Easy2Stake, Top 5 validator in Game of Chains, Replicated Security on the Comos Hub
The launch of Interchain Security (ICS), was perhaps the most important upgrade on the Cosmos Hub, after Stargate.
Security has been a fundamental topic to the growth of any crypto ecosystem. Simply put, there’s really no point in building on an unsecured blockchain.
Cut to Replicated Security, what is it, and what does it bring to the table?
Replicated Security is a form of shared security, it’s a way for several applications in the Cosmos Hub to basically share security. So, it’s not enough to compromise a secured consumer chain, you will have to deal with the provider chain of the entire Cosmos Hub. It’s very simple conceptually really — when a chain launches a consumer chain from the Cosmos Hub, that chain is secured by the full Cosmos market capital which means it’s run by full validators and gets the entire security of the Cosmos Hub validator set. This means the cost to censor and control a consumer chain is equal to the cost to censor and control the Cosmos Hub itself.
‘Replicated’ means that the entire provider chain’s validator set is required (there’s no opting-out) to validate a consumer chain. Validators cannot individually opt in or out, and misbehavior such as double-signing or downtime in producing consumer chain blocks carries the same penalties as it does on the provider chain.
How is it different from Opt-in Security (also known as ICS v2)?
Opt-in security is when validators can decide whether to validate or not on a particular consumer chain; when you want a consumer chain instead of putting it in a government proposal saying “Does everyone agree we want to run this consumer chain?” you can just create transactions and validators can opt-in to validate. The conclusion was that opt-in security cannot work, and had a fatal flow — even if a validator set as a whole is secure, that does not mean that any subset of that validator set is secure. This led to the conclusion that any subset of validators opting into a consumer chain could have a malicious majority.
Mesh Security, also known as Layered security or v3.
Mesh Security is the concept that you would have the validator sets of several different blockchains combined to provide security to one consumer chain. In Mesh — the delegators delegate the tokens out to the validators of the consumer chain. The objective of Mesh Security is two chains securing each other. So people from the Cosmos Hub can stake on Osmosis, for instance, and people on Osmosis can stake on validators Cosmos Hub validators. In that case, the Cosmos Hub, if you adopted it, would be both the provider and the consumer of Mash Security. And any replicated consumer chains from that point would get all the extra security benefits of the Cosmos Hub.
The difference between Mesh and Replicated is that in the Replicated Security consumer chains get one governance proposal. Once they’re in, they’re in, it’s yes or no. The full validators set of the Cosmos Hub and the full security of the Cosmos Hub.
Although Mesh Security and Replicated Security are different, both accomplish the same thing. So it’s not one versus the other, these are not exclusive solutions, it’s something that should be combined, and one can get the benefits from both.
Now, before Replicated Security was launched, Cosmos Hub ran a testnet program called Game of Chains. Game of Chains (GoC) was an incentivized testnet program designed to help validators develop confidence around Interchain Security (ICS) and provide a public platform where this new technology can be thoroughly tested. Through the various GoC phases, validators were expected to build an understanding of ICS and help us discover interesting attack vectors. At the end of the testnet program, Easy2Stake came in the top 5 validators.
During the testnet program, Easy2Stake was involved in voting on `create-consumer-chain, stop-consumer-chain` proposals and validating the 1st block for all tested consumer chains through the program. The Easy2Stake team of validators also ran bridges between provider & consumer chains (necessary to keep the same validator-set on chains) and tested the Slashing Rate Limiter — the mechanism that protects the Cosmos Hub against the worst-case scenario of a malicious consumer chain binary which slashes many validators as part of an attack. More on their effort and methodology here. As an early adopter of Replicated Security, Easy2Stake was there from the testing phase of Interchain Security, validating their involvement in the consumer chain, but also validating the fact that Replicated Security works.
At the beginning of May 2023, the Neutron Consumer Chain is being launched. The proposal to bring the Neutron consumer chain to the Cosmos Hub is on-chain now. As a validator on Cosmos, Easy2Stake has to run a new node for every consumer chain secured by the Hub.
Why does Replicated security matter? On a practical note, it came as a solution to lowering the cost while increasing the growth potential of Cosmos chains. On a more conceptual note, it’s a great opportunity to start a conversation around the governance and business relationships between provider and consumer chains.
Connect with Easy2Stake on the following channels:
Website: https://www.easy2stake.com/
e-mail: contact@easy2stake.com
telegram: https://t.me/easy2stake
twitter: https://twitter.com/Easy2Stake
