Fully Decentralized

The max number of supernodes on Umbrella is infinite. Supernodes are onboarded through a DAO Proposal since they can’t buy a slot like in most other networks. Supernodes would need to submit a proposal and sign a legal agreement with the network DAO if selected, then stake the required tokens.

While there is an infinite set of supernodes only 27 are validators during each epoch, but this is randomly rotated to prevent any focused attacks on single nodes. This way validation duties are spread through a larger set of potential supernodes. Increasing both decentralization and the difficulty of attacking the network. Supernova nodes do not have any additional rights on the Umbrella network itself. Their role is as software maintainers entrusted by the other supernodes to continue the development and maintenance of the Umbrella mainnet. This is how Umbrella expresses our role in the ecosystem, and one day for our duties to become a decentralized process.

There is a hierarchy in terms of the roles that users play on every chain, not just Umbrella. The issue is that these roles cannot be expressed onchain, because every user has the same rights. Introducing a hierarchy doesn’t remove decentralization. We would argue it actually creates a more feasible decentralized environment. Open access and open data are cool and not something we want to disable, but enabling finer controls opens new doors for web3 applications.

This is where ZTAP (Zero Trust Access Protocol) a proprietary protocol tool we built to enable granular access controls comes in. Enterprise applications cannot develop in public environments because they have to follow stringent regulations around consumer data. On a chain where everyone can see everything, you could never run a healthcare app since it’s a felony under HIPAA regulation for a doctor to review data for patients they don’t treat. However by implementing attribute-based controls not only can you prevent the supernodes themselves from seeing your information, but you can also whitelist users and give them different roles and attributes.