Bharvest, I love that you are a worry wart, and always take the worst case scenario in mind when building or suggesting ideas, but in this case, there is quite honestly little we can actually do to prevent the above from happening.
There -are- things we can do to help minimize them.
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Yoyager will unlikely issue warnings against X validator, it’s simply to “hands on” for a decentralized network.
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a Wall of rules, or a quiz, will be skipped no different than a terms of service on a software install.
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Greed all to often outweighs good deeds.
With that said, I think that there are a few good things that could come of this discussion. While I think that we should build a group of technically capable validators, bring them together in a public facing channel (where public can see the chat, but only verified validators can actually communicate). From there and with some mainnet experience under our belts, we can build an expectation of the validator community.
I personally think governance to decide if someone can or can bond atoms should be a last resort, and that we should use governance to not -remove- a validator, but rather as a recommendation of commission rate to discourage further delegations. I’m sure we could develop a sliding scale, and if all of our websites has an explaination of the problems of centralization, and the expectation of increasing commission values based on network voting power we can “train” the delegators in what to watch for, why to watch out of it, how to redelegate etc.
Many of the people in our validator chat are devs/people of technical backgrounds and are rooted in the industry and the concept of what we are doing. The biggest mistake I’ve seen in the crypto community is developers thinking the people that are appealing to understand/care/comprehend what they are doing and why they are doing it (which is fueled by their immersion in a field of other highly technical people). Unfortunately, a large percentage of our clientele barely have the ability to understand circulating supply much less an understanding of BFT consensus.
There will be a large number of people who will have read just enough to know that more atoms = more proposals and therefore more rewards, and will be thinking "if i am getting 7-20% from returns, and only risking 1% to slashing (when the market can swing 5-10% a day) , who cares if the largest validator has 23% or 23.02%.
I know the statement is patently false, and I don’t have to point out the errors in the assumptions to you guys, but I assure you a certain percentage of people delegating shares will have the above mindset…
TL;DR You can’t educate someone who doesn’t want to be educated, but I think building expectations of behavior from each other as validators will help to clear up potential issues down the road, and instead of someone waking up in the morning finding out they’ve been cliffed/voted out, they find a message that we all fee it prudent they increase their margins. It is far easier to teach 100 like minded individuals to act in the networks best interest, than it is to teach potentially millions of people how they should delegate.
Remember, if the expectation going in is that I’ll be voted out at X percentage, then my goal going is not going to be increased transparency.