[Suggestion] A more decentralised, secure and profesionnal way to chat between validators

Conversation Validation
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Hello, I’m Ichthyx CTO of Nuxian-Labs/Pro Delegators

From the beginning cryptocurrency have decentralized/interoperable value, and you ?
Some people like @jacobgadikian (on twitter, forum don’t allow me to post link) have raised concerns about Discord, and I totally agree.

I think discord is a over-complicated UX, is slow, does not respect privacy, is centralized, and absolutely no values about decentralization, freedom, interoperability.
All the notifications is a mess and a lot of spam therefore is very confusing then not serious for a validators job (checking announcements).

That’s why I suggest by this post an alternative way of having chat.
I think we should use an open, decentralized, federated, and interoperable, and simple communication protocol.

Like XMPP or Matrix.

Every validator can host his own instance and every instance can communicate together.
Of course there will be a public group-chat for validators, or private group-chat? Who will be on one of the instances.

For spam issue we can restrict access for only stakers, or even validator only (But I didn’t find how you can sign/verify a message with Gaia/Cosmos for stakers only. For example, on eth you can easily check the authenticity of an wallet address, and then check in the blockchain if he is a validator, and you can sign without any third party lib directly with cli.)

About XMPP vs MATRIX:

XMPP :

  • server light and fast (150mb of ram and 1% of CPU for hundred of people) and more.
  • client light and fast, no battery consumption
  • spec is not centralized.
  • clients is not always UX friendly. (Prefer Gajim or Conversations)
  • no group voip support

Matrix :

  • server is slow (2gb of ram and more for 10 people), bad code.
  • default client is slow electron shit like discord…
  • spec is centralized
  • is know to leak some metadata
  • clients is UI/UX friendly
  • group voip support

Also XMPP and Matrix can be bridged together so both can be used. But I don’t know if you can create invitation link to create user account on matrix to restrict access only for stakers or validators.

For group VOIP/Screen I suggest maybe not relate on xmpp/matrix but use a more kiss/simple tool like galene

Thanks for reading my suggestion, happy to see you reaction on this.
Regards.

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Lets do it on chain instead. Urbit, Status, Cyber (by the way native to Cosmos and IBC enabled) are all options.

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Explain why do you want to put all validators conversations on a public register ? (It’s bad for privacy and data hungry).

Also solutions like Status.im is not on chain. Imho pure p2p chat is bad for battery consumption and take far too much resources. Chat messages should be mobile friendly. Technically speaking, I think SimpleX have found the right compromise, but it’s far too niche.

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because validators are public entities and what they discuss should imo be public. in all honesty, the chains that create closed discord channels to hide validators convos arent doing the best thing ever. btw things can be encrypted…

Why do you say Status is not? The app is build on top of Ethereum

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Hey Ichthyx,

Thank you for your input and post! We appreciate your suggestions and the spirit of innovation they represent.

Decentralization and interoperability are extremely important, but there is a trade-off space to be explored between the options that you suggest and already established platforms like Discord. There are a few reasons why Discord continues to serve the Cosmos Hub as one of our primary communication platforms.

Foremost, Discord provides a unified experience, offering a single platform for text, voice, and video communication, complemented by file and screen sharing features. This comprehensive communication suite reduces the need for additional tools, ensuring that validators, developers, end-users, and other community members have everything they need within easy reach.

The community is made up of a diverse group of users with vastly different needs, including validators, developers, end-users, and more, who interact regularly and thus share key information and context across the different layers of the community that need to be informed. A unified platform like Discord fosters a conducive environment for these interactions. Fragmenting our communication across multiple platforms could detract from this collaborative experience and strain resources to coordinate across platforms.

Some examples of important collaboration across multiple stakeholder groups are emergency chain-upgrades. Any migration to a new platform would require a lot of strategic planning to ensure that nothing is neglected along the way. This difficulty is further compounded by the critical connective-nature of these platforms as it relates to the liveness of both the Cosmos Hub and its consumer chains. With the complexity of network operations, any migration could have impacts on the network operations itself.

The welcoming environment on Discord is beneficial for newcomers in the space. Who may find the familiarity and accessibility of Discord helpful, promoting inclusivity and easy access to collaborative support. It’s also helpful for them to be able to interact with the chain validators and thus delve into the deeper aspects of network operation and staking based on those early interactions.

Re: the concerns about spam and notifications. Discord also excels when it comes to notifications customization, ensuring users aren’t overwhelmed with excessive or unwanted notifications. This personalization extends to server notifications, where you can choose to receive notifications for all messages, only @ mentions, or none at all.

Moreover, within each server, users can adjust their notifications on a channel-by-channel basis. You can mute specific channels, suppress @ everyone and @ here notifications, and tailor your mobile push notifications according to your preference. The ability to selectively mute servers or channels for a defined period or indefinitely offers additional control to users.

Users can also set their status to ‘Do Not Disturb’ to silence all notifications temporarily, and they can customize or disable friend request notifications in the ‘Privacy & Safety’ tab in user settings.

Discord’s “Mentions” tab, a feature akin to an Inbox, is an invaluable tool that collates all the messages where a user has been directly mentioned, across all servers and private messages. This includes @ everyone and @ here mentions as well as those directly mentioning your username. This tool ensures that even amidst high volumes of communication, key messages are not overlooked.

In conclusion, while your suggestions for XMPP or Matrix reflect a valid and appreciated interest in decentralization, we believe that, currently, Discord continues to meet the communities needs effectively.

Thank you once again for your valuable input. We welcome your feedback and will always consider suggestions that may improve the experience.

Best Regards,
Alice

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Absolutely in favor of this. Closed groups should be a big no.
I don’t have technical knowledge but I can throw some ideas. AFAIK We need closed discussion for vulnerabilities.what we can do is allow acess to val who are in active set through message. we can give acees to new val and reset the acess every week. Dont know if this is possible but we can do something similar to this.

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Interesting points on why using Discord as the primary communication.