Choosing a validator in the COSMOS ecosystem
Hello everyone! Today we’re releasing a couple of articles dedicated to projects on the COSMOS blockchain, discuss the main issues on staking, figure out how to choose a worthy validator and finally delegate our coins to the Stake Service team!
I hope this guide will be useful for newcomers of the COSMOS ecosystem. Let’s go!
First of, you have to choose and evaluate the capabilities and reliability of one or another validator in the ecosystem. As you might have guessed, the choice of a validator mainly comes down to your personal preferences, but we will try to consider the main criteria in choosing a validator and answer these questions right away.
Selection Criteria Checklist
1. Technical configuration of the validator
The most important part which we advise you to request directly from the validator, not every team is writing that information on the main page of their website. You can compare our answer with the answers of other validators and choose a solution that is more suitable for you.
In our work, we use dedicated servers in data centers of the 3rd level — evenly placing them in the USA and Europe. The machines have redundant power supplies! We use the latest method of monitoring the health of our systems such as Prometheus. It allows you to receive timely alerts based on metrics.
To effectively counter DDoS attacks and not publicly disclose our validator hosts their IP addresses on the Internet. We are using an architecture developed by the Tendermint / Cosmos team called the Sentry node architecture.
While validators are in a virtual private network (for example, many cloud providers offer it) or in a real private network that is disconnected from the Internet, our Sentries basically create a proxy layer between this network and the public Internet / space network. Sentinel nodes are complete space nodes and it’s sole task is to relay messages and blocks to validator nodes.
2. The number of self-faced coins of the validator.
We participate in many projects both in the COSMOS ecosystem and beyond — the total amount of our own blocked coins today is about $ 2.5 million.
3. The current commission rate, commission change rate and maximum commission.
Our complete data on fees in the COSMOS ecosystem:
SifChain:
Commission Rate 0.00%
Max Commission Rate 20.00%
Max Commission Change Rate 10.00%Regen:
Commission Rate 0%
Max Commission Rate 20.00%
Max Commission Change Rate 2.00%Sentinel:
Commission Rate 1.00%
Max Commission Rate 100.00%
Max Commission Change Rate 100.00%
Remember! The responsible validator always notifies in advance about changes in fees. We never raise commissions overnight. You can follow such changes in our TG channel.
4. Community engagement and longevity
Community engagement and longevity We are constantly evolving and sharing training materials and all kinds of useful information. We have plans to develop our notification services system about the best staking and investment offers in general.
5. Working hours of the validator.
Validator uptime is one of the most important metrics to watch out for. The COSMOS ecosystem provides quite strict conditions for splashing for a simple node. In the first section related to the technical characteristics of our equipment, we’ve described our methods of dealing with such problems. Most validators in the Cosmos ecosystem typically have uptime of 99–100%.
6. Active participation in network management.
This goes beyond community participation. A validator who values the project should actively participate in governance by voting on proposals, informing their delegates of their vote and their reasons for voting.
As a professional validator, we’re planning to make our own contribution to the development of decentralization, to protect the interests of the community and to provide our delegates with the best and honest service.
Check out our F.A.Q on the COSMOS Ecosystem!
Soon you will be able to familiarize yourself with all our offers on our new site:
Please follow the news on our Twitter:
