Validator Relations and Comms - Strategy

Hello dear GnosisDAO community,

Today, I’d like to share with you my objectives as a validator communication lead for this year at Gnosis Chain.

Our Overall Strategic Goals

  • Grow the Gnosis Chain validator community
  • Improve the tools we have for increasing accessibility
  • Continue to support the Gnosis Validator Community for network health

Let’s take a look at what’s happened since the GBC launch.

  • December 2021: GBC Launch

    • The Gnosis Beacon Chain launched its first block in December 2021, marking our transition from Proof of Authority (PoA) to Proof of Stake (PoS).
  • December 2021-2022: Seed Validator Campaign with DappNode and Avado

    • We launched a seed validator program with Dappnode and Avado, leading to over forty thousand validators joining the Beacon Chain in just two months.
  • April 2022: Kick off Gnosis Builders (GIP-38)

    • The Gnosis Builders’ Proposal was introduced in April 2022, activating the builders team for Gnosis.
    • Same year, in 2022, we launched validategnosis.com and gave grants to Stereum and Etherpools.info. We also created guides for aspiring validators.
  • December 2022: Gnosis The Merge

    • The Gnosis Merge in December was a historic event, emphasizing the importance of validator and team coordination.
  • April 2023: Launched Gnosis VIP

    • The Gnosis Validator Incentive Program, was launched by the builders team to promote network decentralization.
  • August 2023: Shapella Upgrade

    • The Shapella update in August 2023 combined the Shanghai and Capella updates.
  • November 2023: Builders got wound down

    • Post the Builders team’s wound down, we entered a new phase, which is called Gnosis 3.0.

I would like to add our observations and conclusions:

  • Programs with Dappnode and Avado were successful. Success was ensured by generous rewards.
  • The builders team shipped many tools, but we faced maintenance challenges.
  • Gnosis VIP, aimed at supporting geographic diversity, was a great concept, but didn’t achieve expected results due to design and implementation issues.
  • During Shapella, we focused on strong coordination and instant information flow, achieving successful transition and high participation.
  • Our current focus is maintaining coordination and information with validator and preparing new strategies for Gnosis 3.0

After builders wound down we should set a new approach to validators.

  • We recognize the potential of our network culture and the integration of new Gnosis initiatives like Pay, Wallet, Circles and more.
  • Growing with our culture is key. Evangelizing the network ownership opportunity is giving huge playground. Gnosis products like Pay and Wallet provide additional income through fee market growth. This means additional income for validators
  • We uphold our cultural pillars: decentralization, community ownership, and credible neutrality, reinforcing them with evolving Gnosis products.
  • The PoS and staking ecosystem is expanding rapidly.

Our culture is central to the critical point of client diversity and credible neutrality in this ecosystem.

Growing with Core Values

Growth is an existential question. We should grow but how?

We believe that growing by taking power from our culture and society is the right way to grow.

We aim to achieve growth by reaching new audiences and explaining to them the opportunities created by the growing Gnosis products.

On the other hand, we will also reach out to the community by showing interest in our culture and commitments. This group knows us, but they haven’t engaged with us so far. We will include them in our network by giving the right messages.

We will renew and maintain our tools that ensure the health of our network and make it more accessible. These tools include the launchpad, deposit UI, and network dashboards.

And finally, we will keep all the validators who protect our network updated through social media communication and solve potential problems with the valuable support of Mert and Manuel.

In short;

  • We aim for growth by reaching new audiences, sharing the benefits of Gnosis products and network ownership.
  • We’ll also engage with those familiar with Gnosis but not yet actively involved, through targeted messaging.
    • Our tools, including the launchpad, deposit UI, and network dashboards, will be updated and maintained for optimal performance.

What we have?

  • We have someone on the team with dedicated time to focus on validators.
    • Armagan will be involved in validator comms and growing the validator community.
  • Gnosis’ consumer-focused strategy
    • Gnosis as an organization is moving away from the ‘build it and they will come’ approach with Gnosis Chain towards a focus on core product pillars.
  • Validator friendly tech stack
    • Our tech stack is constantly being developed and battle tested with more and more participants. We also have a beacon chain compatible with Ethereum.
  • Community Ownership
    • Gnosis is the easiest and most accessible network for community ownership and as a validator you become the owner of the network that is processing UBI, decentralized payments and bankless banking.

Action Plan

  • We’ll launch communication campaigns tailored to different groups, focusing on economic opportunities for one and our core values for the other.
  • Continuous updates and coordination with other teams will ensure our tools remain effective.
  • Education and updates for both our existing and new community members will be a priority, supported by validator newsletters, meetups, and workshops.
  • We’ll act as a bridge between our core development team and the community, maintaining active engagement.
  • We will observe and report all our activities, and if something is not going well, we will observe again and make new decisions.

If you have any question, please reach out me.

Validator Docs | Validator Feedback & Resource Form | Gnosis Chain Discord |

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6-Month Work Summary

Introduction

Hey everyone, I’d like to share what we’ve achieved over the past six months. The purpose of this update is to share our work on the Gnosis Chain with community, enhancing transparency and accountability. Our team and I welcome your feedback.

Overall strategic goals

  • Grow the Gnosis validator community
  • Improve the tools we have for increasing accessibility
  • Continue to support the Gnosis Chain validator ommunity for network health

Ongoing Projects

  1. Dappnode Home x Gnosis Chain Campaign

    • The campaign, which started in May 2024, is ongoing. We are giving 3 GNO to those who purchase devices branded with Gnosis Chain. We are also organizing special campaigns for events like Dappcon and ETHAccra.
    • This campaign has significantly increased the number of node operators. DAppnode users now make up almost 25% of the total node operators on Gnosis Chain. We are focusing on home operators to ensure network resilience.
  2. Validator Track Tool

    • We have determined the technical requirements and project workflow. We plan to launch it by the end of September 2024. Details can be found here
  3. Gnosis Chain x Circles x Dappnode Home

    • As a pilot program launched specifically for ETHAccra, this campaign aims to increase the number of node operators in West Africa and promote Circles’ community node feature. Click here for details.
  4. Obol Collective x Gnosis Chain

    • We have begun testing the integration of DVT into Gnosis Chain with Obol Collective. Eight professional teams were invited to participate. After the tests are completed, we will launch the program for permissionless participation. We will also share the DAppnode package with our operators.
    • Next, we plan to launch a campaign focused on promoting Squad Staking.
  5. Gnosis Chain x StakeWise v3

    • Stakewise V3 has been launched on Gnosis Chain. Through the vault creation feature, we have onboarded many small and medium-sized teams as well as individual operators to Gnosis Chain. With the workshop we conducted with StakeSaurus, anyone can easily create their own vault.
      • Serenita
      • Axol
      • StakeCat
      • Stakers Union
      • Blockscape
      • Oragefin
      • Stakingverse
      • NEDO
      • StakeSaurus
  6. HOPR GIP-98 Node Operator Airdrop

    • As part of GIP-98, we organized a campaign to encourage HOPR node operators (around 500) to join Gnosis Chain. Additionally, we informed operators about the opportunities on Gnosis Chain through our informational broadcast. The process is continuing under the leadership of the HOPR team.
  7. Shutter Network x Gnosis Chain

    • The Shutterized Gnosis Chain is now operational, and those who wish to participate as validators can run the Nethermind client from this repository. The next steps include improving network stability, enhancing user experience, and increasing validator participation.

Completed Projects

  1. validategnosis.com

  2. deposit.gnosischain.com

    • We updated the interface and added functions such as autoclaim and a Dappnode campaign claim.
  3. Run a Node | Gnosis Chain

    • We updated the content and added more comprehensive guides.
  4. Educational events, Online meetings, Hard fork Calls

  5. PR and communication activities

Achievements and Highlights

Validator Count and Change Rate

Active Node Operators

  • We observe that the number of active node operators ranges between 2.3K and 1.7K. With the activation of ValTrack, we will be able to conduct better geographic scans. The most significant progress in this area has been achieving a very healthy level of token distribution. When evaluating all validators (265,000 validators), the total share of the four largest operators is less than 33%. To achieve a healthy chain, it would be beneficial to reduce this ratio to below 10%.
    We estimate that the proportion of validators using Dappnode among all validators is 5%. Among all node operators, the proportion is 23%.


Community Participation

Goals for the Next Period

  • Next 6 months, we will continue to promote the healthy growth of our validator ecosystem. In this context, promoting the use of DVT and the Shutterized Gnosis Chain will play a significant role. Additionally, we plan campaigns to encourage validators to use Gnosis Pay, Circles, and Metri in line with the Gnosis 3.0 vision. We are coordinating with client teams for the upcoming Pectra upgrade, which will activate MAXEB on our network. The top priority is to keep the network secure and healthy.

Conclusion

Keeping the Gnosis Chain secure and healthy is the responsibility of every validator. By fulfilling this duty, we maintain an highly decentralized, censorship-resistant, and credibly neutral network.

We hope this update has answered your questions. You can reach us through the channels below.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog.

Validator Feedback & Resource Form | Gnosis Chain Discord

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Great update @armog (and team) :clap: :clap::clap:

Looking forward to see what initiatives you get into in the second half of the year!

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2024 Retro

I’d like to share the results of our 1-year efforts here. You can review the six-month update here. Thank you for your endless support and contribution to the network.

TL;DR: This year, we experienced a significant increase in validator growth. In 2025, we will try to bring all payment-focused projects developed by Gnosis closer to validators.

You can see the detailed analysis below.

1. Main Goal and Focus

  • Grow the Gnosis Chain validator community
  • Improve the tools we have for increasing accessibility
  • Continue to support the Gnosis Validator Community for network health.

2. What Went Well

3. What Didn’t Go Well

  • Need better balance between staking growth and on-chain activity
  • Alignment with Gnosis 3.0 vision and Gnosis’s payment strategy
  • Payment focuses on-chain activity and adding validators into the payment pipeline
  • Better documentation
    • We should primarily focus on improving documentation quality and addressing technical challenges and potential offers such as payment flywheels.

2025

Overall Strategic Goals

  • Gnosis 3.0 and economical zone focus

    • Increasing on-chain activities by leveraging the power of the validator
    • Develop project collaborations within Gnosis ecosystem that allow users to create on-chain flywheels
    • Build projects with external and internal teams to accelerate payment options on chain.
    • Build a view of ‘Gnosis’ economic areas’
  • Validator ecosystem focus

    • Build projects with external and internal teams to accelerate toolkit that we have.
      • Bounty hub
      • Network tracker
    • Continue campaigns and occasional events for onboard new operators
  • Network decentralization focus

    • Keep the network healthy and secure through high participation
      • Pectra
      • Fusaka

First 100 Days:

  • Build a view of ‘Gnosis’ economic areas’
    • Once these different zones are identified, the next step is to figure out which of them we can grow most effectively, and how?
  • Ship Pectra successfully
    • GOAL: +98% Participation Rate
  • Establish Gnosis Bounty Hub with the DevRel team.
    • Onboard projects that they can open payment-specific bounties
      • GOAL: Find 5 concrete bounty projects that can be integrated into our strategy (EOY)
        • Coordinate with internal and external teams for this project.
  • Launch Gnosis Validator Reward Claim Widget
    • GOAL: Generate a $1M volume on Gnosis Validator Reward Claim tool in EOY.
    • Onboard Defi projets, Balancer, Aura, Spark, Stakewise
  • Launch d14n.info with new tech stack
    • Nebula and Xatu

First 6 Months:

  • Increase minority client usage on Gnosis Chain
    • Erigon, Geth, Lodestar
  • Organize pop-up campaigns/events with Gnosis Pay and Circles team for onboarding more crypto native people into the Gnosis Chain utilizing validator/node operator offers.
    • Dappcon, Devconnect

Rest of the year

  • Onboard +3K node operators
  • Prepare FUSAKA upgrade
  • Gnosis Economic Area project executions
    • Payment
    • Align with Metri, Pay and Circles growth
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