Important: Validator Pool Updates

This article shares details of our action plan to further enhance decentralization on Terra. While decentralization is our key goal, ensuring safety of user’s funds is paramount. Hence we have stringent criteria for validator selection.

Below are the key sections:

1. Revised Stake Pools criteria

2. Increase in Pool size

3. Addition of new pool (Next week)

4. Details about Airdrops Plus pool

(Changes 1 and 2 will be done in the next 2–3 days)

1. Revised Stake Pools Criteria

Stader Stake Pools have a TVL of over 4.6 Million Luna & over 10k+ unique wallets delegating.

Currently, there are 3 validator pools on Stader:

• Blue Chip
• Community
• Airdrops Plus

In order to be a part of Stader pools, validators need to meet the below criteria during the 30 day period (22/11/2021–22/12/2021).

• Uptime > 99.85% (averaged over a one month period at the time of selection)
• No slashing in the past three months
• Commission ≤ 5%
• 1–2 pool-specific criteria

We have revised the eligibility criteria for the Blue Chip pool to further support decentralization:

• We have not considered any validators that have >2% voting power.
• No validator in the top-10 is part of this pool now.

2. Increase in Pool Size

We are also including more validators in our pools. Currently, we have 13 validators across the pools, we will be increasing this to 20 validators across 3 pools.

• Blue Chip validator pool will be increased from 5 to 10 validators.
• Community validator pool will be increased from 5 to 7 validators.
• Several new validators including Galactic Punks have been proposed by the community to be added to the pools. They will be on our watch list, and will be added to the relevant pools as soon as they complete 3 months history and meet our criteria.

3. Addition of a New Pool (Next week)

We will also be adding a ‘Small Validators’ pool that will have validators who have low voting power, yet a good performance history.

We aim to encourage smaller validators who are performing well with this pool. We will share the criteria for the selection of this pool soon.

4. Details about Airdrops Plus Pool

Airdrops Plus pool is one of the favorite validator pools of the community. We would like to add more validators to this pool that meet the criteria. We have been encouraging several validators to provide airdrops etc. to stakers. At this stage, the 3 incumbent validators are the only ones that provide airdrops. We are constantly monitoring the ecosystem to add more qualifying validators to the pool.

If you have feedback, write to amitg@staderlabs.com.