Edward Kim Explains Stance on Terra Classic Allnodes Concern in Gadikian Appeal

Kim says reducing Allnodes’ voting power effectively reduces risks to the Terra Classic chain.

Terra Classic core developer and director of the Terra Grants Foundation Edward Kim has explained the reasoning behind his stance on recent concerns surrounding Allnodes’ operations on the Terra Classic chain in a Twitter thread yesterday.

Recall that Notional Labs founder Jacob Gadikian has recently attracted significant attention to Allnodes’ significantly high voting power in addition to its worrying practice of holding the seed phrases of validators using its node hosting service. Consequently, it raised concerns about centralization risks akin to the network having a single point of failure.

In response, Kim noted that Allnodes was working to reduce its voting power by increasing its commissions to 10% in February, encouraging delegates to stake elsewhere. However, as reported, Gadikian called out the TGF director for not addressing the fact that the hosting service held validator seed phrases.

In yesterday’s thread, described as an appeal to Gadikian, Kim asserted his focus is on the Terra Classic chain. According to the developer, in his view, Allnodes’ high voting power represented a multiplier effect. Consequently, he expressed the belief that eliminating that also eliminates the risk to the network.

Hi @gadikian , I would like to appeal to your computational side to help explain my focus. My highest priority and current objective is to minimize the risk, specifically to the #lunc network, while I believe your objective is across multiple chains.

— Edward Kim (@edk208) January 27, 2023

Notably, in response, Gadikian has implied that the TGF director is not doing enough, saying he has to tell the community to re-delegate regardless of the cost to Allnodes. 

Meanwhile, Allnodes, as reported today, disclosed that it had launched a non-custodial node management service for Cosmos chains. It will allow validators to retain control of their node information. While it has been hailed as a step in the right direction, there are lingering concerns that it does nothing for existing customers whose seed phrases are already potentially compromised. Community members have urged these validators to launch new nodes.

At press time, Smart Stake Analytics data shows that Allnodes’ voting power sits at 17.81%. It has lost 47 unique delegates in the past 24 hours.