The Celestia Foundation has concluded the Foundation Delegation program for Cohort 1.
You can find the list of validators receiving delegations in the spreadsheet.
As a reminder, Cohort 1 has three Placements, divided into First Place, Second Place, and Third Place per the “Key Points” section of the Validation Program. Validators receiving delegation are advised to check which place they’re in, which will inform them how long they will receive delegation before they are subject to a renewal. When new cohort applications open up, existing validators up for renewal are invited to reapply, and new validator applicants will also have an opportunity to submit their applications.
Cohort 2 applications will open up on June 1st, 2024.
Currently, many validators are running their infrastructure on OVH and Hetzner, so ideally those validators can migrate to other data centers and infrastructure providers.
For the next Cohort, the Foundation will reject any applicants who run their infrastructure on OVH or Hetzner. Furthermore, any new validator who wishes to apply to Cohort 2 is advised to start running their validator node and bridge node on Mocha testnet ahead of applications opening on June 1st. The community managers on the Celestia Discord are happy to help get you to the active set on Mocha testnet. This ensures uptime performance can be measured prior to applications opening.
Thank you to everyone who applied, and we look forward to seeing new applicants for Cohort 2. We also wanted to thank @Yazanator and the whole P-OPS team for doing a lot of the heavy lifting that made the delegation program possible.
Thank you for keeping the Celestia network secure and resilient.
The Celestia Foundation.