Shibarium Lead Validator Explains Why It Turned Off Staking Delegation

Unification, the lead validator on the Shiba Inu Shibarium network, has clarified why it temporarily turned off delegations to its node.

Following the launch of the Shibarium network, Unification’s blockchain validator has quickly risen to prominence. According to data from ShibariumScan, Unification’s validator node has 5,539,466 BONE (approximately $4.35 million) staked, representing nearly 20% of the total staked BONE supply.

However, in a recent development, Unification disclosed that the rapid increase in the number of BONE staked to its node was behind its decision to temporarily restrict new user delegation.

Unification admitted that its validator node “became too powerful too quickly” and posed decentralization risks to the newly launched proof-of-stake (PoS) network.

The Unification team revealed:

“By disabling delegations to our validator, we allowed a more equal distribution of stake power to the other validators on the network and therefore encouraged decentralisation.”

The validator added that although it has reopened delegation, it would continually monitor its staking weight and may “temporarily disable staking” to keep the network sufficiently decentralized.

Unification also raised its commission rate to 3% as another subtle way to discourage delegation to its validator. Of the 12 validators currently live on the network, ten charge no commissions, with Chainmasters being the only node that also applies a 3% deduction to rewards earned by delegators.

Unification Brings Oracles Service to Shibarium

Beyond offering a validator node on Shibarium, Unification had actively collaborated with Shiba Inu developers to build the network. Additionally, the project revealed as part of its latest update that it has launched its Oracle of Oracles (OoO) service on the Shibarium network.

Similar to oracles on other networks, the new offering will allow developers to build decentralized applications to feed real-time data on cryptocurrency prices to smart contracts. Such data is especially crucial to decentralized exchanges and lending protocols that could emerge on Shibarium.

Meanwhile, the roughly one-month-old Shibarium network has continued to see an increase in the number of wallets, transactions, and smart contracts. RPC nodes on the network are also setting new weekly records, suggesting growing interest in the layer-2 solution.

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