Dear Cosmos Hub Community,
Following the ongoing discussion regarding Melea’s misleading claims of 0% commission, despite the protocol-enforced 5% minimum, it is crucial that we now shift our focus toward actionable steps. The evidence presented in the previous forum post clearly shows that Melea has been falsely advertising their commission rate for nearly nine months, misleading countless delegators and undermining the integrity of our validator ecosystem.
Proposed Penalties for Melea Validator
To maintain the trust and transparency that are foundational to the Cosmos Hub and surrounding Interchain, we propose the following penalties for Melea Validator:
1. Temporary Suspension from Voting on Network Proposals:
- Melea should be barred from participating in governance votes for a period of one year. This will ensure that they cannot influence key decisions while under scrutiny for deceptive practices.
2. Financial Penalty: 100% Tax on Staking Rewards:
- A 100% tax should be levied on all staking rewards accumulated by Melea during the period of dishonesty. This tax would be applied retroactively for each month that Melea falsely claimed a 0% commission, which currently amounts to nine months. The taxed rewards should be redirected to the community pool to support network growth and decentralization efforts.
3. Public Apology and Rectification:
- Melea must issue a public apology to the Cosmos Hub community and update their validator moniker to reflect accurate commission rates immediately.
4. Possible Tombstoning For Failure to Comply With The Above
- While Melea has clearly violated community trust by falsely advertising a 0% commission, we must ask ourselves whether this action warrants a penalty as severe as tombstoning. And, if this penalty is even possible.
Community Actions to Prevent Future Misconduct
To prevent similar instances of deception in the future, we would like to engage the community and ATOM Accelerator DAO to discuss the following community-driven actions:
1. Ban all advertising and promotional content from on-chain monikers. On-chain monikers should be limited to validator name only.
2. Validator Transparency Index:
- Develop a community-maintained index that ranks validators based on their transparency, honesty, performance and community involvement. Enhanced on-chain reporting could show that validators found to be misleading delegators will have their ratings lowered, discouraging delegators from staking with them.
3. Delegator Education Campaign:
- Launch an educational campaign to inform delegators about how to compare and select validators, to make informed decisions when choosing where to stake their tokens.
4. Enlist the wallet providers and their teams to implement strategies to improve decentralization.
- No longer display validators with the highest total stake at the top of the list in-wallet. This is creating further centralization. We propose wallet providers randomize the lists and even display validators with the lowest total stake first and in descending order.
- Incorporate the transparency index discussed above.
We believe these penalties and actions are necessary to protect our ecosystem from further harm caused by deceptive validators like Melea. We encourage all community members to participate in this discussion and provide feedback on these proposed measures.
Let’s work together to ensure that Cosmos Hub remains a transparent, decentralized, and trustworthy network.
Thank you for your continued engagement.
Sincerely,
The Atlas Staking Team
@Govmos @BlocksUnited @freak12techno @FHZ @Quentin @Cosmos_Nanny @jtremback