As a validator since before mainnet, I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to help and support the network over the past five years. I appreciate all the comments here, especially the honest and unbiased takes. It’s refreshing to see genuine discourse. Some of the critical points raised are also valid in the broader scheme of things. I believe the market has shown it does not value a decentralized validator set, nor is purely running validators a viable business (it arguably never has been).
The issue with following the market too closely is that we end up lagging instead of leading with conviction in our beliefs or ideas. We’ve seen this before in decisions made under market pressure: spinning off Mento and removing the core design mechanism for value accrual in the $CELO (RIP $cGLD) token, or spending $100M on the DeFi for the People campaign chasing mercenary capital because it was the meta at the time. If Celo had instead leaned into its original vision of a mobile-first stablecoin network, we might be in the best position for what the market demands now.
So let’s be serious here and look at this through the lens of an unbiased observer. Validators are, more or less, providing a redundant service. The long-term goal has always been to move toward a decentralized sequencer. To be honest, Celo needs a differentiator from other L2s, ideally one that reflects its core values. If such an initiative does emerge in the future, it makes sense that the entities who have spent the past five years validating and now providing RPC infrastructure would participate in providing that service.
With that in mind, we should acknowledge that the current validator selection process and schema are outdated. Validator groups with child validators are no longer representative of a functioning system and would need to be redesigned for any future L2 decentralized sequencer. If we were to move forward with the direction outlined in this draft proposal, I’d suggest that every validator group be limited to a single validator.
That said, I do see a problem with this proposal being initiated by an entity that has used community funds to build initiatives which, intentionally or not, directed votes in a way that now positions them to benefit from this very proposal. However, as others have pointed out, we should avoid evaluating this in isolation. If this proposal is indeed motivated by cost-saving concerns, then we need to look holistically at all entities drawing from the ecosystem, especially the beneficiaries of various sub-programs.
At a high level, I’d argue that none of these entities are revenue-generating businesses. To stop the bleed, the broader solution should be that no program is eligible to receive community funds unless it is a revenue-generating business capable of sustaining itself without ongoing community funding. Of course, there may be rare exceptions such as the Foundation, but setting this standard, even if painful at first, would create a stronger and more resilient network over time.
Lastly, as an independent validator who has used the leverage of that role to support the network through various initiatives like Prezenti and the Celo Governance Guardians (outside of validation duties), it’s disheartening to know that I’m likely to be one of the entities wiped out by this proposal.