The Axelar Foundation Genesis Delegation Program

The Axelar Foundation delegates mainnet stake to certain validator teams. Here we describe one program under which the Foundation will delegate stake at the time of AXL token launch.

Executive summary

• The Genesis Delegation Program is one program under which the Axelar Foundation delegates stake to mainnet validators. There will be other delegation programs in the future.
• The goal of the Program is to delegate stake to mainnet validators for the four-month time period beginning at token launch.
• Delegations during this four-month period are intended to be stable and unchanging. But changes might occur for special circumstances such as poor validator performance.
• The Program terminates after four months, at which time the Foundation will evaluate the Program and make more delegations under a different program.
• The Program will aim to delegate 30% of the total supply of AXL tokens in circulation from the Foundation. (See the Axelar token release schedule.) Thus, Program delegations will start small and increase as tokens are released to the community over time.
  - Example: Suppose 20 million AXL tokens are released to the community at token launch. The Program will delegate 6 million AXL tokens on that date.
  - Suppose that, one month after token launch, a total of 50 million AXL tokens have been released. The Program will increase its total delegation to 15 million.
• Approximately 50 mainnet validator slots will receive a delegation under the Program by token launch.
• The Program will include two delegation buckets, based on performance metrics described below. Those in Bucket 1 receive 2x the delegation of those in Bucket 2. This is designed to incentivize good performance among validators.
• Delegation amounts per validator as a fraction of total delegations under the Program:
  - 4 / 7 ≈ 57.14% to 20 validators in bucket 1 @ 2 / 70 ≈ 2.84% each.
  - 3 / 7 ≈ 42.86% to 30 validators in bucket 2 @ 1 / 70 ≈ 1.42% each.
  - Example: Suppose the Program has delegated 7 million AXL tokens in total at token launch. Delegations to each validator are as follows:
  → Bucket 1: 200,000 AXL.
  → Bucket 2: 100,000 AXL.
  - Example: Suppose that, one month after token launch, the Program has delegated 14 million AXL tokens in total. Total delegations to each validator become:
  → Bucket 1: 400,000 AXL.
  → Bucket 2: 200,000 AXL.
• Some Axelar mainnet validators already have stake, delegated to them by the Foundation prior to this Program. Any such validator who is selected under the Program will not lose any existing delegation. Instead, suppose validator V already has X AXL delegation and suppose the Program would award Y AXL delegation to V.
  - If X > Y then V receives no additional delegation under the Program.
  - If X < Y then V instead receives Y - X AXL delegation under the Program.
  - If V is not selected under the Program, the Foundation will undelegate all its existing stake away from V.

How do I become a mainnet validator?

• Spin up a validator on testnet-2 as per the instructions here, complete the validator questionnaire. (A testnet-1 validator is sufficient if you already have it. New validators may wish to join testnet-2.)
• Run a testnet validator for a minimum of three weeks with good performance before you can move to the next step.
• Validator performance on both testnet & mainnet will be measured as described below in “Measuring performance.”
• The team will delegate stake on testnet-2 to at most 10 new validators each month for three months.
• Q: How does the Foundation select validators for mainnet? A: Combo of objective performance metrics (see “Measuring performance”) and strategic alignment (see “Priorities”).
• Most mainnet active slots will be filled by token launch. New validators should not expect to receive a delegation under the Genesis Program. That said, new validators may be onboarded under the Genesis Program in special circumstances such as:
  - An existing validator is removed from the active set.
  - The size of the Axelar mainnet active set increases.
• Mainnet validators are expected to continue to maintain their own testnet validator nodes.

Priorities

The Axelar Foundation prioritizes delegation to validators with the following properties:

• Proven track record of good performance on Axelar testnet (more on this below).
• For all supported EVM chains: run a full node, register as a chain maintainer, vote consistently and correctly.
• Have a dedicated team.
• Have experience validating other Cosmos chains & running nodes for EVM chains.
• Have a monitoring and alerting system so as to discover and repair problems with minimal disruption in service. Examples: missing heartbeat, missed/incorrect EVM votes.
• Run and maintain your own external EVM chain RPC nodes.
• Guarantee high availability through geographically distributed data centers.
• Contribute to diversity and decentralization of the validator set.
• Participate in any on-chain Axelar governance votes.
• Community contributions such as educational content, running relayers, participation in community channels, contributions to open source software, and other community resources.

Measuring performance

The Foundation will base delegation decisions in part on the following objective performance metrics for both mainnet and testnet:

• Success rate for heartbeat messages.
• Participation rate for keygen, sign protocols.
• Jail frequency, average jail response time.
• Downtime frequency, average downtime.
• How many external chains supported.
• Responsiveness to network upgrades (within 1–2 hours).
• Unannounced spot checks for:
  - Voting correctly on EVM transactions.
  - Keygen, sign eligibility status.

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