Axelar Network: How to Choose a Trustworthy Validator

Axelar offers a decentralized network that links dApp developers with blockchain ecosystems, applications, and users for effortless cross-chain communication. It provides a set of protocols, tools, and APIs to remove obstacles to cross-chain communication. With 55 validators supporting the Axelar network now, a big question for many users is how to choose the best validator and be sure of token security. 

This article will discuss the such issue, utilizing Metrika Dashboard and Everstake infrastructural metrics.

The Roles of Delegators and Validators in Axelar

A validator provides node infrastructure that helps support the PoS consensus. It verifies blocks, and a delegator is a token holder on the network who can delegate their Stake to a particular validator.

Validators aid the network in obtaining censorship-resistant and high-performance blockchain status through consensus participation and transaction processing, and the validators have more power than delegators. The number of Stakes on the network gives this power.

In Axelar, all validators receive equal voting power due to Axelar’s innovative use of quadratic voting. Delegators are compensated with a portion of the validators’ earnings based on how efficiently they operate. By choosing to stake their AXLs, token owners can also participate in governance and vote on network proposals.

Being a validator is a responsible mission. If a validator misbehaves by missing or double-signing blocks or going down on the Axelar network, there’ll be penalties:

• 0.01% of the Stake will be slashed per block of downtime. The maximum slashing penalty is 1.75% of the Stake.
• 2% of the Stake will be slashed for double signing. The validator will be permanently removed from the active set, and the entire Stake must be redelegated or undelegated.

What to Look at When Choosing a Reliable Axelar Validator

Many users need clarification about how to choose a reliable Axelar validator, considering how many there are in the market. Let’s talk about the key factors that can help delegators to choose the most suitable validator.

Signs of Healthy Validators: Performance Metrics

We propose you open the Metrika Dashboard to dive deeper into the numbers.

This table provides a Validator Overview (Staking Info) with the key indicators of staking providers:

• Total Stake, which includes self-delegations. Total Stake and Total Delegations show how many people trust and delegate to the validator. It’s a perfect sign if its Total Stake is high and the number of delegations is high too. 
• Voting Power is weighted by Total Stake. It’s common to see a leader with a high Total Stake and considerable Voting Power, but only with a few delegations. It’s not the best-case scenario because the validator has got to the top otherwise than due to people’s trust.
• Quadratic Voting Power is implemented on Axelar to handle cross-chain transaction processing and validation.
• Total Delegations (the addresses that delegate to the validator).
• Commission – a percentage of the delegation amount. Choosing a validator with a low commission rate is only sometimes wise. A well-performing validator with a high commission rate may be able to pay out more rewards than a low-charging validator that performs poorly.

Estimating the abovementioned metrics will help you quickly understand how many people trust validators for their funds. Tap on Everstake’s name to learn more about the validator (Operator Address, Registered Voting Networks, Status, etc.)

Scroll down to check Delegations & Stake and their day-to-day changes.

All these indicators give you general information about validators. Let’s switch to the Validator Activity table to gain a deeper understanding.

It is crucial to pay attention to the following:

• Missed Blocks. It represents the number of blocks a validator failed to sign throughout the chosen period.
• Missed Heartbeats for multi-party signing. A “heartbeat” response is provided every 50 blocks to indicate liveness.
• Signing Participation.

These technical indicators give a broader picture of validators, showing staking providers’ performance and productivity levels. For example, as per the table above, Everstake has 0 Missed Blocks, 0 Missed Heartbeats, and 100% Signing Participation, which means Everstake has healthy nodes and no missed rewards for its delegators. Check the following tables for more details:

It shows that Everstake works non-stop responsibly to provide the Axelar Network with quick and quality blocks’ validation.

Signs of Healthy Validators: External Chain Voting

EVM voting keeps track of external chain voting involvement degree. If validators are identified as chain maintainers, they can vote on events and may only abstain from the chains they manage. Validators’ absentee votes are taken into consideration while analyzing voting trends. An analysis of “Yes” votes compares them to “No” votes and hence does not include abstentions.

Validators with a more significant “No” vote ratio in the recent hour compared to the average throughout the period are performing worse, whereas validators with a lower “No” vote ratio are more likely to have fixed a problem or discovered a solution to enhance performance.

The graphs in this section display statistics on “Yes” and “No” votes by validator and network and a summary of voting trends.

The Importance of Exploring Metrika’s Knowledge Center

Metrika keeps track of networks’ and validators’ performance, monitors activity and technical issues, and generates graphics and unique valuable information for all interested in the staking process. To learn more about metrics, visit Metrika’s Knowledge Center. You can also find a FAQ section and Quick Start Tutorial there.

Why Delegate to Everstake?

Validators should be responsible for community engagement and participate in protocol governance since they play a critical role in chain operation and shaping how networks grow and evolve. Therefore, it’s crucial to pick validators who can fulfill their duties to the network and their token holders. 

Everstake is a validator for over 70 blockchains and has a dedicated team of community, DevOps, and R&D specialists. You get your blockchain community representative with Everstake. 

Feel free to contact our Axelar Blockchain Manager on Twitter.