Our Vision
Blockchains don't stop developing, and solving of one question opens new questions. Solving the question of decentralization opened up the question of scalability. The solution to the question of scalability opened up the question of interoperability. Right now, we are seeing the results of the efforts we've made to solve the question of interoperability: how can separate, decentralized, and scalable networks communicate with each other and transfer data to each other?
In the early stages, the main interoperability solutions were Cosmos and Polkadot. But it's already clear that the future of Web3 will be built not on one protocol, but on several, just as Web1 and Web2 reached their peak of development thanks to the use of many protocols: Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, various decentralized bridges and rollups will become the basis of the Internet of Blockchains - InterChain Ecosystems in which various separate blockchains transfer data between each other using completely different communication protocols.
The transition from Web2 to Web3 is increasing demand for decentralization from centralized services. And if for some services it's enough to use a smart-contract platform, then some services will need their own blockchain, which will lead to the increasing demand for validators.
In addition, even for existing blockchains, the demand for good validators is not decreasing, but continues to grow. In the Polkadot and Cosmos ecosystems, good validators are the avant-garde of the development of the Network and the Community, both technically and humanitarianly.
At this stage of development, we are faced with the following problem: we don't have enough “good validators”.
A Good Validator, in our understanding, is a validator who, in addition to providing a security for the network (maintaining the infrastructure, and updating the program code), also contributes to the development of the Network and the Community: improves the program code, creates tools and applications, develops the community, creates information and educational content, and also actively participates in decentralized governance.
Just as the shortage of good programmers has led to the emergence of a huge number of educational programs and educational services, so the shortage of good validators should lead to the creation of educational programs and educational services to give people the necessary knowledge and skills in the field of validation.
The Internet is already filled with a huge number of guides on how to launch this or that node. But in order to become a good validator, it’s not enough to run a node! Projects are interested not only in running nodes, but also in having these nodes located in different parts of the world. In addition, each project is interested in diversified development: building the community, popularizing its own technology, spreading the information on how to use it. And good validators take on all these responsibilities, that's why projects delegate funds to them.
If a project delegates its funds to ordinary validators, this leads to a decrease in the price of the coin. Since ordinary validators sell all their validation rewards, and don't bring additional value to the Network and the Community. In addition to ordinary validators, there are also “harmful validators” - these are CEX-validators who, due to the low awareness of their users, have large amounts of coins at their disposal, which gives them the opportunity to launch their own validators. CEX-validators use the reward received from the network to manipulate the coin price, and also sell them at every opportune moment, which causes irreparable damage to both the Network and the Community.
At the same time, good validators spend part of their rewards on the development of the Network and the Community, and actively participate in decentralized governance, which brings additional value to the Network. And it's good validators who explain to their stakers the technical aspects and functionality of projects, as well as the meaning of staking funds from personal addresses, and not through centralized exchanges. Proof-of-Stake is inextricably linked to both validators and stakers, and the speed of development of PoS-networks directly depends on good validators and the awareness of stakers.
Instead of searching for good validators, we decided to train them!
Good validators are not born, good validators are made! And we have been helping people become good validators!
We are a group of validators, developers and enthusiasts who created Validator School with the goal of teaching people how to become a “good validator”.
We have developed an educational methodology that was tested on three test streams, and then continues to be updated with each new stream of students.
You can read the report on the development of the educational methodology here: https://synctems.medium.com/validator-school-d67d7efee607
Also, information about the Validator School is available on our GitHub: https://github.com/Distributed-Validators-Synctems/Validator-School