Nice to Meet You
Hi Cosmonauts 
We’re Chainflow, and we’re excited to formally introduce ourselves. Together with the community governance stewards over at Hypha Coop, we’ve drawn up some guiding questions to help share what validator operators like us are all about.
You’ll find our answers in the “About Chainflow” section below.
Let’s Connect
If you have any other questions or want to get in touch directly, we’d love to connect:
- Here in the forum
- On Twitter (@ChainflowPoS)
- In our Telegram Group (Chainflow Community)
We look forward to building the future of the Cosmos together!
About Chainflow
1. Can you tell us a little bit about your validator – who are you and what makes you stand out from the others?
Chainflow is building Web3 infrastructure for a better world.
We were founded in 2017 by decentralization activist Chris Remus to accelerate the development of a more inclusive, equitable, and fair economy. We’ve since grown into one of the most active teams working in Web3’s staking economy, operating secure, high-performance validators on many of the leading Cosmos networks, including the Cosmos Hub, Agoric, Akash, Juno, Oasis, Osmosis, Regen, and Stargaze.
Chainflow has supported the Cosmos Hub from the very beginning. We were a member of the original Cosmos Hub validator working group going all the way back to 2017, and we participated in mainnet genesis in 2019 (for a time capsule, see our old launch post, here), helping to lay track for the thriving community of validators, delegators, and developers that make the Cosmos Network today one of the most dynamic ecosystems in Web3.
Chainflow has never taken an outside investment; we’re self-funded from day one, fully independent, and proudly values-driven.
Beyond running validators, we lead efforts to increase decentralization across the staking economy. Some of our ongoing initiatives include:
- Nakaflow.io, a watchdog resource that tracks the centralization of stake on major blockchains
- Cosmos Validator Mission Control, a set of monitoring and alerting tools for independent validator operators on Cosmos networks
- Re-delegation programs that distribute stake to smaller validators—like delegating 30% of our Regen holdings to other smaller, independent, yet very capable validators
- The Staking Defense League, a collaborative of independent validator operators working to keep Web3 decentralized
Just to name a few.
We’re excited to continue supporting the community as it grows, and we look forward to working with our delegators and partners to make the Cosmos Network stronger and more decentralized.
You can find out more about us at our website, https://chainflow.io.
2. How long has your validator been active on the Cosmos Hub?
Chainflow has been active on the Cosmos Hub from the very beginning: we participated in the network’s original validator working group in 2017, as well as mainnet genesis in 2019, and we’ve been growing our support ever since.
3. How do you engage with your delegators?
For general commentary, we keep an active Twitter account (@ChainflowPoS) to share things like: alerts about network changes, upgrades, and downtime; updates about our ongoing projects; reports on our governance voting; and commentary across the space.
To hold more hands-on space with our community, we also maintain a responsive Telegram group (Chainflow Community) for things like: in-depth breakdowns of our governance voting; responses to support questions; and guest AMAs.
For more long-form thoughts and analyses, we publish to our blog.
4. How do you make governance decisions? What is your process for deciding how to vote on proposals, and how do you ensure that you keep delegators’ best interests in mind?
As we mentioned above, we’re a fully independent team. When we participate in governance, that independence allows us to make decisions in the community with the same values we use to make decisions for our own team. Those are:
- Decentralization: Does this initiative redistribute power away from the most dominant participants to more, smaller ones?
- Inclusivity: Does this initiative open access to new, underrepresented groups?
- Equity: Does this initiative increase stakeholdership for more participants?
- Fairness: Does this initiative even the playing field for more players?
That framework isn’t, of course, black and white. Communities are complicated, and we believe that community governance requires nuance, flexibility, and imagination. Our decision-making reflects that. We value progress over dogma, we’re not afraid to update our opinions in the face of new information, and we abstain conscientiously when we recognize that we don’t have the experience or context necessary to engage in a thoughtful discussion.
Since we have no outside investors, we have the privilege of making decisions entirely on our terms. By trusting your vote with Chainflow, you’re trusting a team that’s beholden only to our delegators—not venture capitalists, banks, or any other outside interests. Our track record speaks for itself: in our votes, and in our work, we always choose to invest in initiatives that create opportunities for everyone—not just our bottom line.
5. How do you share your voting choices, and the thought process behind them, with your delegators?
Every week, we share a governance participation update that breaks down every vote we made in the previous week, across each of our networks. First, we publish a lightweight version to Twitter. Then, we publish a more in-depth version to our Telegram group, where we open up a discussion for feedback from our community.
For a bigger-picture look at our governance participation, we also post quarterly governance audits to hold ourselves accountable to participating regularly and transparently. You can see our most recent audit here.
6. What resources does your team dedicate to participating in governance and engaging with your delegators?
Team members across our organization own different aspects of our governance process in order to make our participation more accessible and transparent for our delegators:
- Our dedicated Protocol Specialist is responsible for monitoring every active proposal on each of our networks, including the Cosmos Hub, and ensuring that we participate in the necessary discourse around them
- Our team is responsible for determining our vote, based on the available information
- Our Comms Lead is responsible for sharing our governance updates and engaging with our community around our participation
One of our top organizational priorities is to maintain active, informed, and transparent governance participation—we’ll continue to invest in improving our processes and resources.
7. What are your hopes and goals for the Cosmos Hub?
We embrace the “Port City” vision for the Cosmos Hub—one that centers it as a “servant leader” responsible for supporting and enabling other Cosmos chains, not competing with them. In order to realize this vision, we need to ensure that the Hub is:
- Elegantly Simple: Focused on security, neutrality, and interoperability for the interchain ecosystem
- Rock Steady: Operating predictably, reliably, and consistently as the key crossroads of the Cosmos
- Thoroughly Decentralized: Across validator infrastructure, stake distribution, and governance
Interchain security (ICS) is waiting just around the corner. Its arrival will mean that it’s easier than ever for new Cosmos communities to launch and grow. It will also mean that the security, stability, and decentralization of the Hub will apply directly to a growing ecosystem of new “consumer chains.” In other words: the decisions we make for the Hub today will have significant consequences for countless networks for years to come.
Our ultimate goal for the Hub is for it to earn the faith that the interchain future will demand of it. We look forward to working with anyone interested in helping to make that happen!