XRP ledger node validators, who determine whether transactions meet protocol requirements, have been a hotbed of discussion for a long time now. Bitrue, Coingate, and Bitstamp are some of the crypto-exchanges that run XRP validators. To make the network more decentralized, the validator number has to go up.
A major cause of concern was its parent firm, Ripple, running majority validators, raising concerns about the ‘hypothetical if’ and what would happen if and when Ripple suddenly stops. Due to the above, many in the community brainstormed ideas to prevent this from happening and keeping the XRPL network sufficiently decentralized. This has led people to come forward and incentivize validators, which seems to be a good way to rope in more of them.
In a bid to reward and recognize validators on the network, Richard Holland, creator of the open-sourced Toast wallet, has developed a new way to help with incentivizing validators through tipping.
I’ve written a tool to allow XRPL Validators to see and claim their corresponding XRPL address. Validator keys can be used as XRPL account keys but this hasn’t been done until now. This will allow validators to be incentivised through tipping in the future https://t.co/Qf9Q8prJ0v
— Richard Holland ⚡️ (@codetsunami) July 21, 2019
To publish validations to the XRPL mesh network, validators use a key pair. Using the same key over and over again for every transaction is cumbersome. This is where the tool comes into play. Dubbed the ‘Validator Address Tool,’ the new roll-out sets “regular keys” for the validator to receive the incentive in any wallet; be it Toast wallet, XRPTipBot or any other wallet. The post explained the mechanism and said,
“Using the validator’s key repeatedly to make transactions on this account would be insecure and cumbersome, so instead let’s send 20 XRP to the address and then re-key the account by using the tool to set a regular key. This step requires access to the validator’s key file. Now the validator can access his account from Toast or any other wallet.”
Holland was hopeful that in the near future, it will be possible that validators could be automatically incentivized “to their XRPL addresses by a community Codius smart contract that monitors up-time and agreement rates.”