Proposal for a Fair Reward System. For the people.
I am a new validator / node runner on POKT and seeing that only top 1000 validator is selected based off their “skin in the game” ~ amount of POKT staked. It’s great for early adopters and whales with huge spending power but not good for nerds that want to provide resources and get rewarded everyone will have a skin in the game. If this look messy forgive me.
Current
1000 Validator will be selected to propose block / validate based on how much POKT is staked on validator.
-Pros -
1000 Validator seems secure
-Cons -
Centralized funds can be placed to reach top 1000 Validator. Making it somewhat centralized.
Future / wannabe validators for POKT network has to spend a fortune on POKT to reach top 1000 which doesn’t allow enthusiastic people to have a skin in the game.
Make POKT better?
Suggestion
1- Whatever is working on Eth validator use the similar system, with randomness of block proposal.
Chances are centralize funds can run as many validator to get higher chance of block proposal.
With this at least everyone has a chance of randomness to get rewarded.
Remove the top 1000 Validator stuff that only the whales can generate more.
Set stake 15,000 per validator only.
Users can run as many validator/nodes as they want, which will provide more resources for network to relay.
-Pros-
Everyone has a chance to proposal based off the randomness selection
More nodes = more resources for the network hence security.
-Cons-
Anyone can run as many node and stake but low possibility of a 51% take over if number of nodes grow as time passes.
2- Flux type of tiered node reward
Flux uses resources for their ecosystem to build a cloud computing to go. Thus they have Stake to hardware requirements of nodes’ tier.
Flux has 3 type of node tiers
Entry Culumus, Nimbus, Only whales Stratus
Entry requires lower stake amount and computing resources for the staked tier
Higher tiers requires larger fixed amount and higher computing resources.
Reward system
Each tier has any amount of nodes
E.g
Cumulus has 6000 nodes online
Nimbus has 2000 nodes online
Stratus has 1000 nodes online
Reward is issued based on the “ranking” which gives everyone a chance to get rewarded as long as they keep their node online till ranking reaches 1 then goes back to rank last rank.
Ranks are determined by amount of nodes online of each tier and each block will have a queue system for the next node to get rewarded.
Proposing a “fair” reward system / enhance security towards network.
POKT requires 4 CPU’s (or vCPU’s) | 16 GB RAM | 200GB Disk
I believe overtime Disk will be growing which is now 420+
Resources is clearly needed to handle the growing relays.
A Tiered staking pegged with hardware gives all computing resources a chance to be a part of the network.
Maybe have 3 type similar to flux & a mix of eth validator randomness proposal system.
Entry 4 CPU, 16 Gb ram, 200gb
Mid 8 CPU, 32gb ram, 500gb
Top 12 or 16 CPU, 64gb, ram 1tb
To allow each tier to handle some request / splitting the work load of nodes making it more scalable.
Pokt can allow tiered node staking with a lottery reward system for nodes.
Breakdown 100% Of reward per block split down towards
25% goes to entry tiers
30% goes to mid tiers
35% goes to top tiers
10% randomness rewarded to any tiered node as a incentive to keep node online and win the lucky draw.
With up time to reach rank 1 to get rewarded based off total of nodes online on each tier.
So there will be 3 tiered validator placed in the block for proposal and 1 random validator as “witness” Not sure how the terminology works.
Relayer Proposals - tiered nodes
Witness/Oracle- randomness validator
Tiered node is to allow work load spread evenly without compromising hardware upgrades in the future. Every computing resources counts.
For contribution everyone gets rewarded fairly, not only the OG / Whales. For everyone.
I believe this is a whole change of ecosystem but take it with a pinch of salt, understand lots of resources and dev power needed to make this happen, unfortunately I have no knowledge to make it happen but have the idea.