Pools

As part of the technological and decentralisation services provided to Kusama, Polkadot and Aleph Zero, only the strongest validators of the relevant networks will be listed in the Nomination Pools managed by Gatotech.

A wee disclaimer: GATOTECH LTD only offers Information Technology services to institutional clients, i.e. the substrate-based networks, and it is implied that these services benefit the wider network community. However, GATOTECH LTD does not offer retail or consumer level services. GATOTECH LTD is not registered with the UK Financial Conduct Authority and therefore does not advise, promote, arrange, deal, or make financial or investment transactions of any kind. All unsolicited deposits made to our accounts will be duly rejected and/or returned back to origin.

Strategy

The selection strategy has been devised with the following goals in mind, according to the indicated priorities:

1. Secure the network: the primary objective of the pool is to contribute to the consensus mechanism, and for that is key to nominate validators which effectively participates in the active set in all available eras. This priority will be fulfilled by choosing validators according to their technical performance and potential amounts at stake, and verifying at set intervals that these selected validators are consistently participating in the consensus, and that the pool stake is successfully backing those validators.
2. Decentralise the network: The next goal after securing the network is to make its long-term operations the most resilient possible. In this category the main focus is to obtain an heterogenous mix of validators, that maximises the quantity of individually distinct operators and spread their geographical dispersion.
3. Foster validator transparency: Finally, a great deal of preference will be given to the individual candidate validators which also shown a good track of transparency. Although some very good validators choose to remain anonymous for different reasons, the nomination pool requires that a certain level of accountability can be deposited on the real persons behind the selected validators. In this sense, aspects like maintaining fully judged (verified) on-chain identities, and reasonable levels of activity in their websites and/or social media accounts will be privileged in this pool.

Given the quantity of variables to monitor and the complexity of the different sources, this strategy will be implemented manually and the results updated in the tables below at periodic intervals.

Methodology

1. Transparency disclosure: the validators operated by Gatotech (max. 2 per network) will have priority in the nomination list, but its(their) performance(s) will be also reported in the table for reference and easy comparison with the rest of the selected validators.
2. Then, for networks allowing multiple nominations, a minimum of 75% of the candidates will be selected from the most performant validators in the previous active sets as per reports from the community (e.g. Polkachu’s Performance list and/or Turboflakes’ ONE-T bot):
   1. Validators are ordered according to their performance grades (A & A+ preferred).
   2. Validators with excessive commission fees (>15%) are deleted from the set.
   3. Validators without verified on-chain identities are struck out at this stage.
   4. Validators with oversubscribed capacity (above the pools’ available stake) are removed from the list.
   5. Validators from same operator already selected are also dismissed.
3. Finally, the remaining candidates are completed with waiting validators with perceived potential to become good active validators:
   1. They have an acceptable commission fee.
   2. They have a verified on-chain identity.
   3. They are operated by entities not already selected.
   4. They have an effective nominators’ stake close to the one needed to enter the active set.

Nominations