While listening to the “Updates from the Lab” from 2 days ago (10-04-2024) I noticed something which I deem interesting to address and to have an exchange of thoughts.
Amongst news about the project from Mad Scientists itself it was mentioned it was also in the plans to start a validator. That is a good thing imo, since it shows the commitment of the project to be an active part of Osmosis and contribute in whatever way possible. The message that triggered me though was the idea to make it a 0% commission validator, bypassing the 5% baseline set via the Osmosis chain via buybacks and airdrops.
On that field I start this thread to have a conversation together with input from the Mad Scientists team. We have had a period in the early days of Osmosis where we had an abundance of validators who bypassed the 5% baseline, scooping up massive amounts of delegations.
Those days are over (luckily), where (as far as I am aware) all validators adhere to the 5% commission minimum for staking.
Especially in combination with the drive for shorter blocktimes it is important for validators to have an income to be able to pay for proper servers as well as the necessary monitoring. And not to forget the continuous learning to improve the validator business. I am aware that a decent part of the active set is able to do so, but not the tail of the set. I rather avoid a race to the bottom with a few large low commission validators and a long tail of validators who either run at a loss or choose to run on inferior infrastructure. For that reason I am perfectly fine with how the chain looks like atm (although the idea of rewarding the tail of the set a bit more than the upper part still looms in my mind. Read more here and here).
With all that in mind I would like to find out more about the plans of Mad Scientists before forming a judgement whether it is unwanted for Osmosis as a project (yes, personal opinion ^^) OR that it is just a fun experiment which won’t do any harm.
*Disclaimer 1: I am a LAB holder as well, so also interested in the future of the project 
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Disclaimer 2: this does not need to be handled via an on-chain proposal, just a fruitful conversation to exchange thoughts should already do the trick.
