We’re about a month into the Great Celo Stakeoff and it is definitely the most dynamic testnet launch I’ve ever been apart of. I’m constantly checking vote totals and running election calculations. On Discord, groups are frequently asking for new validators to associate with and are chatting late into the night. And already, many of the validators (myself included), who had a slow start, are already unable to meet the minimum threshold required to become elected as a validator – but we’re all trying to get back in the game!
I’ll be the first to admit I had only a basic understanding of how the Celo election process worked and didn’t have anything more than a basic uptime strategy coming into the testnet launch – which is probably why we were quickly out of the running. The top validator groups figured it out quickly and were able to take advantage! So, for the rest of us, here’s how the Celo elections work and some strategies that may help you get back into the game if you’re already out or thinking about running a validator on Celo in the future.
Celo uses an election algorithm called The D’Hondt Method. The Wikipedia page has a decent explanation and I’ll use that to demonstrate how the elections work for Celo. Celo validators currently have two areas to vote: for their group and/or for their validator. For each one to have a chance to be elected, the group and validator must have at least 10,000 (10k) cGold staked. For each validator in a group, the group leader must have an additional 10k locked in the group address (4 associated validators means 40k cGold locked).
From an election standpoint, the amount staked to a validator, as long as it’s at least 10k cGold, doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the total amount staked to the group and its validators. When an election occurs, Celo identifies the group with the highest total and elects a validator from that group first. It then starts to apply The D’Hondt Method, which means first dividing the total of the top group by two (for election calculations) then looking for the next highest total. If that first group still had the highest total, even after halving their total stake, they would elect a second validator. If not, the next group with the highest total would be elected (and their effective stake would drop by half as well). This process continues until 100 validators are elected. Each time a group has a new validator elected, their effective stake (for the election only) drops by an increasing factor. So a group with 100k would go to 50k the first time elected; the second time elected, the original total would be divided by 3 to 33k; the third time, divided by 4 to 25k and so on. If that’s confusing, I’ve got an example below:
| Number of Validators | Total Votes | |
| Group A | 4 | 700k |
| Group B | 3 | 600k |
| Group C | 2 | 325k |
| Group D | 1 | 200k |
For our test case, we’ll start off with 4 validator groups, 6 electable validator positions, and 10 total potential validators. Group A has 4 validators, Group B has 3, Group C has 2, and Group D has 1. The total number of network votes is 1,825,000 divided among the groups as seen in the chart above. An election would go as follows:
| Pass 1 | Pass 2 | Pass 3 | Pass 4 | Pass 5 | Pass 6 | Validators Elected | |
| Group A | 700k | 350k | 350k | 233k | 233k | 233k | 3 |
| Group B | 600k | 600k | 300k | 300k | 300k | 200k | 2 |
| Group C | 325k | 325k | 325k | 325k | 162k | 162k | 1 |
| Group D | 200k | 200k | 200k | 200k | 200k | 200k | 0 |
On the first pass, Group A gets the top spot since they have the highest total. Group B wins a validator in pass 2 because Group A’s effective votes drop by half. Now for pass 3, both Group A and B have been halved, but Group A’s votes are still higher than the rest so they win a second validator and their original votes are now divided by 3 to 233k. In pass 4, it’s Group C’s turn to win a validator. This continues until 6 validators are elected. Some things to note: Group D does not get a validator elected! Even though they have the highest ‘per-capita’ validator (tied with Group B) at 200k. Group A actually has the second lowest per-capita votes (average votes per validator) at 175k but still elects 3 validators.
Ok so what’s the strategy here?
First, the validator total staked (or locked) doesn’t really matter. A validator with only 10k locked can be elected over validators with higher totals as long as the sum of the group total is higher. What this means is group leaders (the only ones who can lock gold for their group) should only be sending rewards to their group address and locking it. This will allow them to add additional validators and consolidate their votes.
The D’Hondt Method favors the largest groups (as demonstrated above), so groups will probably want to consolidate their group totals by adding additional validators to improve their chance of being elected. What does this mean in the long term? Currently, transactions are not allowed between third parties, so it is up to the group leader alone to save and add validators. But once the network goes to mainnet, what’s to stop people from creating super groups of 10 or more validators? And does it matter? We’re already seeing consolidation, there were over 100 groups when the games started last month and we’re down to less than 50. This will probably be amplified on the mainnet. As these groups consolidate, will that affect the decentralization of the mainnet? And again, will it matter? If validators are free to join groups as they please they can obviously leave a group that is misbehaving. This is similar to Bitcoin mining in the sense that although there are a small number of mining pools, miners can move between pools as desired. The remaining question to be answered then is how much power do the miners actually hold? In 2017, we saw the Bitcoin miners bow to users and SegWit2x failed, will Celo users wield the same authority? Once the mainnet launches, token holders will be introduced to the mix and we will see how they chose to allocate their capital to help ensure decentralization.
So far, so exciting! For those following along, the stakeoff will continue until Feb 19th, with Phase 3 starting Feb 5th. There is some talk of expanding the number of allowed validators beyond 100 to allow those who have already fallen out of the running back in – but that remains to be seen. Additionally, the Celo foundation is performing security audits on those validators that request it for their seal of approval and bonus stake. You can take a look at the current state of the network here as well as the validators participating here.