Hi everyone 👋,

As pre-voting periods have closed and all ICONists are busy voting and staking to support the P-Reps that match to their vision, we thought it was time to give our guidelines a quick update.

At the time of writing, there are 103 candidates registered on Iconsensus and a total of 114 P-reps in the explorer; it can be tough to decide whom to vote on. Hence, we hope that this guide will help you to make a sound decision.

We could not include all P-Reps on this illustration. If you’re sad about it, shoot us a message or write a comment below, and we’ll do our best to squeeze your logo!

Make your due diligence

There are a couple of elements you can look for when deciding which P-Reps you’d like to support, among which:

Security practices 🤖: The main job of P-Reps is to maintain a secure infrastructure with high uptime to consistently validate blocks on the ICON Blockchain. There are multiple ways to maintain such infrastructure. For example, some P-Reps use cloud services, others colocation, and some others even have a hybrid model (mix colocation/cloud).

🤖: The main job of P-Reps is to maintain a secure infrastructure with high uptime to consistently validate blocks on the ICON Blockchain. There are multiple ways to maintain such infrastructure. For example, some P-Reps use cloud services, others colocation, and some others even have a hybrid model (mix colocation/cloud). Track-record 🤓: Some P-Rep candidates have teams with strong backgrounds in blockchain/cybersecurity, some others have been operating for months on multiple protocols, and finally some P-Reps have been involved in the ICON community for years. Whatever it is that convinces you the most among these, make sure to search for it. For example, you can check P-Reps’ websites, or if you’ve been following The Iconist or ICON social media channels, you have probably seen some names coming up frequently.

🤓: Some P-Rep candidates have teams with strong backgrounds in blockchain/cybersecurity, some others have been operating for months on multiple protocols, and finally some P-Reps have been involved in the ICON community for years. Whatever it is that convinces you the most among these, make sure to search for it. For example, you can check P-Reps’ websites, or if you’ve been following The Iconist or ICON social media channels, you have probably seen some names coming up frequently. Community contributions 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦: Although the primary job of a P-Rep is to maintain a highly secure validation infrastructure, it is our view that its involvement within ICON development should go beyond that! Community contributions can be marketing-oriented or product-oriented . Both are important. Marketing activities help spread the word about ICON and enhance the strength of the community. Product Development activities create useful tools on the ICON blockchain and use cases for the token. Marketing activities usually consist of social media channels involvement (Telegram, Reddit, Forum), Articles and Guides, Events, and Meetups. Product Development can be building an explorer, a wallet, an exchange, or any kind of Dapp on top of the ICON blockchain. The more involved the P-Rep, the better for the community and the token.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦: Although the primary job of a P-Rep is to maintain a highly secure validation infrastructure, it is our view that its involvement within ICON development should go beyond that! Community contributions can be or . Both are important. Marketing activities help spread the word about ICON and enhance the strength of the community. Product Development activities create useful tools on the ICON blockchain and use cases for the token. Marketing activities usually consist of social media channels involvement (Telegram, Reddit, Forum), Articles and Guides, Events, and Meetups. Product Development can be building an explorer, a wallet, an exchange, or any kind of Dapp on top of the ICON blockchain. The more involved the P-Rep, the better for the community and the token. Brand ⭐️: Brand criteria is very subjective, especially in this nascent validation market. Voting for a P-Rep is also about trusting a company/brand to do the job, and if you are not much into doing deep due diligence, it can be easy criteria to work with. Professionally looking companies are more likely to be long-term focused P-Reps who will keep working hard in the next months and years.

⭐️: Brand criteria is very subjective, especially in this nascent validation market. Voting for a P-Rep is also about trusting a company/brand to do the job, and if you are not much into doing deep due diligence, it can be easy criteria to work with. Professionally looking companies are more likely to be long-term focused P-Reps who will keep working hard in the next months and years. Rewards management 💰: Some P-Reps have detailed plans on how they will allocate their P-Rep rewards. Although it can be hard to ensure that these plans will take place, it does indicate what P-Reps would like to do in the future, e.g., marketing involvement, product development, refinancing the ecosystem, or just paying themselves huge salaries. An excellent way to judge the rewards management policy and be to take a look at what the candidates have already been doing so far, and their overall track-record of contributions.

💰: Some P-Reps have detailed plans on how they will allocate their P-Rep rewards. Although it can be hard to ensure that these plans will take place, it does indicate what P-Reps would like to do in the future, e.g., marketing involvement, product development, refinancing the ecosystem, or just paying themselves huge salaries. An excellent way to judge the rewards management policy and be to take a look at what the candidates have already been doing so far, and their overall track-record of contributions. Location 📍: In our view, a healthy decentralized network should have validators all around the globe, as it diminishes the risk of a whole region being down (can be due to political issues). It should also contribute to the development of local communities, which are essential to an international blockchain network. When voting, and we’ll come to that point further in the article, make sure to diversify among several P-Reps and choose some operating in various regions!

Use multiple resources

Now that you have some ideas of what to look for when electing P-Reps, you might wonder where you can find all this information. Below is a list with some useful resources:

Check the official list of candidates and proposals

Have a look at panel discussions

Ask questions to candidates in the social media channels, such as Telegram

Make sure to understand who you are voting for, check P-Rep websites!

P-Reps have been working on multiple projects regarding marketing, development, education, and infrastructure. It is possible to read through current proposals and projects, to form a good idea of where the network is heading with the current P-Reps.

Diversify & Decentralize

You can vote for multiple P-Reps by allocating some portion of your voting rights to each of your favorite ones. It is effortless to do so since the only thing you have to do is to use the slider on ICONex.

50% there, 30% here, 20% over there — Et voilà! ☝️

Here are a couple of reasons why you should allocate your votes to several P-Reps:

Decentralization : Voting rights should be split among various P-Reps so that not one P-Rep or a cartel of P-Reps can decide the future of the network when it comes to governance .

: Voting rights should be split among various P-Reps so that . Diversification: In case one P-Rep is down, you want to make sure that the majority of your holdings are still earning interests and contributing to the network PoS ecosystem. Plus, there is a risk of slashing for large downtime from a P-Rep. It is better to diversify among various P-Reps (see our article Diversification is Decentralization), to limit such risks.

That’s all for this article, we hope it will help you assess how to vote for P-Reps in the upcoming election! If you don’t know yet how to vote, you can check our guide (ICONEX and Ledger options included).

For more information on our proposal and other P-Reps’ proposals, you can check Iconsensus.

Get to know more about ICON

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. Staking and cryptocurrencies investment involves a high degree of risk, and there is always the possibility of loss, including the loss of all staked digital assets. Additionally, delegators are at risk of slashing in case of security or liveness faults on some PoS protocols. We advise you to DYOR before choosing a validator.