Description
Valar Solutions GmbH has expanded integration of xGov for Réti Pooling. The integration enables stakers to express their opinions about xGov proposals and validators to automatically aggregate the opinions of their stakers and vote based on their wishes. This overcomes xGov’s limitation, which allows only block-producing accounts to vote in the program, opening it to a larger user base.
For stakers, the integration clearly shows on the Réti UI if their validators have enrolled in the xGov program. Moreover, it displays to stakers the xGov proposals that are currently in a voting, draft, or finished stage. The stakers can express their opinions on a proposal that is in a voting stage by sending a zero payment transaction with a predefined note field, following the same approach as used in the general Algorand governance program. The UI shows the staker if they have not yet voted on a proposal. It also displays the staker’s voting history.
For validator owners, the integration streamlines their participation in the xGov program, enabling them to easily see if there are any proposals that require their attention. They can automatically get the opinions of their stakers, aggregate them, and vote accordingly. Stakers’ voting power is assigned based on the rewards earned with a validator during the xGov committee window that applies to the proposal. If a staker does not express its opinion, its voting power is automatically delegated to the validator owner.
This integration contributes to the decentralization of the xGov program, and consequently of Algorand. It opens the doors for xGov participation to 2.6k additional participants (at the time of writing), which doubles the number of participants that could currently participate in the program. The integration provides transparency and accountability to validator owners’ representation of their stakers, enabling stakers to make well-informed decisions when choosing a validator.
In addition, the integration improves the staking user experience by reducing the website loading times and streamlining the staking process for first-time users, guiding them towards community-operated pools to aid network’s decentralization.
The integration has been used as the basis for Valar’s Réti version https://reti.valar.solutions/, which is one of twelve staking options listed by Algorand Foundation.
The integration is open-sourced under MIT license, building upon Algorand Foundation’s Réti version, which was developed by TxnLab, Inc.
About the Team
Valar Solutions GmbH was founded by Dr. Uroš Hudomalj and Dr. Alexander Marinšek after winning Algorand’s Global Hackathon - Change The Game, at Decipher 2024, with the IgoProtect staking platform. The platform evolved into Valar peer-to-peer staking, which has more than 100M ALGO staked by 350 users that are staking via 100 different node runners that are operating more than 20% of all online accounts.
In addition, the company has developed:
- Valar’s xGov Delegation platform, which enables xGovs to delegate their voting power to representatives, automatically voting the same way as they - always or only when the xGov forgets to vote on its own.
- VERA platform for transparent, fair and verifiable random draws.
- Algorand Decentralization Dashboard, which provides a real-time, easy-to-understand analysis of Algorand decentralization.
- Certify platform for on-chain credentials for node runners, which won 1st place at Algorand France Hackathon.
- Block Anxiety - a tool helping to assess your staking performance, which has been integrated e.g. into https://algonoderewards.com/.
- Block Tracker - a tool for tracking block producers on-chain.
Valar Solutions GmbH is also offering node running services via Valar’s peer-to-peer staking platform and Réti staking pools. Moreover, it has contributed to Folks Finance audit competitions for their xALGO liquid staking token (1st place), Folks Smart Contract Library (4th place), and their Wormhole NTT integration for Algorand (2nd place) .
Dr. Uroš Hudomalj currently serves as a member of the xGov Council and Ecosystem Advisory Council. He will abstain from voting on this proposal within the xGov Council to prevent conflict of interest.
Additional info
This effort is in-line Valar’s mission to increase decentralization of Algorand. Two crucial aspects of this are consensus participation (i.e. staking) and governance. The developed integration enables larger and more inclusive participation as well as transparency in both activities.
Technical details about the developed integration:
- Refactored xGov code to a separate feature for easier maintenance.
- Added fetching and displaying all xGov proposals, dividing them in voting, draft, and finished categories. Proposals are displayed as carousel. Note: Deleted proposals are not fetched.
- Added fetching of full reward history for a staker between two rounds by replaying all transactions. To fetch the reward history, connection to an indexer is required. If no indexer is provided, only the xGov-related features are unavailable while the rest of functionality is unimpaired.
- Enabled stakers to express opinions on proposals by sending a zero payment transaction with a predefined note field to the xGov registry contract. The note must be of the form: xGovReti/<proposal app ID>:j{“a”:<i>,“r”:<j>,“n”:<k>}, where: i,j,k are integers representing portion of approvals, rejections, and nulls, respectively, expressed in ppm.
- Added assigning of stakers’ voting power based on portion of rewards earned with a validator during the committee window for a proposal.
- Added fetching of pools’ voting powers.
- Enabled validator owners to aggregate expressed stakers’ opinions and vote based on them on a proposal.
- Joined xGov signup banner for validator owners with xGov proposal voting component.
- Added displaying of one’s voting history for proposals - both for stakers and validator owners.
- Added displaying on Dashboard only a subset of validators, i.e.
Featured Validators, to speed up loading and making interaction with xGov feasible. AsFeatured Validators, a predefined number of validators are fetched at random from all available validators. Specific validators can be predefined to ensure stakers get at least a few eligible validators that they can stake with. - Moved displaying of all validators to
/validatorsroute. - Fixed minor bugs with local deployment and consistent naming.
License
The project is open-sourced under MIT license at GitHub - ValarStaking/reti at xgov-stakers-vote · GitHub
Focus
Other
Funding Type
Retroactive
Adoption Metrics
-
+250 stakers
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+1M ALGO staked
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+100 votes cast in xGov
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1 of 12 staking options listed by Algorand Foundation
Amount requested
149,999 Algo
Proposal ID: 3568130794
