Jan 25, 2022
UMB Community Validators: Meet The Third Cohort
Umbrella Network is pleased to announce that we’ve selected our third cohort of community validators. More than 50 applications were submitted for Cohort 3, with 7 being selected.
Together, these 7 community validators shall mint, validate, and commit blocks on the Blockchains supported by Umbrella Network.
Meet The Third Cohort of Community Validators at Umbrella Network
The first one, based out of Dnipro, Ukraine, comes with the experience of running many servers, including VPS, Amazon, VDS Hetzher, etc. As a crypto enthusiast and a professional node runner, Artem has run nodes for several blockchain projects, including the Solana mainnet and testnet nodes for Casper, NYM, Axelar, Massa, Minima, Hydra DX, KYVE, Aleo, etc.
The second one, from France, is a Java Developer and a proficient DevOps and SysAdmin. Chow has experience in running a diverse set of cloud/web servers, including OVH, Docker, Datastax, Cassandra, RabbitMQ, Java, microservices, VM, and more.
The third, based out of San Francisco, USA, runs nodes on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Chia, Terra, and Cosmos. Professionally, Ryan runs servers on Google Cloud, AWS, and on-premises for several customers.
The fourth, based out of Denver, USA has nearly two decades of experience in the IT infrastructure space. He has worked in AWS and Azure servers for over six years for Fortune 500 companies as a professional service consultant. In the blockchain space, Nathan has the experience of participating in the testnet for ETH2 and running a rocket node.
The fifth, from Lviv, Ukraine, has worked on many blockchain projects such as Moonbeam, Minima, Massa, Automata, HydraDX, Aleo, Evmos, Iron Fish, and Joystream, as a node runner.
The sixth is a professional team that runs several dedicated servers on multiple chains. It has the experience of running nodes in blockchain projects such as ORE Chain, Celestia, Beam, and Horizon.
The seventh is a big one — Klever, a professional validator service provider that has its own exchange, a token, and runs validator nodes for several big names in the industry. This one is a major partnership and shall come with a separate announcement.
Together, these 7 validators are being onboarded as the 3rd cohort of community validators at Umbrella Network.
(Learn more about Cohort 1 and Cohort 2)
To become a community validator, interested applicants can fill out this form to be considered for the upcoming fourth cohort.
Role of Community Validators at Umbrella Network
Umbrella Network is all about bringing data on-chain, and community validators specialize in doing just that. A community validator is chosen at random to serve as the validator leader who mints the upcoming block.
Data that goes into these blocks is sourced via several sources such as Direct APIs, indexing websites, and price trackers, among others.
Once the validator leader mints the new block, the data going in is first verified and validated by the other community validators. Discrepancies, if any, are caught and fixed at this step.
Once the validation process is completed and all community validators have signed their approval, the validator leader counter-signs, and the block is successfully committed to the blockchain thereafter.
If the block is bereft of any errors/discrepancies, the validator leader is rewarded UMB tokens as per their prorated stake.
If there are mistakes/manipulations, a penalty is imposed on the validator leader, to disincentivize manipulation.
(As of writing, the Umbrella Network community validators are minting, validating, and committing blocks of data to the BSC, Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche Blockchains, at the rate of a new block minted every 1 minute on BSC and Polygon and every 1 hour on Ethereum and Avalanche.)
Data manipulated by a single entity can lead to fraud, attacks, and losses among blockchain ecosystems.
It’s crucial to have a decentralized approach to stop these problems from happening.
So community validators are that essential layer of protection and a crucial part of Umbrella Network’s oracle services.
Community Validators and The Road to DPoS
Umbrella Network offers large amounts of data pairs securely and at a low cost. Developers can use this data to build dApps and the future of blockchain technology.
When DPoS is implemented (March as per the roadmap), the earnings from dApps sourcing our data shall be shared with the validators. UMB token HODLers can stake their UMB tokens with any of these community validators and earn a prorated share of these earnings.
(As of writing, the community validators earn a monthly rewards pool of 250,000 UMB tokens every month. By comparison, a validator node costs less than $1,500 per month to run. With the complete roll-out of DPoS, the current staking portals would be integrated within the DPoS structure — giving UMB HODLers more skin in the game!)
On the UMB network, it is the APIs or direct sources that fetch the data and commit them to the blockchain, and it is on the validators to verify the data. They are the most crucial milestones when it comes to leading the network towards greater decentralization and transparency.
The selection of the validators is on the contract owner. Validators deposit their UMB tokens into the staking bank. The more the total number of the UMB tokens staked the more is the voting weightage.
About Umbrella Network
Umbrella Network is a scalable, cost-efficient, and community-owned oracle for the DeFi and blockchain community. Its Layer 2 technology uses the latest advances in Merkle tree technology to write multiple data points on a single on-chain transaction, so it allows for batching data to smart contracts accurately, securely, and inexpensively.
Umbrella believes a community-owned oracle is not only possible but essential to creating a truly decentralized financial system.
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