Community Pool Proposal: Standardized Validator & Node Launch Infrastructure for the Cosmos Hub

Hub Proposals
1

Community Pool Proposal: Standardized Validator & Node Launch Infrastructure for the Cosmos Hub

Status: Request for Feedback (Pre-Governance)

Authors: DeEEP Network / NerdNode

Target: Cosmos Hub Community Pool

Funding: Not yet requested — seeking community input first

Overview

We are proposing a Community Pool–funded Phase 2 initiative to extend and harden a production-ready platform that enables teams to launch, operate, and scale Cosmos Hub validators and Cosmos SDK–based nodes using decentralized physical infrastructure.

This proposal builds on an Interchain Foundation–funded MVP (currently in progress / recently completed), and is intended to support:

  • Greater validator diversity

  • Reduced operational burden for Cosmos Hub participants

  • Less reliance on centralized cloud providers

  • Reusable, open infrastructure for the broader Cosmos ecosystem

This forum post is intended to gather feedback, concerns, and suggestions from validators and ATOM holders before any on-chain proposal is submitted.

Motivation

Operating Cosmos Hub validators today requires:

  • Significant infrastructure and DevOps expertise

  • Continuous monitoring and maintenance

  • Centralized hosting dependencies

  • High upfront and ongoing operational risk

These factors:

  • Discourage new validators

  • Concentrate infrastructure in a small number of providers

  • Increase correlated failure risk

  • Lead to duplicated tooling across teams

The Cosmos Hub benefits from more independent, geographically distributed, and operationally resilient validators. Our goal is to reduce friction to participation while preserving Cosmos values of sovereignty and decentralization.

What Has Already Been Built (Phase 1 Context)

This proposal is not experimental. It builds on an MVP delivered through prior funding that includes:

  • Cosmos SDK validator and node templates

  • Automated deployment and lifecycle management

  • Verifiable execution and reporting primitives

  • Deployment across a globally distributed DePIN network

  • Live production infrastructure already supporting thousands of nodes

Phase 1 demonstrated that Cosmos infrastructure can be deployed and operated reliably without centralized cloud dependencies.

Scope of This Community Pool Proposal (Phase 2)

Phase 2 focuses specifically on Cosmos Hub–aligned validator operations and long-term sustainability.

Primary Objectives

  1. Improve accessibility for Cosmos Hub validator participation

  2. Increase operational resilience and observability

  3. Reduce single-provider infrastructure risk

  4. Provide reusable, open tooling for the community

Proposed Deliverables

1. Cosmos Hub Validator Support

  • Validator templates optimized for Cosmos Hub requirements

  • Support for upgrades, governance participation, and maintenance

  • Safer handling of common validator lifecycle events

2. Validator Operations Tooling

  • Health monitoring and alerting

  • Slashing-risk visibility

  • Uptime and performance reporting

  • Operator-facing dashboards

3. Decentralized Infrastructure Deployment

  • Validator deployments across geographically distributed hardware

  • Reduced dependence on centralized cloud providers

  • Improved fault tolerance and decentralization

4. Documentation & Community Access

  • Public documentation for Cosmos Hub validator operation

  • Open reference configurations

  • Free access paths for community validators and test deployments

Public Good Impact

This proposal qualifies as a public good because it:

  • Lowers the barrier to becoming a Cosmos Hub validator

  • Improves decentralization and geographic diversity

  • Reduces duplicated infrastructure work across teams

  • Produces open-source, reusable tooling

  • Strengthens long-term network resilience

All Cosmos Hub–specific components funded through the Community Pool would be:

  • Open source

  • Publicly documented

  • Freely usable by the community

Funding (For Discussion)

We are not requesting funds yet.

Based on scope and comparable Community Pool initiatives, we anticipate a request in the range of:

75,000-150,000 ATOM equivalent

Final scope and amount would be adjusted based on:

  • Validator feedback

  • Community priorities

  • Governance discussion

Milestones & Accountability

Proposed milestones include:

Milestone 1

  • Cosmos Hub validator templates released

  • Open-source repository published

Milestone 2

  • Operational dashboards and monitoring live

  • At least 3 independent validator pilots onboarded

Milestone 3

  • Documentation and usage guides published

  • Community feedback incorporated

Progress would be reported publicly via:

  • Cosmos Forum updates

  • GitHub repositories

  • Milestone reports

Why This Matters for the Cosmos Hub

The Cosmos Hub’s long-term health depends on:

  • Validator diversity

  • Operational resilience

  • Reduced centralization pressure

This proposal invests in durable infrastructure, not short-term incentives, and directly supports those goals.

Request for Feedback

We are specifically seeking input on:

  • Validator concerns or edge cases

  • Desired operational features

  • Funding scope and structure

  • Governance considerations

Feedback from validators and ATOM holders will directly inform whether — and how — this proposal proceeds to an on-chain vote.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

2

Not worth it in my opinion.

There is no evidence that new validators are “discouraged” to join, it’s more like a competition in reality. There are plenty of monitoring tools that already exist also. Moreover - if you can’t figure out how to set up a validator node properly - maybe being a validator is not for you. Being a validator is a privilege, not a given right.

So to me it looks like asking $500k - $1m for solving a problem that doesn’t exist. Plus CP spending is to be suspended until AAADAO is established.

5 Likes
3

"As a validator operating in the active set, I need to bring a reality check to the premise of this proposal.

1. The Barrier to Entry is Stake, Not Scripts
Currently, the Cosmos Hub has an active set of 180 validators. To join this set, a new validator doesn’t need ‘better dashboards’ or ‘easier deployment tools’.
They simply need more staked ATOM than the validator ranked #180.

That is the only barrier.

There are technically competent teams outside the active set right now. They aren’t stuck because they don’t know how to configure Linux or use Prometheus. They are stuck because they lack the delegations to displace the 180th validator.
Spending 250k-500k ATOM on tooling does absolutely nothing to solve this. You can give a aspiring validator the best infrastructure in the world; without the stake, they remain inactive.

2. Solving a Non-Existent Technical Crisis
With ~180 validators running successfully, the ‘technical operational burden’ is evidently manageable.
If we have a surplus of technically capable teams fighting for a limited number of slots (180), why are we subsidizing entry tools? The market is already saturated with capable operators.

3. Economic Irrationality
Even at current prices (~$2), asking for ~$500k - $1M USD worth of ATOM (250k-500k tokens) from the Community Pool for a tool that:

  • Generates zero revenue for the Hub.

  • Creates zero demand for ATOM.

  • Does not help a single new validator overcome the actual barrier (stake threshold).

…is financially irresponsible.

Conclusion
We are spending scarce Community Pool resources to solve a ‘complexity’ problem that doesn’t exist, while ignoring the ‘economic’ problem (delegation concentration) that actually prevents diversity.

If we want to help new validators, we need to talk about delegation strategies, not deployment scripts. I cannot support this proposal."

2 Likes
4

I hear what you’re saying, and I agree on a few fundamentals — being a validator is a privilege, and competition itself isn’t a problem. Strong operators should absolutely be expected to know what they’re doing.

That said, the intent here isn’t to “dumb down” validation or subsidize unqualified operators. It’s about reducing unnecessary operational friction that doesn’t actually improve security or decentralization, especially as networks scale and diversify geographically.

A few clarifications:

  • This isn’t based on the claim that validators are “discouraged” today — it’s about future-proofing the validator set as complexity, compliance, and monitoring expectations continue to rise.

  • Existing monitoring tools are good, but fragmented. The proposal is about standardization and shared infrastructure, not reinventing basic observability.

  • The goal isn’t to replace competence — it’s to lower duplicated effort across operators so the network benefits from higher-quality, more consistent operations.

On cost: totally fair to question scope vs. budget. If the community doesn’t believe the problem is real yet, then pausing or resizing the effort is reasonable — especially with CP spend pending AAADAO governance.

In short: this isn’t about entitlement or hand-holding. It’s about whether Cosmos wants to proactively invest in validator quality and resilience before scaling pressure makes these gaps more painful and expensive to fix later.

2 Likes
5

I appreciate the nuance regarding “future-proofing” and reducing friction. However, this pivot to “standardization” and “quality” still fails to address the fundamental reality of the Cosmos Hub architecture.

1. The “Active Set” Cap Renders “Friction Reduction” Irrelevant
You mention scaling pressure, but let’s look at the math. The Hub is capped at 180 validators.
The barrier to entry isn’t operational friction or fragmented tooling. It is purely economic. To become a validator today, a team needs enough stake to displace the 180th validator.

If a team has the capital or reputation to attract that massive amount of stake (millions of $ in value), they inevitably have the resources to handle “fragmented monitoring tools” or hire a competent DevOps engineer.
Conversely, if a team needs subsidized tooling to figure out how to run a node, they almost certainly do not have the capital to enter the active set.
We are essentially building a luxury on-ramp for a highway that is closed.

2. Standardization is a Bug, Not a Feature
You argue for “standardization” to improve quality. In a decentralized network, relying on a standardized infrastructure layer funded by the protocol introduces a correlation risk.
The Hub’s resilience comes from the fact that validators use different setups, different monitoring stacks, and different contingency plans. “Standardizing” operations creates a single point of logic failure. If this “shared infrastructure” has a bug, a significant portion of the network could be impacted simultaneously.

Conclusion
Spending 250k-500k ATOM to solve “operational friction” for a set of validators that is mathematically capped and economically gate-kept does not align with the Hub’s current priorities. We need economic diversity (delegation distribution), not operational homogeneity.

2 Likes
6

1. Active Set Economics — Agreed, but Incomplete

You’re absolutely right that the 180-validator active set is the dominant gate, not tooling. No amount of UX polish changes the fact that stake concentration determines inclusion.

Where I think the framing diverges is who the tooling is actually for.

This isn’t about helping under-capitalized teams “break into” the active set. If that were the pitch, I’d agree it’s misguided. The value is for:

  • Existing and near-threshold validators

  • Operators managing multiple chains

  • Validators already economically viable but operationally stretched

At that level, tooling isn’t about entry — it’s about risk reduction, uptime assurance, and sustainability as operational burden compounds across chains, upgrades, and compliance environments.

In other words: this isn’t a ladder onto the highway — it’s guardrails for people already driving on it.

2. Standardization vs Correlation Risk — This Is the Real Crux

I think this is the most important point you raised, and it’s valid if standardization means monoculture.

But standardization ≠ uniform execution.

There’s a meaningful distinction between:

  • Standardized interfaces / reference patterns

  • Identical infrastructure stacks

The former reduces duplicated effort and failure modes caused by bespoke mistakes; the latter creates correlation risk — and I agree that would be dangerous.

The intent here is closer to:

  • Shared schemas, not shared servers

  • Reference implementations, not mandated deployments

  • Opt-in tooling, not protocol dependency

Cosmos already standardizes at critical layers (CometBFT, SDK modules, upgrade processes). The network’s resilience comes from diversity behind stable interfaces, not from every validator reinventing the wheel in isolation.

3. On Capital Allocation & Priorities

I agree with your conclusion as stated:

Economic diversity (delegation distribution) matters more than operational homogeneity.

Where I differ slightly is that this isn’t an either/or tradeoff. Improving validator operational reliability doesn’t preclude delegation reform — but I agree it shouldn’t crowd it out.

If the community decides that:

  • delegation incentives,

  • stake dispersion mechanisms, or

  • governance-level economic reforms

are higher priority right now, that’s a defensible outcome.

Bottom Line

You’re correct that:

  • This doesn’t fix stake concentration

  • It won’t change active set economics

  • Poorly designed standardization would increase systemic risk

The open question isn’t whether those critiques are true — it’s whether shared, optional, non-homogenizing infrastructure still delivers enough risk reduction for existing validators to justify its cost relative to other priorities.

That’s a governance decision, not a technical one and this is exactly the level of rigor that decision deserves.

7

There is no “unnecessary operational friction”, setting up a node and monitoring is very easy if you are not completely oblivious in tech. You should not be a validator if you are completely oblivious in tech. I haven’t heard a single validator complaining that it is “too hard”. The problem is not real - and it will not ever be real.

Cosmos Hub nodes can already be deployed with ~one click into a decentralized network like Akash as well. Here is the template.
What kind of scaling are you talking about? If anything - there are talks of potentially reducing the validator set on Cosmos Hub, not scale it up.

You are clearly writing your responses with AI, do you not even want to spend effort of thinking of/typing your own arguments yourself?

8

I think we’re talking past each other a bit, so let me simplify this.

First, I agree with you on the core point: Cosmos validators today are not struggling because node ops are “too hard.” Anyone running a Hub validator is already technically capable, and this is not about enabling people who shouldn’t be validators.

Where I disagree is the assumption that today’s validator skill set should define the long-term ceiling of the ecosystem.

This isn’t about hand-holding validators. It’s about making Cosmos deployable for Web2 businesses and infrastructure teams that already know Docker, cloud ops, monitoring, SLAs, and compliance — but don’t live inside Cosmos-specific tooling and governance models.

A few important distinctions:

  • Running a validator ≠ deploying a production Web2 workload

  • “One-click Akash templates” ≠ enterprise-grade deployment

  • Being tech-savvy ≠ being able to operationalize blockchain infra inside a real business

Most Web2 teams are perfectly competent technically — they just don’t want to rebuild their entire operational model to touch Cosmos. Right now, that friction pushes them back to AWS every time.

Saying “only highly technical people should deploy nodes” is short-sighted if the goal is adoption beyond crypto-native operators. That mindset guarantees the ecosystem stays small, even if it’s technically excellent.

On scaling: I agree this isn’t about increasing the validator set. Scaling means more workloads, more economic activity, and more real businesses deploying services that create reasons for users and capital to care about the Hub.

Lastly — yes, I use AI as a tool. The ideas are mine, curated and edited before I post. I’m interested in advancing the discussion, not proving how fast I can type.

If the Hub decides it only wants to optimize for today’s validator operators, that’s a valid choice. But let’s be honest about the tradeoff: it caps adoption by design.

That’s the real conversation I’m trying to have.

9

I’m not technical enough to weigh in on the overall Cosmos validator scheme. If this would be a helpful proposal (again, I have no idea), it does seem secondary to the more pressing concerns of inflation and recapitalizing Cosmos through value accrual to ATOM and rebuilding the ecosystem.

From discussion above it sounds like we can at least get by fine with the current validator scheme and perhaps this should be proposed somewhat later after the fundamental questions around inflation, tokenomics and value capture from Cosmos tech are handled.

10

Just to clarify, this isn’t really about improving things for current validators, the Hub works fine there. The intent is about making it easier for Web2 businesses and infrastructure teams to deploy real workloads into Cosmos, which is ultimately one of the ways you do drive value capture back to ATOM. If the community feels those economic questions need to come first, that’s reasonable. My view is simply that lowering friction for Web2 expansion is complementary to those goals, not a replacement for them.

11

I never said “only highly technical people should deploy nodes“, I said people with minimal technical knowledge are capable of deploying nodes perfectly. What is short-sighted is making a baseless assumption that enterprises don’t have technical enough people to figure out how to deploy Cosmos nodes and spending $500K-$1M on something that is absolutely not needed.

My vote it NO.

Using AI to communicate instead of you is just disrespectful to whoever you are talking to.

12

One clarification for accuracy: the ask here is ~$150k not 500k–1M. I’m not sure where that number is coming from, but it materially changes the framing. And To be clear, I’m not saying enterprises can’t deploy Cosmos nodes. Of course they can. The point is that most don’t want to dedicate time, people, and risk to learning chain-specific operational details just to experiment with decentralized infrastructure. This proposal isn’t about validator difficulty or technical incompetence, it’s about reducing adoption friction for Web2 workloads so Cosmos can compete with centralized cloud platforms on ease of deployment, not just technical merit. If you don’t think that tradeoff is worth the cost, that’s a valid position and I respect the no vote. My goal here is simply to make Cosmos easier to choose, not easier to run for existing validators.

13

I’m open to this idea in principle. My experience with testnets/mainnets on smaller chains has shown me that there is a gap in competence compared to the Hub, so standardized infra could serve as a valuable public good if it is easily transferable to other chains. I think this is excluded in the proposal though.

That said, I share the concerns regarding budget spending right now. I wonder if the request could be lowered by integrating existing tools from other teams instead of starting from scratch? This would also benefit teams that already spent their time on solutions for the validator community.

Also, I find the proposal lacking in technical depth. It is currently hard to assess the value without a clearer picture of the specific technical deliverables.

The proposal currently states 250k-500k ATOM. If you are looking for another amount i would recommend to edit the ask.

Offtopic: Since i dont know of any passed proposal that suspended CP spending i dont see any reason to stop duscussing CP proposals. @Pakku Please let me know if i missed that.

14

Appreciate this feedback, I think we’re largely aligned.

On funding: to clarify, the intent was always to request ~$250k USD, not 250k ATOM. That was my mistake on the ask, which is why we’ve adjusted the ask to 75k–150k ATOM to better reflect the actual USD requirement. We’ll update the proposal to remove that ambiguity.

On reuse vs. rebuilding: agreed. This should not be a greenfield effort. The goal is to integrate and extend existing validator tooling, contribute improvements upstream where possible, and avoid duplicating work already done by other teams.

On ecosystem scope: while submitted to the Hub, the work is intended to be chain-agnostic and transferable, specifically benefiting smaller Cosmos chains where validator competence gaps are more pronounced. We’ll make that clearer.

On technical depth: fair criticism. We can tighten the proposal by explicitly outlining:

  • concrete technical deliverables,

  • clear non-goals,

  • and measurable success criteria.

Overall, this feedback is helpful and points to refinements, not fundamental disagreements.

15

Not really getting the hang of this. Ill explain why. As of ow, id argue that Citizen Web3 has on of the, or the most, unique architecture. But it doesnt change anything.

to save space - its described [here](GitHub - citizenweb3/staking: Non Custodial. Self-Hosted, Bare-Metal Validator Infrastructure. Off the Grid Capacity. Offering Endpoints, Archive, Snapshots and Relaying)

16

From an architectural perspective, I think this proposal highlights an important distinction that is worth making explicit.

There are two different layers involved:

  • Operational infrastructure - how validators are deployed, monitored, and kept running.
  • Verification and accountability - how validator behavior is evaluated during slashing events, disputes, and governance decisions.

Most of the proposal - and much of the discussion - sits in the first layer. Improving operational tooling can reduce friction, but operational efficiency alone does not resolve ambiguity around accountability.

Even with a stable validator set and competent operators, Cosmos governance still relies heavily on dashboards, explorers, and RPC-dependent views of reality. When incidents occur, different data sources can produce different - yet internally consistent - interpretations of the same validator behavior.

This is not primarily an operations problem.
It’s a verification problem.

What appears structurally missing is a reproducible verification contract for validator behavior: a way to derive deterministic, portable evidence from public data that any third party can independently re-check.

Such a layer would not change stake dynamics, but it would materially improve governance clarity, incident resolution, and delegator trust - areas where infrastructure standardization alone has limited impact.