Phase 2 of the Validator Resource Center and Ranking Website (VRC) further improves upon the ranking method from Phase 1, by making the scoring model more customizable and thereby better representing the user’s preferences. Also, the VRC score is now a major metric in the manual selection process. Additionally, we include several new metrics (e.g. performance based on historic era data) and thereby reduce the load of information on nominators. A new filtering technique helps to reduce the overall set of validators based on their quantitative properties and make it easier for nominators to make an appropriate selection. We also introduce a staking dashboard, which gives important visual and numerical information about the network.

This proposal covers the development of milestones 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

Original proposal and context:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14pvmbMMzNAqVzQkoXi_nRS-1wDti2y03X4VqOp9nNTw/edit?usp=sharing

Link to the Validators Ranking website (new UI and tools):

https://validatorsv2.kusama.polkastats.io

Link to monorepo (backend + frontend):

https://github.com/Colm3na/kusama-validator-resource-center-v2

Scope of work for this proposal

The majority of the work for these milestones has been completed: the team is at the moment finalising details on M10 to continue further development. In Phase 2, we extended previous work and incorporate three major upgrades:

A new manual selection for validators set taking into account custom scoring and a filtering technique to remove quantitatively dominated (undesired) validators from the overall lists.

A dashboard, which makes it easier to cope with the ever changing nature of the network, where today’s selection might not be the right one for a nominator in the future. It shows general information (like number of validators, number of nominators, current era, minimum stake) and graphs with metrics over time: a. Graphs (across time) for: average commission, average self-stake, average performance, average era-points; b. Plot the current selection of validators in the VRC as points (averaged) in the graphs of a); c. Indicate the on-chain nominations (when connected to the polkadot extension) in the graphs of a). Here we can potentially plot two points. One where the nomination was made in the past and another where the current nomination compares to the current state of the network.

A process for nominators to cultivate their on-chain nominations. To do so, we can compare the nominations made in the past to the most recent era and flagging critical events (e.g., commission increases by validators or slashing events) that happened between the time of the validators set election and present time. We can further offer nominators to remove validators who caused critical events from their set and make a renomination of the rest.

A way to feature not elected validators, to incentivize its inclusion in the user’s validator set. A random validator is selected randomly over the inactive validators that had up to 10% commission and at least 20 KSM self stake. The validator is featured 2 weeks in the top of the ranking page and after that period another validator is selected.

This proposal submission covers the final part of the VRC Development:

Milestone 6: (1 week) - EUR 1000.00

User interface implementation II:

• Simple weighted metrics
• Add charts for performance, rewards, era points and payouts.
• Integrate 1kVP Validators information

Milestone 7: (1 week) - EUR 1000.00

User interface implementation III:

• Implement dominance filter
• Feature inactive validators:
• Feature inactive validators: use next elected information to feature the top 10 inactive validators based on previous phragmen election;
• Incentivize inclusion of at least one inactive validator in the set;

Milestone 8: (1 week) - EUR 1000.00

User interface implementation IV:

• Dashboard with comparison charts:
• Current set vs network average performance comparison

Milestone 9: (1 week) - EUR 0.00 (REMOVED)

Trustless mode:

• The dapp will start in trustless mode (no backend used), you can enable the backend to analyze the full history.

Milestone 10: (1 week) - EUR 1000.00

Testing and documentation:

• Final testing
• Documentation
• Migrate to production

Payment conditions:

• One submission per milestone/ 5 milestones per submission (as decided by council)
• First milestone submitted as agreement for Phase 2 of this project, to start as soon as passed by Council.
• Subsequent milestones to be paid after delivery.
• Overall timeline: 5 weeks
• Total estimation: EUR 4,000.00 / USD 4.846.54 / 12.35 KSM
• KSM Rate: using monthly average from https://kusama.subscan.io/tools/charts?type=price) - 392.346 USD/KSM - 323.81 EUR/KSM.
• ADDRESS: FUNseFMiXE3b1iAbfixBLtPNgc1PPWaxhDRpZHrC8sjL4aX (Mario)