MIP 15: Decentralized Liquid Staking Validator Registry

Introduction

This proposal aims to decentralize liquid staking on the Meter network by expanding the validator set supporting the liquid staking registry. Presently, only the Meter Foundation Node is part of the liquid staking validator registry. Expanding this set will enhance the network’s security, performance, and decentralization.

Background

Liquid staking pools face two significant challenges:

1. Providing a Liquid Staking Token: Ensuring that the staking token (stMTRG) is useful and deeply liquid.
2. Maintaining a Quality Validator Set: Maximizing APR for users while minimizing the risk of misbehavior or poor performance for the blockchain.

Decentralized liquid staking operators reduce risks for stakers and mitigate potential negative effects on integrated DeFi protocols and the underlying network with minimal risk of downtime or censorship, while maintaining high throughput. This necessitates validators that are censorship-resistant and perform well under all conditions.

Proposal Details

The overall details of the proposal are as below;

1. Whitelist: 10 Validators: (Preference: 50% professional services, 50% community members)
2. Process: Equal Vote Distribution across all validators
3. Minimum Stake: 10,000 MTRG
4. Specifications: Minimum Hardware Requirements of 4 Core CPU, 16 GB RAM, 200 GB NVMe storage (Avoid unstable VPS providers like Contabo)
5. Communications: Direct communication with the team for upgrade, bailout within 24 hours
6. Expulsion Policy: Automatic if node is not bailed out within 24 hours

The goal is to minimize risks associated with operator compromise, network connectivity issues, and operator misconfiguration by creating a diverse and robust validator set with the following properties:

Legal and physical independence of node operators

• Jurisdictional distribution of operators
• Geographical distribution of validators
• Diverse infrastructure:
• Avoidance of overreliance on specific cloud providers and data centers
• Adherence to best practices for securing execution and consensus layer nodes, as well as validator clients
• Strong key management and security practices

Application Process

Interested users and entities should fill out the Google form available in the forum discussion.

The application includes:

• Node Operator: Individual or Entity
• Previous Node Operation Experience: Yes/No
• Experience Details:
• Node Operation Infrastructure: On-premise or Cloud VPS
• If Cloud VPS, specify provider
• Contact Information:

Applications will be evaluated by the Meter Foundation, which will finalize professional services for node operations. If community applications exceed the available whitelist spots, community members with active contributions to the ecosystem will get a priority.

Governance Proposal Voting

The options available to the Meter Community;

Option 1: Yes, Approve the Proposal Option 2: No, Deny the Proposal

Period of 2 days starting 10 June 2024 06:00 PM UTC to 12 June 2024 06:00 PM UTC.

Users can vote with MTRG, staked MTRG, stMTRG and wstMTRG along with MTRG/ wstMTRG supplied in Sumer and Meridian and MTRG-wstMTRG liquidity on Symmetric. The proposal will pass when it achieves a majority vote. There is no quorum requirement.