Argument-0010: Retention at Rank 2

Member details

• Matrix username: @tsvetomir:parity.io
• Polkadot address: 1QhVP5qzR2LfXqP77N1JcuwHoY7NH8JVRNFm1hSooE9d4pR
• Current rank: 2
• Date of initial induction: 2023/10/11
• Date of last report: 2026/07/29
• Link to last report: link
• Subsystems developed/maintained: Parachains

Reporting period

• Start date: 2026/07/29
• End date: 2026/10/14

Argument

During this reporting period I've finished the testing for the collator protocol revamp (polkadot-sdk pr-12836) and made it the default collator protocol implementation for Kusama (polkadot-sdk pr-12880).

My next focus is preparing a design for Validator quality set improvement. The purpose of this project is to outline a set of checks which helps the operators understand if their node performs as expected. The difference from the metrics already provided in polkadot-sdk is a limited set of checks, with expected reference values and concrete actionable advise for the operator if the check fails. The design is under internal discussions and hopefully will be made public after that.

What I have done so far:

• Studied prior work on the subject (a document by @Overkillus on Validator set quality from network point of view).
• Analyzed the reported issues in polkadot-sdk and extracted the patterns for common operator complains.
• Studied how this problem is solved in other ecosystems.
• Prepared a list of duties and checks which should be implemented in the validator/metanode binary (pending review).

The current state of the document can be found here.

I am maintaining the stop-gap AH security fix (the list of preferred AH collators) for Polkadot until the revamp lands there too (polkadot-sdk pr-13320).

I reviewed some collator protocol v4 related PRs, e.g. polkadot-sdk pr-12172, polkadot-sdk pr-12255 and polkadot-sdk pr-12396.

Voting record

Misc

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