Tranquil Finance Stone Validator Proposal

Governance Validator DAO
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Tranquil Finance team has reached out with a proposal concerning stONE validators which reads as follows:

"I synced up offline with the stONE dev team and would like to hear VDAO’s interest in this proposal:

1) The Tranquil Team will migrate stONE to use the new staking precompiles and enable contract-based staking to be fully trustless. We can team up with the LiquidStaking.ONE team (thanks @Jacksteroo | Harmony ) to make this happen:
Launch Proposal - LiquidStaking.ONE ($50K)

2) The Tranquil Team will hire auditors to review the fully trustless liquid staking solution and then open source the contracts.

3) The Tranquil Team hands over ownership of all contracts with admin permissions to a VDAO multisig. VDAO will be able to set their own policies on which validators are on the whitelist and their allocations. Tranquil dev team can also build front-end UI tooling to help VDAO manage this easier

**4) Tranquil and Harmony will further incentivize the use of stONE in DeFi (ex. incentivizing stONE-ONE dex pairs, stONE market in lending). Both contributing 50% each to the incentivizes. Tranquil team can contribute FIRA and TRANQ rewards to incentivize adoption. **

We also plan to release innovative GameFi features for our Defira project to incentivize swaps. We can also incentivize swaps on stONE pairs using these features (new feature, never before done in any other DEX before)

This way stONE will be completely decentralized and owned by the community. VDAO will be able to set their own policies on validator allocations. VDAO can also set the stONE commission fees; any commission fees collected will go to the VDAO treasury.

Let me know your thoughts on this. If this fits the scope of VDAO, we can use Sunday’s forum to present and discuss this with the wider community (edited)"

We have asked for a more detailed official proposal to include contract details. Please utilize this forum to discuss this proposal and vote on the attached poll as to if it would be beneficial to have a validator “town hall” meeting on Discord stage or a dedicated Discord chat.

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  • Hold a live chat validator discussion on Discord stages on a date TBD
  • Use dedicated Discord channel in VDAO Discord for on-going discussion chat

0 voters

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Tranquil and LiquidStaking teams partnering up are going to be a defi harmony powerhouse, great to hear!

Although I believe this would be a great source of revenue to the VDAO, I think it could create conflict balancing the mandates with generating an acceptable financial return that keeps stONE competitive to other staking derivatives.

Derivatives are also a complex financial product that is poorly understood by the general public. VDAO’s involvement in the project could be seen as an endorsement of a defi product?

On a lighter note StakingPrecompiles are awesome. Currently testing the DAO Treasurer Wallet. Creates a treasurer role that controls staking responsibilities without custody of funds. Hopefully can convince the ever increasing DAOs to start delegating knowledgeably to grow and strengthen the validator community.

Looking forward to discussing this further.

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Why does Tranquil Fi want to hand over the liquid staking stONE to VDAO? I don’t get the motivation.

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Becouse the stOne protocol is centralizating the stake, instead of helping the decentralization. Its converging all the stOne delegations to only 18 validators. If keep this way, the more it grows, more the network will be centralized around these handpicked validators. Handing over the control to the VDAO, an effort to keep the network decentralized can be made.

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Can’t the Tranquil team extend the validator set themselves? Do they really need VDAO for that?

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Well, it’s a question that must be asked to them. My best guess is, that is something that was not going to be automated. In set and forget style so, it would strain to much to maintain…and as a company, their focus need to be elsewhere, generating revenues. I mean, the whole idea was nice and could really enforce decentralization. But in the practice, it just promoted more centralization.

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I question the appropriateness of the VDAO in being a part of this proposal. For many reasons:

  1. This would show favoritism to a 3rd party developer. We’ve all heard rumors about others wanting to make something similar to stONE. The VDAO shouldn’t be picking winners and losers.

  2. The VDAO along the lines of can’t be picking winners and losers, also can not be drawing up whitelists. The VDAO is an advisory role. Having the ability to pick who is whited listed, meaning VDAO governors would of course list themselves and/or other friends. Any list of validators would need to be voted on and any list where a certain validator is not on the list would be voted down by that validator. The VDAO already has extreme problems passing popular HIPs. The VDAO would not be able to pass a whitelist unless everyone was on it.

  3. The VDAO should be taking an advisory role at most. The VDAO should be explaining how mechanics of the Harmony validator work such as max fees, fees, max fee change, returns, etc. The VDAO should not be guiding anything other than the validators.

I propose that since this is a stONE proposal that the Tranquil Community be charged with managing it. The Tranq community should be voting on proposes for whitelisting. Reading the Tranquil discord, many in their community have passionate ideas and input into how the whitelist should be done. I believe that the VDAO running this proposal would place the VDAO into a position that may or may not properly align with the Tranq community.

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I have to agree with @HankTheCrank on this one. This honestly shouldn’t be that complicated, and it seems that something like this proposal would be overcomplicating a simple problem to solve. If you want to know if a validator is trusted/known in the community before you add them to your whitelist, feel free to ask around. You’ll get suggestions, plenty of them I’m sure.

I could personally come up with a list of them that have been around for some time and are active. And I’m sure others could do the same. Perhaps just a forum post asking for everyone to list the validators that they want to see on Tranquil. Take the ones that are suggested the most, and add them to the whitelist.

As more good validators come online, someone like myself for example could let you know so you can add them as we go. Seems like the best way to go about it that will allow everyone to be part of the decision-making process here. :blue_heart:

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I agree with @HankTheCrank as well, I couldn’t disagree with any part of his response.

As much as we would like to help out other companies like TF, we need to refrain from putting ourselves in positions that may compromise our ecosystem’s view of our DAO.

The last thing we want is to hurt the ecosystem’s public opinion of our DAO and the validators as a whole. We all take running nodes very seriously and have invested countless hours into them

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I request that the VDAO accept this offer by Tranquil!

The VDAO set a goal of 200 elected validators. This will help us get there!

I do understand the VDAO’s/validators’ hesitance to take on a custodial role of the stONE program. I agree there are conflict of interest concerns that need to be addressed (I have a suggestion for this). I also agree that, ideally, Tranquil would maintain this program itself (but with significant community input into how to better operate the program.) However, it doesn’t appear they wish to continue being the stewards of this program. That’s where we can step in.

Of the 4 points listed in the OP, only point #3 asks for direct involvement from the VDAO. This would be to create policies for whitelisting and allocations. To avoid conflict of interest, this can be performed by the community, in a non-VDAO capacity. For example, a group like @Harmoforce could coordinate the policies.

I’ve seen comments from the community seeking to improve the stONE program. Two key areas I think we can address:

  1. Improve decentralization by distributing stONE delegations to more small/medium-sized validators. And the unfortunate truth is that stONE removed tens of millions of $ONE from all validators, and then centralized it into only 17 validators who currently are receiving stONE funds.
  2. Address the undelegation process so that smallest stONE validators don’t become unelected. Instead, undelegate from a larger stONE validator in order for both parties to remain elected. Currently there is a stONE validator who has become unelected for the second time because of how the stONE undelegation process is implemented.

These are by no means the only ideas that should be looked into. Further community input/discussion will be necessary, as well as correspondence with the Tranquil team. But this is how the community could handle the “policy making” so that the VDAO won’t have to.

In essence, the VDAO would only act as signatories. The VDAO’s visibility in the community, and the community’s trust in the VDAO governors would be a tremendous asset in this case. It would give legitimacy to this proposal, imo. It would also minimize the risk of abuse or conflict of interest from any single party, similar to a separation of power between different branches of a government.

I envision this as being an incredible supplement to the Bootstrap Initiative once that is operational. And I think the two projects should work together to ensure maximum efficiency and decentralization.

Full disclosure: I am a co-founder of Harmoforce. It is a grassroots collective who seeks to support new validators and improve Harmony’s decentralization. Since our formation in October 2021, Harmoforce has helped 6 validators from 3 different continents become elected. Currently we’re working towards our 7th elected validator and continent #4. All decisions are made via community vote. Harmoforce is not a validator. We do not profit beyond the staking rewards each individual delegator earns, and all members retain full control of their funds.

Tagging a few members of the Tranquil/LiquidStaking teams to increase visibility and discourse:
@HarmonyValidatorDAO @0xKrillin @maxmustermann2 @raquel_stone @imaki

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Wouldn’t it just make sense for stONE to have it’s own DAO with stONE as the governance token?

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Is there a link I can got to get more info on this?

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The VDAO shouldn’t be held to perform manual centralized duties like this. The VDAO should be focused on validators & growing traditional staking.

Tranquil should start & fund their own sub-DAO of people to manage their lists for their community, this could of course include validators if they wanted to put in the time and effort.

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I think that’s a great idea. Tranquil should run their own DAO have have their community vote on which validators to support. The VDAO should be left completely out of this to ensure full decentralization.

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