Andy, Nico, Isaac - Challenges and opportunities of staking in underrepresented regions

Transcript

🌍 Staking in underrepresented regions like Latin America presents challenges and opportunities due to economic and political issues, but there is significant adoption and growth in the crypto market.

I'm honored to introduce first Isaac Nik and Andy from E kipu from Latin America and they will talk about the challenges and opportunities of staking in under represented regions welcome [Music] can we have it yep plug okay one second we are

live yeah yeah I know so on screen all right I think a little bit annoyed we thanks well uh thank you everyone uh in uh thank you for being here today uh we are going to be chatting about our experience um trying to cultivate trying to grow a community of U node Runners and validators in in Latin America and

how other regions may be or may learn from it um to begin with I think it's important to uh just have a picture of Latin America um that is very particular to us in some senses but I think it's also um we can see some of that in in other regions All Around the World in our case in general we are uh L America is mostly composed of developing countries third world countries um we have some very hard uh and pol political and economic uh issues all around we can see examples in Venezuela we can see examples in Argentina now uh even Guatemala has been having some some

political issues Panama as well um and uh at least economically we are very dependent on remittances uh like uh even my parents moved to Spain just to be able to work and send all the money that they made back to the to the iseland for example um which this means is that U crypto we we we have a very strong value proposition for all of us there uh and we can also see this uh in the countries where they have the most economic issues uh they also have the most adoption U let's say Argentina again for a very clear example now to be more specific uh in

crypto we are the seventh biggest Market we move around 562 billions at least that was from 2021 to 2022 and um that represented a 40% growth over 2020 to and 2021 and that just keeps growing five of the top 30 countries in the adoption index crypto adoption index by analysis are also in L America uh and like I said Bar store of values uh protection against inflation remittances and and others are the main reason to use crypto um and that's very very important that's very common but unfortunately we do so

🌎 Latin America faces challenges in ethereum staking due to low representation, economic barriers, and adoption obstacles.

via centralized exchanges it's the best UI it's very very simple um but that also means that we need to sort of protect uh ourselves against them uh at least in the in the realm of ethereum security and staking now I'll pass it over to Andy thanks so yes 51% of latam has used cryptocurrencies in the past which is awesome uh and that represents 4% of the global population yet uh less than 0.65% of the ethereum validators are in Latin America so that represents a very asymmetric you know composition between usage and contributing to the security to the network to even just technically

and other uh communities or involvement within the broader ethereum ecosystem and we can see according to noatch and uh the one on the left is a map of maps it's just like what's the distribution geographic distribution of validators around the world and we can see huge clusters in Europe in North America that's not in use but a lot of them are in data centers a lot of them in like one or two in the US and and in in in Germany and that's not great not only because of involvement but also for other uh challenges that we're going to see um in Latin America there's still a lot of misconceptions of crypto there's still a lot of misconceptions about what is validating there's still a lot of uh lack of resources that exist like most of the resources as we know exist on

English and there's a huge barrier of language just not only technical but also for language just understand this topic and the one of the big biggest uh adoption barriers that we've seen of people getting involved is the 32 East uh economic barrier so I know there are many projects and we're all trying together to lower that but that's a huge reality that maybe we um Mis represent or or or are not as aware when we talk in other regions which is still a good amount of money but it's achievable for most people this is like many times their lifetime value that they can save um for their families like 10 20 people saving it's it's just un unachievable so that's a challenge if we want to Buster to make the most decentralized uh

🌍 Staking in underrepresented regions like Asia, Oceania, Latin America, and Africa can increase Ethereum's resilience and decentralization, but there is a tension between performance and decentralization that needs to be addressed.

Network in the world um we have a challenge and I want to or we want to keep beating the drums on this narrative that Geographic diversity is very important maybe as important or related to client diversity and this is something that we have started to see um we want client diversity because we want uh redundancy we want um to have separation of or or resilience if there's a bug in one client and there's not another well something similar we get from Geographic diversity uh whereas in client diversity we get technical resilience with Geographic diversity we get Social and legal resilience so you see the two biggest uh like regions of

of of of like validating is Europe and North America if there was a Collis in legal aspects well uh imagine over 80% of the network being against against ethereum you know and you know there's already a lot of alignment it's like sharing the code base between Europe and North America we share a lot of like legal alignment and political alignment so that's a challenge see the opportunity in other regions um Asia Oceania Latin America Africa you see the the the percentage is really really small so yes there's a big opportunity on increasing the uh resilience of etherium uh by increasing the geographic diversity the same way that we try to increase it the client diversity and yes as we get uh client

concentration we can also get Geographic concentration which we have at the moment we saw the ofac comp like ofac uh like challenge that we had one year ago is one of the best examples of how like laws in a country affect the whole network whereas if we had a more diverse Geographic network uh we will get less uh effect on on people um we also had sanctions on like metamask not alling users from Ben Venezuela accessing the the network RPC nodes that's all legal challenges that if we had more validators and local noes in the region I'll me more much more accessible and just moments ago we were talking about like a member here on on on on the public that there's a counter incentive

of being concentrated so you have low latency with your peers and if you are in regions like Bangkok or Latin America um even if you want to participate you get some penalties because the rest of the world is like further away so there seems to be like some tension between performance and want it to be all concentrated and decentralization and resilience and and and performance so yeah how do we try to solve it uh we'll still have to talk about but yes even today we have lowered and that's a great achievement from our uh Network we have lowered from almost 80% OFA compliant to 30 something per but that's still onethird of of blocks that are over compliant so we need to be better if we

want to keep uh beating the drum and and and teating um sending an N of decentralization censorship resistance Etc so uh that's why we are talking here pass toik thanks uh Andy um yeah well and uh let's talk now about like uh what efforts are being taken to solve this issue and uh well we will start talking about uh the organization we're part of uh if kipu the let's say community of communities ethereum communities in Latin America and specifically us uh we're working on the vertical called Kus stakers is uh kind of like e Staker but specifically for Latin America and um

🌍 Efforts to decentralize and lower barriers for staking in underrepresented regions through educational initiatives and support from organizations like Kus stakers and the ethereum foundation are crucial for network growth.

we've been since uh like for a year now we've been taking efforts in uh both education and operational um support to decentralize the the network geographically and um I'm going to mention some some of the efforts that we've taken to um to do this well uh educational we've been hosting uh Twitter or ex spaces um with different leaders in the industry like staking and node operators uh to explain to the public like in different from different perspective from different uh projects to understand better uh the current status uh of staking like what are some of the Innovations going on and uh the

the importance of these Innovations in lowering the barrier for um people in under represented regions to uh also be able to stake and uh run nodes um well in in the educational efforts we've also uh translated e Staker uh knowledge base and Rhino review as well as having like virtual and U IRL uh presentations and and and workshops um so um that's talking about Kus sters but if we talk about like initiatives from bigger projects let's say the ethereum foundation um made a campaign called run a node grants uh

where they were giving uh grants and and um kind of like machines for people to be able to run their to become solo stakers um same for ethery that run operation solo Staker with a with a similar goal uh and with different characteristics but super interesting um to to see that like these big players are also taking efforts in um allowing other like people in in these regions to to run notes and uh that way decentralize uh the network geographically so um aside from that there's also like big efforts to make uh staking or running noes uh more accessible um well with simple things

but very impactful like improving the user experience or the um user interface and um one that's as I mentioned like super important lowering the barrier of 32 e that needs to be stake uh stake to uh run a node because well um if we really want to uh make a difference in these regions we definitely need to make sure that it's accessible for them and well if the network uh gets more and more value over time the these 32 e are going to be harder and harder to to to get so we need to make sure that uh everyone in those regions are also able to um to afford running a node or

staking um so how are we doing so far um well we've uh definitely gotten given more awareness um and actual education of what staking uh means uh in the region like we're seeing this in the activity of uh Discord channels where people are starting to ask questions are starting to engage a lot more so there's also like a increased interest in in uh these operations even in the bare Market which is very very interesting um there's a lot of uh people who are discovering this world like uh both very technically Savvy and not so much so that's that's also a challenge to uh make sure that we uh educate people equally from both sides um through these

🌍 Increased interest in staking in underrepresented regions has led to more engagement and education efforts, with a 50% increase in note count and involvement from universities and institutions, and the speaker is running a test on testnet with five machines in different countries and is looking for support to run on mainnet.

programs there has been an increase of uh around like 50% um in note count and um we've also sparked the interests of uh universities and and um institutions to participate in this like a few um universities uh have reached out that they want to uh run notes uh their their blockchain clubs want to experiment with that so that's also big part of like these um staking campaigns that are or no running campaigns that are being uh um led by these other projects so aside from that with Kus sters we started to uh experiment a little bit with running our

own um DVT cluster to well this these ones on on testnet but uh we had five machines in five different countries um and well now it's on testnet but we're uh waiting to uh gather those 32 e to make sure that we can also run running on mainnet um so well if anybody's willing to support there like you're welcome to reach out to us and and help us with that goal that we have um and well the idea is as skipo takers that well we will run this as an experiment but also we will share all the experience that we've gathered by by doing this like all the Operational Support that we can give to the community based on this experience and

uh to make sure that this experiment replicates uh in many regions like maybe we don't uh we start like with uh a bunch of clusters across Latin America but maybe uh we can start running clusters within countries or within cities eventually so we have like a bunch of different clusters in in in different um with different set setups uh in in different regions uh well in Latin America and also uh across the world um yeah and uh well we have to think like what's what's next to uh kind of like increase the decentralization of the the geographic decentralization of

🌎 Expanding clusters in Latin America, leveraging universities and local communities for innovation, education, and infrastructure investment to decentralize the network and encourage participation in staking projects.

the network and um as Andy mentioned uh an important part of it is to strengthen the PTP latency uh between nodes and uh well for that there's uh need to invest in infrastructur to make sure that this is possible and um also there needs to be taken a big effort in using universities and local communities as the places for experimentation and uh Innovation uh to make sure that that these well coordinate between those also to make sure that these things happen and like that there's well both interest and uh kind of operational experience so that people can uh execute as well and

um yeah well this can be leveraged with the individual's interest of like being part of something together I mean like uh really leveraging the idea of ethereum being a protocol for human coordination like we can bring this to real life by allowing people to coordinate and collaborate um and create this this sense of community of belonging uh between each other that's a well a beautiful experience actually that we we have experienced ourselves when when we we're experimenting with the DVT so um yeah would encourage everyone to reach out if they want to do it or if they want to experiment on their own to do it as well um so for us

what's next uh will of course we will continue with our educational efforts um the ex spaces the translations and where there's a course coming soon um to well spread this knowledge and uh more operational uh experience to to people and we are uh still going to participate very actively uh and encourage our community members to participate participate actively in these node and staking projects like uh ethery operation soloer uh the LI of community lifeguards and uh well we're fostering a close relationship with more projects like um dno Diva uh Etc so as mentioned we because uh some

universities reached out we are looking to start some programs with these universities to help them and their blockchain clubs to run uh noes and give them all the knowledge that they need or access to the resources that they need to to do this maybe in collaboration with these projects that uh that we mentioned before um as I said uh just now like get our DVT cluster on mainnet uh please reach out if you're interested in supporting that effort and um continue doing workshops for communities to run their own notes or um DVT clusters as I mentioned before um yeah well and the ideally there's also um well kind of university courses

that we can uh teach or U let's say Mentor some some professors to um so that they can also further the education in in notes and staking in ethereum um with with these courses um yeah that's uh pretty much what uh the the overview of of this um well problem of decentralizing the network geographically is um what what it entails and like what are the solutions that what we as a community are bringing and uh how we are encouraging everyone to participate and um also thank you to all the projects that are taking efforts

in in doing this because we believe it's super important we hope we have uh shown you the importance of it and uh hope you join in our uh efforts to decentralize the network geographically thanks I don't know we have time for all yep you mentioned investing infrastructure to improve PP laty can you explain a little bit more about that yeah sure well this is actually information we got from a company called sensei node um they are institutional note runners in Latin America they only

🌎 Staking in underrepresented regions faces challenges like latency and mis attestations, but investing in research and infrastructure can improve the situation.

run nodes in in the region and um we were just chatting with them and they said like well when we started validating at a scale for example uh we saw um a lot of M attestations uh just because the the the the time the time period you have to test combined with we can start to get into proposal bu separation and how notes are incentivized to propose at the very last time and on top of that we have notes at the very bottom of of the of the earth um and that that created a lot of latency and Mis attestations and as since they was growing they had more

validators they had more notes and the latency was going down so I think it's it's very important to just um uh invest in looking to that I I don't think I have seen like any specific paper or something more deep in research I think that that'd be pretty cool cuz uh as Andy said there's a lot of counter incentives to decentralize the network geographically I would just add that it almost feels like there's some gravity of like the network coin into wherever most notes are and I think we need to be very mindful how do we counterbalance that right uh so yeah just great great question other questions no no well thank you very much and the next talk is to in

🌍 Decentralizing the network in underrepresented regions is important to counterbalance the concentration of nodes in certain areas.

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