What is Cosmos?

Cosmos (ATOM) is a decentralized network of independent blockchains, each powered by Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithms.

$ATOM is the native staking token of the Cosmos Network. The Cosmos vision is to build an “internet of blockchains” that can scale and interoperate with one another.

$ATOM has three use cases:

as a spam-prevention mechanism (paying fees)

• as staking tokens
• as a voting mechanism in governance

Cosmos Validator

The Cosmos Hub is based on Tendermint which relies on a set of validators to secure the network. The role of validators is to run a full node and participate in consensus by broadcasting votes that contain cryptographic signatures signed by the validator's private key. Validators commit new blocks in the blockchain and receive revenue in exchange for their work. Validators must also participate in governance by voting on proposals. Validators are weighted according to their total stake. (Read More…)

Cosmos Delegator

Delegators are ATOM holders who cannot, or do not want to, run a validator themselves. ATOM holders can delegate ATOM to a validator and obtain a part of their revenue in exchange.

Because delegators share revenue with their validators, they also share risks. If a validator misbehaves, each of their delegators are partially slashed in proportion to their delegated stake. This penalty is one of the reasons why delegators must perform due diligence on validators before delegating. Spreading their stake over multiple validators is another layer of protection.

Delegators play a critical role in the system, as they are responsible for choosing validators. Being a delegator is not a passive role. Delegators must actively monitor the actions of their validators and participate in governance. (Read More…)

Top 10 Cosmos Hub’s Validators

Based on the official ranking on Cosmos Mintscan, Here is the list of the top 10 Cosmos hub’s validators. you can click on the name of each validator for more details:

1- 🐠stake.fish: cosmosvaloper1sjllsnramtg3ewxqwwrwjxfgc4n4ef9u2lcnj0

2- DokiaCapital: cosmosvaloper14lultfckehtszvzw4ehu0apvsr77afvyju5zzy

3- Coinbase Custody: cosmosvaloper1c4k24jzduc365kywrsvf5ujz4ya6mwympnc4en

4- SG-1: cosmosvaloper196ax4vc0lwpxndu9dyhvca7jhxp70rmcvrj90c

5- Zero Knowledge Validator (ZKV): cosmosvaloper1v5y0tg0jllvxf5c3afml8s3awue0ymju89frut

6- Binance Node: cosmosvaloper18ruzecmqj9pv8ac0gvkgryuc7u004te9rh7w5s

7- Everstake: cosmosvaloper1tflk30mq5vgqjdly92kkhhq3raev2hnz6eete3

8- Polychain: cosmosvaloper14k4pzckkre6uxxyd2lnhnpp8sngys9m6hl6ml7

9- GAME: cosmosvaloper1qaa9zej9a0ge3ugpx3pxyx602lxh3ztqgfnp42

10- Paradigm: cosmosvaloper19lss6zgdh5vvcpjhfftdghrpsw7a4434elpwpu

These 10 validators currently have almost 43% share of the total delegated $ATOM in the Cosmos hub.

Dashboard Introduction & Methodology

Delegation and Staking were always the hottest subjects in the Cosmos (ATOM) ecosystem. So that's why I am going to provide an in-depth analysis of the Cosmos Top 10 Validators ==in the year 2023 to see how they have performed in the new year and how delegators have staked/unstaked their $ATOM in these validators.

In this dashboard, I am going to use Flipside’s Cosmos Hub data to provide some useful details about these top 10 validators.

In this analysis, I am going to compare these validators in terms of Delegate & Redelegate activity over them and also their participation in Cosmos governance proposals.

For this, The main table that I am going to use for this bounty are cosmos.core.fact_msg_attributes & cosmos.core.fact_validators tables.

Delegate: First, I have extracted the transaction_IDs of delegate actions by filtering the msg_type column to ‘delegate’ and attribute_key to ‘validator’. the attribute value of this table would be the actual validator operator address, So, We have to filter this column to our validators’ operator addresses. By filtering the msg_type column to ‘delegate’ and attribute_key to ‘amount’, we can extract the actual unadjusted Delegate amount (in $ATOM) from attribute_value and by dividing this number by 10^6, the adjusted delegate amount will be extracted. Moreover, by By filtering the msg_type column to ‘coin_spent’ and attribute_key to ‘spender’, the attribute_value column gives us the wallet address of the delegator. (considering that we should also filter msg & attribute indexes to ’0’)

Redelegate To/From: the methodology for extracting the Redelegations is similar to the Delegate actions but instead of 1 validator, there are 2 validators on a Redelegate activity. one is the source validator and another is the destination. So, We have to filter the source_validator and destination_validator columns to our validators’ operator address in order to analyze data of Redelegates To or From the related validator.

Voting Activity of Validators: Validators use their non-operator address in order to participate in voting on governance proposals. So, Firstly we have to extract the non-operator address of each validator from their specific page in Cosmos mintscan (provided below) in order to identify the voter validators and then, we can use cosmos.core.fact_msg_attributes table to analyze the voting activity by these validators on Cosmos proposals.

Overall Validator Stats in 2023

According to the above charts, EverStake is the validator that hosted the most number of delegate actions and also delegators in the year 2023. But, the total volume of Delegated $ATOM into Coinbase Costudy in this year is more than all other Cosmos validators.

Also, we can see that Dokia Capital is the validator that the highest $ATOM was redelegated FROM it which can not be good news for this validator, and on the other hand, the highest volume of redelegated $ATOM was redelegated into 🐠stake.fish.

The average volume of delegate actions on Polychain is more than other validators while the average volume of redelegates from DokiaCapital is more than others and Stake Fish has the highest average volume of redelegates to itself.

Moreover, we can see Paradigm (Rank #10) has the least activity among other top 10 Cosmos validators in the year 2023.

According to the left charts, the majority of delegate actions on these top 10 validators were done with less than 5 $ATOM. However, the share of high-volume delegates in the Polychain validator is more than other validators.

Also, we can see that most number of Delegators have totally delegated less than 5 $ATOM in these top 10 validators in the year 2023 followed by users who have delegated 10 - 100 $ATOm into these validators.

According to the above charts, the delegation activity on Cosmos validators has almost a steady trend line over time in 2023. The highest delegation activity on these validators has achieved on Jan. 14, 2023. On this day, the most number of new-first time delegators have also delegated their $ATOm into these validators. In terms of volume, we can see a slightly increasing volume of delegated $ATOM in these validator as time goes on especially during the recent days. There are 2 huge high spikes of delegates to Coinbase Custody validator on Feb. 10 & 11, 2023 and these high spikes can be the main reason behind the top performance of this validator in the year 2023. Before these 2 days, Everstake had the highest volume of delegated $ATOM in the year 2023 but thanks to these high spikes, Coinbase Cusotdy is now by far the most successfull Cosmos validator in the year 2023. The average volume of delegates on this validator (Coinbase Cusotdy) has also reached its highest amount on these 2 days which shows the "Whales Activity" on this validator. Totally, Polychain has the highest average volume of delegated $ATOM in the most number of days in the year 2023. On the last 2 charts, we can see on Feb 2 & 6, 2023, a huge amount of $ATOM was redelegated from DokiaCapital into Stake.fish.

According to the left chart, the GAME validator has the most active delegators but the delegators on Coinbase Custody are more worthy.

This means that the average number of delegates on by delegators on GAME is more than other top 10 Cosmos validators in the year 2023 and the average volume of delegates by delegators on Coinbase Custody (as the top performing Cosmos validator in 2023) is more than other top 10 validators.

Governance Voting Participation

Summary & Conclusion

According to the above analysis, Coinbase Custody is the top-performer validator among the top 10 Cosmos validators in the year 2023 because the highest amount of $ATOM was delegated to this validator in this year. The main reason behind this good performance is the significant amount of delegated $ATOM on 10 & 11 February 2023 that was related to “Whale Activity” on this validator.

EverStake is the validator that hosted the most number of delegate actions and also delegators in the year 2023. This validator had also the best performance in terms of volume before 10 February but after those 2 high spikes of delegated $ATOM in Coinbase Custody, Everstake has lost the competition to Coinbase Custody.

In the year 2023, Dokia Capital is the validator that the highest $ATOM was redelegated FROM it which can not be good news for this validator, and on the other hand, the highest volume of redelegated $ATOM was redelegated into 🐠stake.fish.

Polychain has the highest average volume of delegates in the majority of days during the year 2023.

4 out of these top 10 Cosmos validators have not participated in a single proposal’s voting in Cosmos Governance in the year 2023. Zero Knowledge Validator (ZKV) is the most active validator in Cosmos Governance Proposals Voting among the top 10 Cosmos validators. The top inactive voter validators are DokiaCapital, Coinbase Custody, Binance Node & Paradigm.

**Discord: Ali3N#8546 Twitter: Alik_110 Email: Alik110.72@Gmail.com Check out My Other Dashboards at: **

According to the above charts, Zero Knowledge Validator (ZKV) is the most active validator in Cosmos Governance Proposals Voting among the top 10 Cosmos validators. The interesting thing is that 4 out of these top 10 validators have not participated in a single Cosmos proposal’s voting in the year 2023. these top inactive voter validators are DokiaCapital, Coinbase Custody, Binance Node & Paradigm.

Also on the right chart, we can see the number of votes of each validator on Cosmos proposals that were executed in the year 2023. The majority of these validators have only voted once on proposals but Stake.fish & SG-1 are the two validators who have voted more than once on proposal #94 (SG-1) and #97 (Stake.fish)

Over-Time Delegations Stats