According to the specifications from the CHIPs discussion phase, there were mentions to a particular (optional) vote power cap for consumer chains within the PSS system.
Validator power cap
Each consumer chain can also set a cap on the power that any individual validator can have on their chain […] We’ll release some analysis on different top-n and cap scenarios soon.
Source: CHIPs discussion phase: Partial Set Security (updated)
Since this post didn’t mention this feature, we were wondering if it’s still part of the design and if you still plan to release some analysis of different scenarios. We emphasize this because in our own projections of PSS economics, we saw this as an absolute necessity to balance the natural centralizing forces that could emerge in the validator set. We were hoping to use your analysis model to potentially advocate for a minimum cap built into the topN system. Consumers would be able to adjust it freely, of course, but not beyond this threshold.
Something like a 5% maximum VP set by default would ensure that even in the tightest conditions of the 50% topN with no other validator joining outside the top would ensure that consumers have a bare minimum of 10 validators running this chain. In the current Hub’s VP distribution, this would only impact the rewards of the first two validators.
Moreover, inviting every topN consumer to use an even lower cap than the base 5% may be a good way to combine efforts with the forthcoming VotePower Tax proposed by @effortcapital. More information regarding this proposition can be found here: Cosmos Hub Tokenomics - Fiscal and Governance Policy (Blockworks Research).
To summarize, we would like to ask @jtremback if this cap is still part of the final design, and if so, we would like to propose the introduction of a base VP cap to the topN design. The appropriate level of this parameter should be debated by the community, of course, based on a model to showcase the underlying effects this parameter has. If needed, we can help produce this model.
Thanks for reading!
Govmos