

Operators must understand the value of metrics and be able to compare their performance with the best on the network
Operators must be notified about software updates
Operators must understand how to update without downtime

To make the Lido on Solana validator set more stable and productive, we will do the following:

Publish our vision of "good validator" performance metrics
Make a public dashboard displaying validator metrics
Make a system of alerts for problems with validator performance in the pool
Conduct education and share best practices for validator management in Solana

Conclusion

There are ~384.5M SOL staked on the Solana network, of which only ~9.7M SOL is distributed among various staking pools. P2P has partnered with Lido and stSOL since their launch as a validator and has been involved in the development of TVL in collaboration with Lido through incentives, integrations, and more. We see great potential for the development of liquid staking, which will increase economic activity and the speed of the economy in a decentralized network.

Three key principles will form the basis of our new strategy:

Truly decentralize the validator network by simplifying entry and adding validators from other ecosystems.
Make the network economically attractive for validators by dropping 100% nodes and marketing support from Lido
Ensure that the validator set works better for the network to ensure transactions are passed and various applications are running on the network.

If you have ideas or suggestions for achieving our principles, we are always open to community feedback and consider it very important.

Join the new validator set! Together we will make Solana even more decentralized and sustainable!

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Pavel Pavlov

Product manager at p2p.org

Kava Kava 10 Upgrade Launch

Kava is an open sourced, cross-chain, decentralised lending platform that runs on the Cosmos blockchain. The Cosmos ecosystem, referred to as the internet of blockchains, is a decentralised network of scalable and interoperable blockchains each with an independent governance structure. Interoperability is achieved through inter blockchain communications protocol (IBC) and is the key to simplify the access and interaction of a wide range of blockchain-enabled products and services. The ecosystem has and is still growing at a remarkable rate - attracting an impressive amount of attention in the crypto space. However, it still has some distance to cover in order to catch up with Ethereum in terms of attracting developers and the amount of applications it supports. The Kava 10 upgrade brings a unique co-chain architecture that combines Ethereum and Cosmos into a single, scalable network. Ethereum is massive. It is the 2nd blockchain in terms of market cap and has arguably the largest user and developer community and the most applications of all networks, but such popularity has also led to congestion. The resulting high transaction fees became an issue that could stall the growth of the ecosystem leading to the rise of layer 2 solutions to solve these inherent scalability issues. Ethereum also certainly loses the comparison with the Cosmos ecosystem in terms of interoperability, requiring cross-chain bridges to achieve this feature. Nevertheless, the utility of <a href="https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/evm/?ref=p2p.org">EVM smart contracts</a> and a vast and established community of Solidity developers bring great value to Ethereum. Kava 10 brings together the best of both worlds (representing a combined market cap of 300B USD and a large user base), serving as a IBC-compatible EVM-based chain where users will now have all the desired utility and features of Ethereum while benefiting from the fast finality and high-throughput of Tendermint PoS implementation. What's more, Cosmos and Ethereum users will soon be able to transfer this value amongst and between both ecosystems using IBC and emerging bridge projects. This is provided by the new co-chain architecture of Kava 10. The existing Kava chain was transformed into the Cosmos co-chain, while a new Ethereum co-chain was introduced. They are linked by a translator module and are secured by a common Tendermint consensus engine. Such architecture enables users to work seamlessly with both environments at the same time. <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/9fabfef84btmAYt-3-J__yFhFcWroWs9V-4uZB-JE33jHiT6KstcIM2RYBujXB6oB853MjqtE9b-JhYLQjFvk0PvEs7v3a_xkV1Jqbwfmzx1BB3JTx5HHZsCS4jZNvfzVg40-4TL0xsKZlt_3Q" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy"></figure><h3 id="what-features-does-kava-10-bring">What features does KAVA 10 bring?</h3>The ability to use Ethereum Dapps on alternative blockchains is on the rise. Moonbeam, Evmos, and others have already created their EVM to take advantage of the opportunity. Now comes Kava. With the Kava 10 launch, the opportunities for both developers and users have just expanded massively. The main feature allows users to wrap and unwrap $KAVA as an ERC-20 token on metamask, making it usable across multiple apps on the ETH ecosystem. This is a huge step in bridging the Cosmos and Ethereum ecosystems together. Kava 10 turns on the Kava Network’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which brings a big boost to DeFi protocols through access to various Automated Market Maker (AMM) smart contracts, oracles, subgraph indexing powered by The Graph and more. With the launch of the Ethereum Bridge, projected to be released in Q4 2022 users and developers will be able to wrap IBC assets as ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum chain while Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens can be wrapped on the Cosmos chain to be used across both DeFi ecosystems. This expands the opportunities and amount of incentives that can be provided which benefits both users and the protocols. This upgrade comes in the wake of the Kava Pioneer Program, which has recently concluded with the goal of developing the Kava ecosystem, rewarding both projects and developers that contributed to it. With KAVA now available on the Ethereum network, the goal is to make KAVA adoption more mainstream. The Pioneer program is now followed by Kava Rise - a $750M developers rewards program. It is funded by 80% out of a 100% inflation which has been turned on for a year’s period in March 2022 - a great sign of the project’s commitment to support growth and development based on the new co-chain architecture. Coupled with the launch of the Ethereum bridge later this year, the growth instigated by the Pioneer & Rise programs is expected to continue for the Kava ecosystem.<h3 id="conclusion">Conclusion </h3>What Ethereum lacks Cosmos delivers. With Kava 10, developers can easily build on a network where its users will not suffer from high fees and slow throughput. In the end, this upgrade is a step forward towards a multi-chain future where multiple networks can coexist and benefit each other serving various needs. <h3 id="kava-special-offerfree-staking-for-3-months">KAVA special offer - free staking for 3 months!</h3>To celebrate the Kava 10 launch we have decided to create a special offer for<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24KAVA&src=cashtag_click&ref=p2p.org"> KAVA</a> holders! Stake 50 000+ KAVA to receive 100% cashback on our commission for three months as well as individual client support with custom reporting! To get started - fill in our <a href="https://p2p.org/networks/kava?ref=p2p.org">special form</a> or get in touch with our business development manager on <a href="https://t.me/shmemand?ref=p2p.org">Telegram directly</a>. We will provide you with everything you need to get started! <a href="https://p2p.org/?ref=p2p.org">P2P Validator</a> is a world-leading staking provider with the best industry security practices and proven expertise. We provide comprehensive due-diligence of digital assets and offer only high class staking opportunities. At the time of the latest update, more than 2.9 billion USD value is staked with P2P Validator by over 25,000 delegators across 25+ networks.

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P2P's Stance on Terra Current State of Affairs

At P2P Validator we have been closely following the current situation with Terra. By now everyone has had an opportunity to bring forward a solution and an <a href="https://agora.terra.money/t/terra-ecosystem-revival-plan-2-updated-and-final/18498?ref=p2p.org">important proposal</a> has just been put up for onchain voting. We would like to express our position concerning the current state of things and ways to move forward.In our governance decisions, we aim to maximize value for the community, represented by the following three groups:<ul><li>LUNA and UST holders from before the depeg event. This is the core community of the Terra ecosystem, including some long-time holders. We can assume that most of them had some degree of involvement, not just a short-term speculative interest. This is also the group which has suffered most from the fast crash of their investments. That is why we believe that any course of action should first prioritise the interests of these people. Inside this group, UST holders should be prioritised higher than LUNA holders, because the former invested on a promise of a low-risk, stable asset, while the latter worked with a naturally volatile asset - thus the difference in approach.</li><li>Protocol teams and validators. These are the key stakeholders for building value for the ecosystem, who have invested time and money to facilitate Terra’s growth. In addition to being harmed by the current situation, these are the only actors who can rebuild the ecosystem, thus creating new value, which can be used to repay other community members who suffered from the depeg. That is why we have to keep their interests in mind, as a second-level priority.</li><li>Post depeg holders of LUNA and UST. We should give a lower priority to their interests. These holders joined in on an extremely volatile asset, taking a risk to gain high rewards. The community is not responsible for providing them with an artificial safety net. </li></ul>And there is also TFL - a major stakeholder, whose actions during the crisis are questionable, with some legal action expected against them soon. We don’t believe that any plan should focus on protecting TFL as they should have been fully aware of the risks they were taking.To sum up, old holders > protocol teams & validators > new holders >> TFL.Our options are currently few - we can either find a way to compensate the victims with existing funds (presumably from TFL/LFG) and stop the chain OR try to build new value to do that while also saving the ecosystem (presumably in the form of a new chain). The former option relies on the good will of TFL who are committed to option 2. There is just no valuable asset left in Terra to do that, so it seems like the only option we have is to build. The building option can follow three general paths:<ol><li>New chain under TFL’s leadership (i.e. <a href="https://agora.terra.money/t/terra-ecosystem-revival-plan-2-updated-and-final/18498?ref=p2p.org">proposal 1623</a>) - we can save the ecosystem and the community, try to bring new value, albeit with a dubious leader ahead of the process, who, however, has been the only one capable of decisive actions on the ecosystem level since May 8. We will only be supportive of this proposal if we see a clear indication that TFL and LFG are excluded from the token distribution, TFL has a compelling vision for the new project, and TFL is not perceived as toxic by the community. We can not vote YES for such a proposal at the moment.The issues are: only one address excluded for TFL and none for LFG, no clear vision for the new chain, general disbelief from the community. However, we would support introducing an incentive program for TFL (e.g. tiered unlock of funds tied to the new chain’s market cap) if the aforementioned issues are solved - otherwise there is no reason for them to lead and participate if all their accounts are excluded at genesis.</li><li>New chain without TFL. Same as above, but the progress is to be driven by the community (most likely protocol teams + validators). This is a fresh start, but the success without a leadership structure in such turbulent conditions is questionable. We will be happy to support the proposals that follow this path if we see a new leadership team among the community members who can drive this endeavour.</li><li>Move projects to other chains and restart there. These might be a good option for some specific teams, but it leaves the victims of depeg alone.w</li></ol>P.S. Separately, there is an alternative path explored by the ‘Burn LUNA’ <a href="https://station.terra.money/proposal/1273?ref=p2p.org">proposal</a>. This one in particular lacks sufficient detail to be accepted in such form. Specifically, it does not describe any clear benefits for the stakeholders, and the implementation plan is ambiguous. Nevertheless, we will conduct additional research to see if this line of thinking could be promising for the UST / LUNA holders.<hr>About P2P Validator<a href="https://p2p.org/?ref=p2p.org">P2P Validator</a> is a world-leading staking provider with the best industry security practices and proven expertise. We provide comprehensive due-diligence of digital assets and offer only high class staking opportunities. At the time of the latest update, more than 2.9 billion of USD value is staked with P2P Validator by over 25,000 delegators across 25+ networks.

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