The Politics of Cosmos Validators – Daniel Hwang

Transcript

I think one of the most powerful things about what we've built like to put a positive spin on it because that we literally hard-coded the ability to check a tyrannical corrupt centralized organization or entity existence [Music] foreign averse and it's the end of day one uh

Sun's starting to come down but I got one last conversation here today I'm here with Daniel Wong from well previously from state fish and yeah you're working on a couple of interesting things I think one of the things that people knew you for right now is like this validator Commons Workshop group you know there was a there was a work there was a workshop at nebula's Summit a couple months back you'll be doing a workshop here and you have some really like interesting opinions I think around staking in governance in general and like yeah so love to chat a little bit about that today um yeah how you doing yeah it was really we were very thankful for letting us use the nebula conference for

but I think to begin with like the start of outer Commons wasn't necessarily just out of like an idea but more of stressful necessity I think a lot of validators initially when we were trying to figure out how to improve the governance space we're very hesitant to communicate with each other because we thought it would be collusive yeah something validators were just literally saying hey let's set up a slack connect Channel and talk that way which is like the Very extreme end of what might happen or setting up like the potential infrastructure to have that type of collusive activity but the thing is that you had with that problems of communicating there's like this bystander effect where we all did agree that certain actions should be

taken to improve the governance space especially for validators and even infrastructure standards that and best practices sharing but no one was sort of like taking the initiative to like group people together and so out of frustration I initially just called I was like [ __ ] it let's get all the protocol Specialists and these validators into a room I always just like need each other right and we'll make it very clear that we don't want to like have this be collusive but then after that it was sort of okay now that we met each other now we can work together and so the next session after that early later last year was writing down all the problems we had right we literally took six hours and we started writing on

these white boards and then just said like everything from infrastructure standard practices best practices inside of validators to operate them to even like simple stuff like values can never take a break right we're 24 7 and a lot of us especially when some of the smaller validator operators that really did want to scale their business to become a very professional service providers like they literally can't take vacations they haven't taken and it yeah and then we realize how important that type of facilitation meant to have without or just communicate especially if these foundations themselves independently were not very well equipped to kind of lead and guide how the validating ecosystem grew because

they were not operating them themselves and also with the limited resources and levels of professional professionalism they had it was all over the place and what we were finding ourselves doing as validators or as large or validated service providers is that we see these other chains kind of like mangle a lot of like what they were trying to do on the governance side right to to help grow their ecosystem and then we were often telling the foundation hey we actually saw this on chain a already happen you're trying to implement this again do it differently this way because we've we've seen it how how badly it can turn out or how well it can turn out and then it just started becoming the sort of like Coalition of validators that pretty well-versed and experienced with operating their their services

and then also with like the type of way that they wanted to express their particular opinion based on the responsibility that they felt that they took from like this sort of progressive decentralization approach and so then the validator commons had like this sort of like tongue-in-cheek moniker of like crypto political party yeah right where it's like oh it sounds centralized like oh it's my is this like some monolithic sort of thing that's going to be like this voting block which then was like you know in some way why not right even though there is no collusion having this template of like these values that do group together that can like work together very efficiently it does also just represent the ability for other groups to exist right it's a template

and it necessitates maybe the existence of another some might be saying like there's this like concept of oh you're just recreated Congress in like a two two or three party system yeah but then the fact is that like especially in decentralization and things and the the allowance that permissionlessness provides right that that allows anyone to kind of contribute and then if anyone can contribute especially with decentralization you have meaningful check and balances that these different organizations can push against each other similar to how like validated like we broke down like when we were talking about validators is like there's four things there's validator to self how they kind of operate themselves right their best practices internal yeah

operational stuff yeah validated to validator how validators communicate with each other maybe in these consortiums this validator to Foundation how their validators are supposed to be this meaningful check and balance against the foundations and then there's validated to ecosystem right like the rest of the world like regulators and policy makers to delegators right that need to communicate their governance things and the level of complex it seems like the level of complexity goes up just as you go up that that sort of Stack right like exactly it's relatively easy to set say standards and I think lots of validators probably have I mean at least like the professional ones uh Implement similar sort of security standards at least to some extent and then communicating amongst each other well you know we've got telegram groups maybe

it's not like so standardized but at least like there are some ways for validators to talk to each other but then like valid errors to foundation and then like ecosystems the ecosystem that the complexity just becomes so um yeah it's like it's huge right it's it's nuanced but it's also the like enormous complexity because you have so many validators and needing to interact with each other and who best to help build these than validators have literally gone through the [ __ ] themselves right you can make assumptions from foundations who've never sort of ran their own values and see how they had to interact with self other validators foundations and Community or ecosystem yeah and so that's that's kind of like the the trajectory that validator Commons has

been taking I I don't necessarily see it as like a collusive force it but it's a necessity that need that needs to kind of like operate in order for us to like move the the needle forward because if we didn't it's literally just a bystander sort of effect situation and we don't get any we don't get any meaningful movement ahead unless of course like a validator that is enterprising enough just wants to take over everything right and they just want everything in themselves which is fair and they they have the full mandate to do so but right we need to meaningfully grow these ecosystems we can't just have the same like top five validators on every single chain like

especially if within the context of Cosmos if we're having this like multi-chain feature that we want many many hundreds or even thousands of chains we need to have you need to scale the value you're set to we can't just have one validator to have like 1 000 chains on there did you see this uh Sonny's talk about mesh security no I unfortunately didn't not get to see it yeah so here the idea I think it's like quite interesting right so like right now an Isis compliment kind of yeah yeah so I think the idea is for you know chains to provide to be consumer chains and provider chains at the same time right so like the the cosmos Hub and osmosis where they have their own validator sets but they

can also provide internet security to other chains so you could have Cosmos Hub providing security to the osmosis chain and then in return osmosis could also be providing secure to it and other Chains would also fit in here so basically you have like these kind of mesh network of chains securing each other and the idea um is to get away from the current model which is like a bunch of hubs hubs right with zones um yeah so I thought that was kind of cool it seems like with that mesh approach you can even have hubs very specialized hubs with zones and then those hubs themselves provide that sort of mesh networks yeah yeah yeah right because yeah yeah so what are the what

are the kinds of things you've identified as like best practices so far and like these workshops you've been running how many workshops have they written we're running another one tomorrow I think yeah but I'm also organizing an event at the same time but yeah like what are some of the best practices you guys have identified and are starting to take hold you think I think the fact that values are able to communicate like the way they vote to right to at least Express the existence of why even decentralized governance exists right like that that I think is important how we go about doing that I think needs a lot of improvement what do we do we just like post things on Twitter and then try to like outlive

the noise or like outshine the noise and hope people because like it's interesting because of validators most often especially if they're not institutional delegates we don't know who our delegators are yeah and so then how do we communicate with them like we we say like we're voting this way do you have like specific strong opinions against us because we have to eventually get our voting power and if we don't know do we put up a Twitter poll do we know everyone who votes on a Twitter poll is a delegate of ours or just some Bry gated some other right yeah so I think that means best pack today do you think that validators could maybe set up some like kind of internal Dow structure to get token gated kind of like if you yeah that would get your identity yeah but that would serve as a way for

delegators to Signal you know yes or no or yeah yeah I definitely think that should happen I mean is it necessary because like a delegator can also just override your vote yeah and and we've seen that remember did you hear about kava prop 96 yeah yeah that stuff is like still possible and like that's I mean where the so for context like the kava prop 96 was fmos making up uh community pool proposal to Cava to effectively fund um etherment which comment was using which car was using right so like fmos wanted to build a team around etherman they're looking to fund that team they make a proposal to Cava the entire

Community voted the entire Community voted was I mean we were sitting at dinner actually in Paris looking at oh this thing's gonna pass and then two days later a bunch of wallets probably the team yeah um voted wrote a tool and then he tracked the dma one of our protocols yeah it was at state fish also with me yeah and it was and and but that's the thing that we've given that ability to exist yeah and and that right not not to say that governance is completely broken but it's that though we have to like figure out there's like these these edge cases that we see that that don't work sometimes we've seen in our the thing is the thing that was shocking yeah exactly there's so many there's been so many edge cases in the last year

it's fascinating but then but the thing what's great about it is like there are case studies and they provide precedent yeah because like with Juno I literally had given that a talk on Mob rule that type of governance at the Lisbon Cosmo verse yeah and then everyone's like oh that's really cool like you know it'll never happen and then right and I love Juno like it's it's amazing because like it's it's this kind of like move fast experiment quickly you you build up this like fantastically experienced Dev team that has learned and then now is able is capable of building uh Stronger but it's it's like there was there was no consequence we we all like made like some snarky comments on Twitter saying

like oh this is bad this is horrible we put up and everyone liked it right and then nothing happened like that it's like just visit and and that that I think is also just to tie back to how valid or common is the usefulness of it is that there needs to be a way of a coordinative effort even if it's like collective bargaining that needs to happen when there is like this validated Foundation relationship with that chain like what what happens and if and if everyone says it thought it was bad but then no one took responsibility of doing something on it nothing happens yeah and so it's I I remember I was having this conversation with someone who used to work at the doj specifically and now is at the House of Representatives doing

like crypto enforcement stuff and I asked them hey I was explaining to her a lot of this like Nuance of like governance and I was asking her like hey what do you guys look at in you know the government side regular regulator side and then she she straight up told me like it's just in intent right like the difference between collusion and cooperation is intent and obviously intent can very rapidly change right you know from cooperation to now we're just gonna like take all the money for ourselves or something yeah but then if intent is important and it's a clearly mandated and then people can call you out for that it's very transparent which we have been I think it's it's perfectly reasonable to kind of push forward because let's be honest

it's much less efficient to do things in a decentralized manner without coordination then we can do it with court like yeah I love like Gregory always says it's Gregory from regen yeah it's like out cooperate the competition right there's much more that can be that can be gained from like working together and I think value.com is like an example of that and I would even go as far as to say it's like a public good like how valid or ecosystems evolve I also see it yeah as a public good and because no one's working then like we're just like sputtering along or there's a lot of aspects of these chains that do develop strong because they have strong stakeholders right they want this feature produced well and quality but if no one's like speaking on behalf of like

the validator ecosystem then like how do you do that yeah you can even say the same as climate so let's talk about the OPAC stuff a little bit because you've been sort of vocal on that yeah um what's your high level high level uh thoughts about this this topic you know it's funny I have very shy of his on that ideologically but there's also like practical stories like on the record I'm very proud you American citizen I love you know living in America but if you were to take a look at it from like the perspective of like what these protocols were built for in the first place neutrality is like agnostic to nation states right it was funny because I was actually at a

conference two weeks ago um that the global blockchain Business Council had created right the guys Sandra Rowe who CEO chairs who had founded that she's the one that had created all those like the the drips in Chicago for becomes but like all X Regulators right like the head of the oecd the guy who created like the American Finance the Securities forum and all these guys right kind of scary guys right Amanda wake that I was just talking mentioning from the doj in the house of reps like and what what was actually surprising to me is that I was having these conversations exactly about this question that you asked they're actually like open to collaborating obviously there's very

strongly opinionated folks from like the regulator side is like yes American imperialism and dynamism must win at all costs because they come from like a perspective of if we let anyone else have control or have the potential to control these neutral networks that could potentially span Global Network from a place where like the currency is like power from right the American US dollar is like economic Warfare that it can wage Beyond like an actual physical standing army right sanctions that you can make like a war stop right like the Kurds and the Turks sanctions stop that war right from from attacking if if we want to build this the way we

intentioned it we can't have that type of subjective opinionated influence from a nation-state that decides arbitrarily well who they think is right or wrong yeah right if and and I I completely agree with that that perspective but from the perspective of like what these were initially built for maybe that kind of misses the point right because like that is like a slippery slope ofac is Gonna Make Way for kyc and then kyc with ofac and everything else that they're going to want to have it's gonna look very startly familiar like our traditional Financial system but even more expressive in terms of what type of

information that they have on us yeah I think can you imagine a kyc chain that has that that has the ability to sanction people but it's also transparent yeah absolutely I don't I don't think that people would actually use it so I I don't see a future given a choice what if like the cbdc of the world that that you the America says and then they replace ACH with that and we all have to transact on that it's like in a public Ledger because well I think I think that this the idea of a fully public fully transparent fully traceable blockchain with perfect transparency but also identity is impossible because the

stakeholders themselves right like let's face it right like the corrupt politicians the you know the uh tax evading whatever like also the system and so the this is also a check on them so it's not only a check so you know I think the dystopian if everybody gets to use the system you know no there and by with no exception then it's like a very good point I mean then at that then at that point I think it's I don't know that I would personally want that but I think it's worth considering because then it's perfect transparency for everyone even politicians even those with power Etc

um if there's a sort of two-tiered two-tiered system where parts of the population disenfranchise people people with no access to financial systems Etc have to use this but wealthy educated people who live in developed Nations whatever like you know some some separation and some social separation that creates a step where there's two systems one in privacy and one with no privacy I think that is of course that that's the dystopian future I think that you know Levy control over everyone and yeah the disenfranchised public I mean this is a I I think I mean I'm not like super plugged in to like Chinese like you know internal whatever like but I I I think

that probably those with power are not uh as subject to like the surveillance um the you know like all the oversight and and the kind of dystopian aspects of you know the Chinese model I think and so this is like the dystopia right where you have this inequality between them between two groups you know it's it's funny I I actually never really thought about this such a good point like if if the politicians themselves are advocating for this type of panopticon that they want access to right because if they have complete transparency then they can catch the bad guys right but then they themselves are subject to the same scrutiny at the same level of the ease of access to get get that yeah then you can literally just be

like okay it's like uh you can call their Bluff right you'd be like do you want this do you really want this we'll do it for you and then and then they're like oh [ __ ] maybe not yeah maybe they might and then they might value someone like that privacy which begets self-sovereignty that we have yeah I'm not ex entirely I'm not very optimistic about this future I'm I'm I think I'm more pessimistic I mean if things go around I was talking with Ethan uh Buckman earlier about this and basically you know I have this fear that with blockchains we are just recreating a lot of the existing systems but worse so like we there are several paths down

which we can go one of the paths is the same but worse right like this disappear terms may be good sometimes yeah and and I'm somewhat pessimistic that this is what's that this is a strong there's a strong probability that that happens um I think one of the most powerful things about what we've built like to put a positive spin on it is that we've we've literally hard-coded the ability to check uh a tyrannical corrupt centralized um organization or entity existence because right but we have like these the spectrum of ma like tyranny of the majority which is like Marlboro and then

tyranny of the Dems which is like a small group of people and and maybe people would say that our current Society is centralized and corrupt in a tyranny of devs format the reason I like Cosmos so much and then the what we've been able to hard code into it the way it was designed and obviously it needs iteration but like tyranny of the majority even though it is bad it could result in in situations that we don't like because the mob can just be like riled up by some crazy Pied Piper who wants to do something that it still has the opportunity to check those in power and and ha still have that Democratic access to change it the way that they want to have it changed the tyranny of the devs you

don't have that like Bitcoin do you think the Bitcoin Community has the ability to guide the Bitcoin Network that they want they completely rely on core depths yeah as a Bitcoin holder I wouldn't know where to go to do that I wouldn't know where to go these days to voice my concerns about anything that's happening checks and balances are incredible and I think that if we if since we've been like building these Financial systems from scratch that could potentially be this global settlement layer and application layer that everyone has agnostic if it is truly neutral we we all have ability to check it that took that power how that does manifest in like groups or like politicians what what not at least we still have that and and I think that's the most powerful

thing that we've been able to like yeah we didn't like try to work with the system and mold it because it requires like people like go in and people wanted to take the radical approach which is what Satoshi maybe have taken but now we have this at least from first principles to do that yeah which is which is what is also quite scary about to bring it back to like the ofax situation if if a particularly subjectively opinionated nation-state that has a very different world view from other countries they are able to get themselves into the protocol level decision making then then we don't have that power anymore like if they all because like what I won't use America right but like

let's say nation state a is the world power and then they are able to influence something but then let's say let's say 100 or 200 years later nation state B or C has a better formed way but then nation state a was able to effectively influence the development and the protocol Direction in such an ingrained way that the protocol that now they should say A and B and C are using 300 or 200 years later that's the de facto one do you think nation state a will be able to as easily give up that control and unrest that it's grasp of the person and and and especially if they're like losing right they're losing that power of course they're not going to unrest that control and then and they're do you think they're not going to put in like checks and balances or like stop Gap measures to make sure that

they still retain that power in like worst case scenarios I think like it sounds nice from the beginning right it that that like oh it makes sense yeah of course we want to catch capture terrorists or or terrorist financiers and stuff but then what if for example their decision or their opinions suddenly Flip or or are not reflective of the entire world's beliefs anymore yeah yeah I think I think that I think I mean what what I feel strongly about it I think you also feel strongly about is that protocols need to stay neutral yeah and this is true for the Internet it's also true for blockchains and internet doesn't censor at their protocol level and then why are

we suddenly trying to Central at our level too yeah right even at an even more fundamental level or maybe the internet's like um primary zero or later but like you know yeah thank you so much Daniel this has been really interesting we could go on forever uh it's getting a bit dark I feel like um the lighting situation is gonna get dire soon so uh we'll we'll pick this up uh yeah thank you [Music]