Validators are paid exactly 2,500 cUSD per month (82 cUSD/day). The total monthly allocation is 275,000 cUSD. Your numbers are inflated by 30% and will mislead anyone unfamiliar with past governance discussions or tokenomics. Accuracy matters here.
You’re right, I used incorrect data. Using https://celo.blockscout.com/epochs/1967, I see that 5,086.85 was paid to validator groups and 3,641.92 was paid to validators. Thus, 8,728.77 for 110 validators, which would be 79.35. Assuming no slashing, the per validator costs appear to be 82.1917 cUSD.
Using oracle prices, CELO is being minted and added to the reserve to equal cUSD, based on my understanding here: https://docs.celo.org/legacy/protocol/pos/epoch-rewards-validator#validator-rewards
This claim is speculative at best. All conversions of cUSD to CELO are visible on-chain and movement to CEXs is traceable. No evidence is provided here.
I should have centered my point around the emissions that are being minted in CELO and sent to the Mento reserve to cover the amount cUSD minted into existence for validator rewards, at a cadence faster than what was planned at mainnet launch (“15 years to 50% of the initial 400 million CELO”).
Source: Epoch Rewards - Celo Docs
It is also flawed to cherry-pick CELO’s absolute low at $0.25 (ATL $0.23) for your math, only for the price to 1.8x in three days to $0.45. That exaggerates your number by more than 2.3x. A neutral average (e.g. $0.30 over 90 days) is the sensible way to frame this.
Fair enough, I’m alright using $0.30 (or 90 day average), albeit I usually like to plan for the worst case scenario to ensure protocol longjevity.
But it’s equally important to recognize that other validators have been critical contributors since genesis - infrastructure, governance, tooling, ecosystem building e.t.c.
I agree, I’m wondering if reducing the validator set could help us focus on those contributors providing critical infrastructure support.
If the community’s concern is structural selling pressure, the most honest starting point would be Community Fund governance and improving accountability and transparency. Minipay (1 entity) alone received 6.5M CELO during the L2 transition, and Season 1 grantees (11 entities) collectively received 26M CELO.
Fair point.
Finally, “55 validators” feels arbitrary and ignores validator group count and election mechanics.
I wanted to kickstart a conversation, I’m not married to 55 validators.