The Kusama network has been successfully converted from PoA consensus to PoS consensus.And it is basically stable After several upgrades. On November 19th, PolkaWorld and Parity jointly organized an online AMA with the topic of “Kusama node operation mechanism”, and invited Parity research analyst Joe to share the latest developments of Kusama.
As a Kusama validator, Wetez participated in the AMA with questions that we concern (when to open the KSM transfer function and Kusama’s voting mechanism, etc.).
Q1:Can you share with us the latest progress of Kusama first?
A1:We have made a lot of progress on Kusama over the last few weeks. In one week we pushed 10 updates.
With these, we got the validator set up to 100 active validators, improved block time consistency, and tine tuned client performance (memory footprint, CPU utilization).
We also enabled the Council and have a solid Council to take part in governance processes.
The last week has been quite stable, which may not be exciting, but helps give us confidence moving forward.
Q2:What is Kusama’s validators mechanism? Could you pls give us a brief introduction？
A2:Validators are elected using Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS) and an election algorithm based off of research by Phragmen.
The mechanism allows users to nominate up to 16 validators and the algorithm will automatically allocate stake in the optimal way.
What is optimal? First, it will try to maximize the amount at stake. Second, it will try to spread that stake as evenly as possible.
This ensures not only the greatest security for the network, but also the maximum return for the nominators because their nominations will apply to validators with less stake. Therefore, they will have a higher pro-rata share of the rewards.
Elections are conducted every era (approximately 24 hours, although right now we are changing era faster at a rate of about every 4 hours.
Q3:Will the NPoS mechanism lead to fewer and fewer people willing to be a validator?
A3:Actually, NPoS should lead to more people willing to be a validator.
Because our rewards are based on points accumulated during an era, and not on the amount at stake, there is an incentive to create more validators when the slots open up.
Our goal is to get to 1000 validators, and already we have seen healthy growth with Kusama at 100 (plus 40 more who want to be validators).
We will keep opening up slots, but for now the priority is stabilization of consensus.
NPoS is Nominated Proof of Stake. It allows nominators to nominate up to 16 validators, and the nomination algorithm optimizes the spread.
We have docs on NPoS on the wiki, which I believe has a translation. I will find and post here later in the AMA.
does the average time stable at 6s means the consensus is good？
A stable block time is a good indication that the block production engine is working properly.
We separate block production from finality in our modules, so average time is a good input to consensus.
Q4:Why do we need stake or get voted more than 40k KSM to become a validator and now they just need 10 KSM ？
A4:When I checked this morning, the minimum was 3400 KSM. That said, we are in a very early stage and some of the slashing events caused validators to get kicked out for an era.
So there were eras when lower staked validators were able to get into the set just by being in the next up queue. Once GRANDPA is more stable, I expect this problem to go away.
We are actually trying to get the election done in an off-chain worker, which would not slow down the last block in an era.
Q5:The community heard that the current inflation is 10% , but the validators still gets the rewards according to the staking rate, and the extra additional issuance all goes into the Treasury. I want to know Why web3 additional issue so many KSM? What’s this for？
A5:Web3 isn’t issuing anything. The network’s inflation is fixed at 10%. This is divided between NPoS rewards and the Treasury. NPoS rewards account for all of the 10% when it operates in an optimal configuration of validators.
Anyone is able to create a Treasury spending proposal, and the Kusama Council collectively decides on which proposals should be funded.
In general, those funds are to be used to help develop the Kusama network outside of the direct NPoS rewards, such as for wider network security (like future audits and penetration testing), creating incentives for adoption and community building, investing in infrastructure development, or supporting infrastructure maintenance costs.
Q6:Does the slashed KSM all in treasury before ? How will these slashed KSM work in Treasury？
A6:The KSM that was slashed before has all been refunded. In the future, about 90% of slashed funds will go to the Treasury.
Distribution of Treasury funds is always through Treasury proposals, so as said before, always transparent.
A7:When KSM can transfer?
Q7:We are still working out a few bugs that must be corrected before we enable transfers. I think we are getting close, but we must get it absolutely right.
After we remove sudo and enable transfers, it will take longer to upgrade the network and fix bugs. So we are being patient and want to be confident that it is safe to do.
Q8:Do you have any suggestions for the nominators?
A8:Nominating will be more profitable if you nominate more validators. Phragmen’s algorithm will allocate your stake in the way that will get you the best return, and the more options that you give it, the better job it can do.
However, make sure you do your research into whom you are nominating, because nominators get slashed too when a validator misbehaves. You can change nominations quite quickly (every era), so if you are not happy with a validator then you can choose a new set.
Q9:Now the staking rate with 100 validators is 27.1%. When and how the staking rate can reach 50%? Is need to add more validators or something？
A9:Once we enable transfers, it will be easier for people to set up their stash and controller accounts and participate in staking. So that is one limiting factor.
There is no need to add more validators, as each validator can simply have more at stake behind it.
That said, it will not hurt to have more validator options for people to nominate. Perhaps this will make people more comfortable choosing one.
Q11:Some validators have a lot of tokens, they can create a lot of nodes, but now the node number is limited, which is centralized to a certain extent. Is there any corresponding solution for this situation?
A11:Yes, it is true that validators with large stake can have multiple validators running. But we do have protection.’
We use superlinear slashing, meaning the more validators who commit an offense, the higher the slash.
So if 20 validators are offline then the slash percent will be much higher than if only 3 validators are offline.
In this sense, if you have more validators, then you not only have a risk of more absolute funds being lost to slash, but a risk of losing a higher percentage.
Yes we are working constantly to identify the error. We are close and are developing a fix for it.
Q11:The roadmap after enable transfer? Like parachain，slots，parathreads etc, all of those thing will test on Kusama before launch on Polkadot?
A11:Yes, exactly. We have a local version of a parachain working and are continuing to develop cumulus to let people connect parachains.
We also hope to build a strong Kusama community and make people engaged through community initiatives like games and competitions.
Q12:Will polkadot affect Kusama when it launch？When web3 launch Polkadot？
A12:Polkadot launch will not be related to Kusama. We plan to continue supporting Kusama in addition to Polkadot.
Around the New Year.
In the frequent upgrades of Kusama, Wetez node has been stable and not been slashed ,welcome to vote to Wetez, the code 4ogpq.
