White-Label Validator Service

Currently we offer white-label non-custodial validator services on Tendermint-based chains.

When you hold a large amount of crypto tokens, you would like to maximize the economic gains through non-custodial staking without giving up the ownership of your private keys. However, the current Tendermint-based chains treat each delegation the same way regardless of the delegation size. Ideally, you would like to get a volume discount, because your large delegation offers a validator additional intangible benefits such as increased brand legitemacy and larger buffer to stay in the active set.

Many chains do not have a minimum commission. On those chains, many small independent validators charge 0% commission. It is often misunderstood as a signal for low quality. The opposite is often true. These small validators are bootstrapping their service with low commission to attract a large enough stake to be stable in the ranking table. They are oftne more engaged with the community and more responsive in important events like chain upgrades and chain downtime. On those chains, you do not need a white-label service if you can simply do due diligence in choosing a 0%-commission validator. When in doubt, reach out to us. We are happy to offer suggestions as we are quite engaged with many validator community.

With this out of the way, we believe that it does make sense to run white-labeled validators on chains with minimum commisions. These chains include Osmosis (5%), Juno (5%), Stargaze (5%) and Kusama (3%).

Currently, we Polkachu offer two types of white-label services to suit your needs. If you are a financial instutution, venture capital, or a family office that holds a substantial amount of crypto tokens, one of the services might be right for you.

1. Commission Rebate

This is the easy way. You will delegate to our Polkachu-branded validator like any other delegators. We will work out a deal behind the scene so you get a commission rebate periodically.

  • The commission rebate starts at 50%, and can go as high as 80% based on your delegation size.
  • The typical frequency of the commission rebate is weekly. However, we are flexible to make it monthly or daily or another preferred frequency.
  • The rebate will be automated through a script on own side.
  • In order to verify your ownership of the delegation wallet, we will ask you to send a transaction of a negligible amount (less than $0.01) to our wallet with a specific "memo". We will refund the amount if you care.
  • Typically, there is no string attached in this arrangement. You can choose to redegelate away from us or increase/decrease the delegation size any time. Our rebate amount is dynamically computed, so it really does not matter how you prefer to manage your delegation wallet.

2. Dedicated Validator

This is the hard way. In this arrangement, we will manage a validator server on your behalf with your own brand but you will own the validator operator wallet.

  • Because you will be bootstraping a validator in a competitive environment, we require you to hold at least 2x of the minimum amount to get into the active set.
  • You can pay us through either fiat or a cut of the token rewards depending on the negotiation. If token rewards, we can offer a script for you to run. The typical frequency of payment is weekly. However, we are flexible to make it monthly or another preferred frequency.
  • We will typically inform the project team that we are running a white-labelled validator for another entity. The only thing we disclose to the team is the information publicly disclosed on the validator (such as moniker, description, etc.).
  • This arrangement typically requires an off-chain contract. Due to our resource constraint, We do not have a contract template for you to start. you will need to draft the contract and we will review.

Typically steps to get the validator running

  1. We will sync a node to the current height. You can dictate the infrastructure provider and server specs, and we will dictate on the software level.
  2. We will provide a dedicated monitoring URL so you can see the node performance before the final go-ahead.
  3. We will open an RPC (Remote Procedure Call) endpoint from the node. You will install the chain binary and create a wallet on your machine. You will then run a create-validator command from your machine to the RPC endpoint to associate your validator operator wallet with our node. If you prefer, we will provide the command template to you. At no time we will custody your wallet keys.

Final Words

We are glad that you have found this page and read to the end. Please feel free to reach out to us via email [email protected] or contact us in our Discord Server.

Onwards!