Summary:
This proposal is to completely externalize the validator and voting power.
Background:
Validators on Harmony networks are the most supportive and important resources. They ensure network security and consensus while collecting commissions of the staking rewards. Currently, the Harmony network runs with 51% external voting power and 49% internal voting power. 900 external validator slots and 100 internal validator slots. To make the network fully decentralized, this proposal is to fully externalize the voting power and validator nodes. Any further network upgrade requires a strong consensus of all validators upgrading nodes on time.
Motivation:
To have a fully decentralized and externalized network is the most critical goal of a blockchain network. All the users and the team fully trust the validators can take the responsibilities to maintain the 100% uptime of the blockchain, and maintain/upgrade the nodes as soon as possible.
Specification:
There will be a hard-fork created in a planned epoch to enable 100% external voting power and 100% external nodes. After the planned epoch, all voting powers belong to external nodes. There will no internal nodes joining the consensus. There will still be internal nodes for RPC endpoints, bootnodes, and block syncing nodes.
Really excited for this next step potentially arriving so soon! Since internal nodes will no longer be involved in consensus does this also mean external nodes can become leader nodes?
Just to ensure cause by HIP-18 and HIP-19 the Validator Community get fully control and I’m now part of the elected VDAO I would like to know if this both HIP will have a impact on VDAO. Except we are of course need to bring more participation in to Validator Community for updating node’s. But some ops are still in hand of Harmony or in future by Pocket?
once those two proposals are voted and implemented, the validator community will be fully responsible for the upgrade of the network to ensure security and no-forking. The validator DAO will help facilitate the process. Harmony will keep releasing new software of the network.
This is different from the RPC end points. For RPC end points, we are working actively with external providers like Pokt, and Covalent to externalize the rpc end points. Before they are fully functional and meet the requirement, Harmony will keep operating those nodes. However, it is our goal in 2022 to fully externalize all the services, including the RPC end points.
Thanks for the question. Jack had been involved in running a validator by a company he co-founded before he joined Harmony. He had disclosed this info to the public already. Check this post, Jacksteroo @ Harmony | KysenPool
I am also running a small validator myself just to verify the validator node and check the network status.
Is there any concern with vulnerabilities to the network without internal nodes?
I understand that risk of single shard attacks after auto resharding is implemented the network becomes less likely but are we relying on individuals to act honestly until then?
in terms of network security, it is really depending on the voting power to decide the consensus. The internal nodes are at 49% of the voting power now. All the external validators are doing a good job to keep the network up and running. That’s why we propose to have 100% voting power to external validators. It’s the consensus built into the protocol matter, not on any single individual node.
the latest development would be to stage the rollout of 100% external. So, given the current situation that some validators have too many slots, we may still have to keep a bit of internal voting power, and a few internal nodes. Another prerequisite of this proposal is to reduce the number of blskeys per single validator in HIP-16.HIP 16: reducing BLS keys - #90 by CryptoTech
Is there anything being done to ensure that when the 100 internal slots convert to external, that they won’t almost entirely go to existing multi-key validators?
Is there an effort to prevent/discourage the bidding on these keys by already elected validators, in order to allow unelected validators to grab those keys?
Could the @HarmonyValidatorDAO organize a coordinated message through the validator ranks? Both amongst elected validators to prevent excess bidding, and also unelected validators to make sure they’re prepared to sign
Could the Bootstrap Initiative time its implementation to coincide with the 100 key release, to further ensure this results in a significant net gain in elected validators?
What other methods could we adopt to use this opportunity to grow Harmony’s ranks and further increase decentralization?
Being prepared to sign is one of the critical steps for a new validator. Even though there are tools like vStats that help to make sure your node is synced, we also need to consider that the only way validators know they will be successful is when they get elected. Even the testnet doesn’t compare to the resource load on the mainnet.
“Prepared” to put the requisite time and resources into managing their node upon being elected. So we can avoid potentially repeating the January hiccup where some validators became elected but didn’t sign, presumably due in part to the “surprise” nature of their election
I agree that it’s impossible to fully replicate mainnet and guarantee everything will work smoothly
. If so, when would you like the VDAO to facilitate a vote for this proposal?