Energy Web’s Validators launch the first phase of the Validator dashboard

The Energy Web Chain Validator code of conduct defines operational, governance, and token economic responsibilities of Validator organizations

Zug, Switzerland, 14 April 2022 — Energy Web’s Validators are proud to announce the first phase of the EWC Validator Dashboard, a first-of-its-kind tool that significantly enhances transparency into the Validators’ operational and governance activities. The dashboard not only helps the Energy Web community better understand the roles and responsibilities of Validator organizations, but also enables Validators to hold themselves and their peers accountable for adhering to the EWC Validator Code of Conduct.

Summary
The EWC Validators voted to adopt a formal Code of Conduct in 2020 in order to establish clear standards for behavior across all three domains and strengthen community trust in the Energy Web Chain’s Proof of Authority consensus model, which relies on the reputation of Validators to maintain credibility.

To further improve transparency and enforcement of the Code, the EWC Validator community began developing a prototype dashboard in late 2021. Following months of iterative design and development, EWC Validator Dashboard is now in a public beta release. The dashboard is intended to highlight the contributions of Validator organizations to the EWC community, as well as automatically and objectively monitor Validators’ performance against Node Health, Governance & Community Participation, and EWT Block Reward Requirements of the Code.

Using data from the EWC block explorer, the Dashboard currently provides a detailed view into real-time and historical performance of each node, as well as an overview of validators’ EWT block reward stewardship as outlined in the Code. In the coming weeks, the dashboard will be enriched with new sources of data and additional visualizations to paint a more complete picture of validator performance and its broader impact on the EWC community.

Background & Initial Release
In December 2021 the EWC validators voted to amend the Code with more specific requirements related to Node Health, Governance & Community Participation, and EWT Block Reward stewardship in order to establish a more objective monitoring and enforcement mechanism. Since then, a validator subcommittee has worked to gather requirements and launch the initial version of the dashboard using publicly-available data from the EWC block explorer.

Due to the structure of the block explorer database, some metrics were not possible to derive and display for the initial version of the dashboard. Most notably, metrics related to the Minimum Balance Requirement of the Code are currently excluded because of data quality anomalies (persistent empty or missing records for certain addresses and dates in daily account balance tables), and metrics related to Governance and Community Participation are currently excluded due to challenges collecting and structuring relevant data from multiple externals sources into the dashboard backend. Validators and Energy Web are currently working together to address these limitations and expect to resolve the challenges in subsequent releases of the dashboard throughout Q2.

All users should note that in the beta release, there are two known issues that may impact user experience:

• Some browsers may throw an error when loading data or fail to load the page; the most common resolution is to clear the cache and reload the page. Based on testing, the most reliable browsers are Chrome, Firefox, and Brave. Issues occur more frequently in Safari and Edge.
• The dashboard metrics and visuals are derived from the EWC explorer database, and for performance, reasons are updated either hourly or daily; users may encounter brief periods of data gaps if accessing the dashboard while data is refreshing.

Energy Web Chain Validator Node Dashboard
The metrics and visualizations in the dashboard align with the operational, governance, and Energy Web Token stewardship requirements outlined in the Code. In the current beta release, the dashboard displays metrics related to the Node Health and EWT Block Reward requirements as follows:

• The Validator Node Health Status canvas provides a near-real-time (hourly look back) view of each node’s operational status (i.e. whether it is validating blocks consistently or not). Based on the current number of validators in the PoA consensus round and the EWC network's 5-second block time, each node is expected to validate at least 14 blocks per hour. Nodes that have validated at least 14 blocks in the last hour are considered healthy. If a node fails to achieve that threshold, the Validator receives a series of automated alerts; prolonged unplanned node outages are counted towards the Node Health requirement of the Code.

• The Reliability Score canvas provides a longer-term (30-day look back) view of each node’s operational performance and benchmarks it against the top-performing nodes in the network. There is natural variation in the number of blocks validated due to regular maintenance and minor issues, but assuming all nodes are performing well, then they should be within a relatively narrow range. “Best-in-class” performance is defined as the average number of blocks validated by the 5 top-performing nodes in the last month. All other nodes are assigned a reliability score of “Excellent” if their number of blocks validated is at least 90% of best-in-class, “Good” if the number is between 80–90%, and “Poor” if it is less than 80%.

• The Historical Block Production canvas shows the total number of blocks ever validated by each node. This metric isn’t relevant for EWC operations, but it’s a useful tool for demonstrating how long each validator has been an active participant in the community. The greater the number of blocks validated, the longer the Validator has been active.

• The Time Requirement canvas tracks eligibility of validators to liquidate EWT as described in the code (i.e. whether or not validators have been active for at least six months). Eligibility is calculated by querying the first block ever validated by each node and comparing that block number to the most recent block validated. If the difference is greater than ~3 million (roughly the number of blocks that occur in six months), then the Validator has met this requirement.

• The Rent-Seeking Requirement canvas tracks transfers from validator addresses (node or payout) to known exchanges and aligns with the Rent-Seeking Requirement of the Code (i.e. eligible validators may transfer a maximum of 10% of their total reward balance in any given 30-day period).

Next Steps
This month the validators will be launching a quarterly Governance & Community Participation (i.e. Developing Projects & Applications, Contribution to open-source EW-DOS source code, Contributing to Governance Proposals, Contributing to Community Fund Proposals, Community Building) survey that collects qualitative information related to activities in the EWC community beyond node operations in a standardized format that can be easily imported into the dashboard. The EWC Validator Technical Committee is also developing a solution to address the data quality gaps related to the Minimum Balance Requirement. These metrics, along with continued improvements in design, will be incorporated into subsequent releases of the dashboard in Q2 of this year.

About Energy Web
Energy Web is a global, member-driven non-profit accelerating the low-carbon, customer-centric energy transition by unleashing the potential of open-source, digital technologies. Our Energy Web Decentralized Operating System (EW-DOS) enables any energy asset, owned by any customer, to participate in any energy market. The Energy Web Chain — the world’s first enterprise-grade, public blockchain tailored to the energy sector — anchors the EW-DOS tech stack. The Energy Web ecosystem comprises leading utilities, grid operators, renewable energy developers, corporate energy buyers, IoT / telecom leaders, and others.