The Stellar Development Foundation outlines its framework for evaluating and selecting validator nodes to trust in its quorum configuration, based on eight key dimensions including security practices, geographic diversity, and organizational reliability. The article serves as both a transparency report on SDF's validator trust decisions and a blueprint for other network operators building their own validator configurations.
The Stellar Development Foundation published a detailed explanation of how it evaluates and selects which validator nodes to include in its quorum configuration for the Stellar network. The article describes eight evaluation dimensions: security practices, geographic diversity, organizational track record, technical expertise, operational maturity, correlation of failures, and others. SDF uses a risk estimation matrix to assess the severity and likelihood of failure scenarios across these dimensions, prioritizing diversity to mitigate correlated failures. The framework emphasizes that certain dimensions carry greater importance—for example, security practices and geographic distribution are weighted more heavily than others. Rather than applying a rigid formula, SDF uses human review and consensus to evaluate candidates, aiming to increase network resilience by adding diversity where possible. The article positions this as both a transparency measure for SDF's own trust decisions and a practical guide for other organizations running their own validators on the Stellar network.
