One of the troubles we have faced as a validator for Celo is keeping up with all the information that comes up in the Celo's Discord discussions. This is especially true for smaller validators whose portfolios include several networks. To help everyone stay in touch with what is going on the Celo validator scene and contribute to the validator and broader Celo community, we have decided to publish the Celo Discord Validator Digest. Here are the notes for the period of 15 March - 11 April 2021.
Discussions
Validator rewards
A discussion on how voter and validator rewards work in Celo led to a debate on why validators' rewards keep on decreasing:
zviad | WOTrust: Validator rewards also adjust due to rewardsMultiplier. All protocol rewards that are paid out are adjusted using rewardsMultiplier to make sure inflation matches the target supply growth curve.
This is why validator rewards (in cUSD) has been slowly decreasing compared to at the beginning. Validator Rewards are now only ~90% compared to what they were at the launch.
ag: Is decreasing of validator rewards any meaningful? Not questioning about how it works now but how it possibly should work. Costs for infra are not decreasing, slashing penalties are not decreasing, but rewards are decreasing.
zviad | WOTrust: Yeah, this is a reasonable thing to discuss. I was also surprised to see at first that validator rewards were also multiplied by rewardsMultiplier. It would also be very reasonable for validator rewards to stay constant and for voter rewards to decrease faster to keep inflation growth in check.
Afaik, changing it is possible, and doesn't require hard-fork. It is right here: https://github.com/celo-org/celo-monorepo/blob/master/packages/protocol/contracts/governance/EpochRewards.sol#L514
targetValidatorEpochPayment
is also multiplied byrewardsMultiplier
. One could remove that and havetargetValidatorEpochPayment
stay constant, which will accelerate decrease ofrewardsMultiplier
but will keep validator payouts constant.pranay: Exactly, this was my intuition as well -- the validator rewards are intended to be a fixed source of income, so their being adjusted by the multiplier didn't line up with my mental model.
ag: It still covers all the costs (double proxy/validator, testnet infra and so on) but I doubt it will cover in a year or two if it still be decreasing at the same pace. Also I'm not sure it could cover much when there is additional workforce for ops + taxes in some jurisdictions.
Useful info
Jan Anyblock Analytics published a blog post on Celo validator uptime score calculations: https://www.anyblockanalytics.com/blog/celo-uptime-score-approximation/
Important request from Cody | cLabs:
Hey @Validators ✅! Could everyone take a minute to double check that they've enabled all regions in the geo-permission list? Example for Twilio https://www.twilio.com/console/sms/settings/geo-permissions. Some folks have noticed that some regions like Venezuela weren't enabled which may have contributed to a lower completion rate. If you do notice a missing region, please update it and let us know here so we can measure the impact.
And a subsequent communication from timmoreton | cLabs:
Looks like when Twilio add geos, they don't check those new country codes by default. @Validators ✅ If you use Twilio, please double check you're not missing any country codes that you hope to be able to send SMS to -- https://www.twilio.com/console/sms/settings/geo-permissions
Those who use MessageBird for their attestation services need to configure both US and Canadian numbers in order to send messages to the respective countries:
timmoreton | cLabs: In particular, something I didn't realize previously -- if you're configuring MessageBird you need to configure both a US and a Canadian number, because you can't send to each of those countries except with a +1 number from each geo...
...
So right now there's no configuration needed/possible with the sending number for MessageBird. However that doesn't mean it necessarily works as their API docs are thin on the ground and I wasn't aware a separate number was necessary for Canada until this week 😕
Right now, Attestation Service doesn't supply a number when sending SMS via MessageBird, so it uses the 'default originator' (see Settings > SMS -- mine is set to be a blank box). However I haven't tested whether this will correctly send to Canada AND US when both those numbers are available. We'll try and look at this in next day or two.
Guess all this depends on whether MessageBird do the right thing when presented with a number to send to and multiple options to send from (according to the above reply, it sounds like not).
The grace period on mainnet is now 10 minutes instead of ~1 minute:
winslyn | Staking Fund: Did Core Contract Release 3 get activated on mainnet? Especially the update on Validators.sol with CIP-29 implementation (increasing the grace period)?
asa | cLabs: I believe it did!
Community
Some updates from Moola Market:
Moola just published a CLI script called
deposit
that makes it easy to transfer your daily cUSD epoch rewards into Moola market where your cUSD will start earning compound interest (currently 4.57% APY). The script can be modified as needed because there are two assumptions 1) that you will need to unlock your account and 2) that you'll want to transfer the cUSD from a release gold contract to a non-release gold account (although this isn't required) before depositing into the Moola market.Once you've installed the command you can simply type
deposit
, you'll be prompted to enter your unlock password, then the total balance of cUSD in the account will be transferred, deposited into Moola, and the accounts will lock. There is also, of course, a Moola CLI command towithdraw
when needed.Thanks to @mbay2002 | Qoor for composing this script. https://github.com/moolamarket/moola-utils
Cauldron Attestation Map has been updated:
Hi everyone, I've updated the attestation map to be epoch-by-epoch now, since the amount of attestations has increased exponentially. It will default to the current epoch, but you can now search back for historical epochs also. I'll also be adding in an aggregate mode soon as well, so we can still see the totals since genesis. Please let me know if you find any issues, cheers. https://cauldron.pretoriaresearchlab.io/attestations(edited)
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