GC Membership Application of NODERS

GC Membership Discussion
1

1. Name of Applicant

Noders LLC (operating as “NODERS” / “[NODERS]TEAM”).

2. Introduction of Applicant

NODERS is a professional validator, Web3 development, and blockchain infrastructure firm operating since 2021. We secure over $200M in delegated assets for 16,000+ delegators and run high-performance validator nodes across 30+ mainnet networks — including Solana, Sui, Monad, Berachain, Story, Polygon, Starknet, Celestia, and IOTA — with an average node uptime of 99.9%. Our validator footprint includes multiple EVM-compatible Layer 1 networks, giving us operational experience directly relevant to Kaia.

NODERS is ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified (audited by IAF), reflecting an information-security management system that meets institutional standards. Our team of 14 full-time and 7 part-time specialists also maintains open-source tooling for the networks we support.

Our work spans the full infrastructure stack a blockchain network needs: enterprise-grade validator operations backed by a self-developed 24/7 monitoring and alerting system; public RPC, API, snapshot, and node-tooling services delivered through noders.services; testnet faucet infrastructure (Faucetlist); and developer- and community-facing products, including the CommunityApp ecosystem framework and the AppsFactory hackathon-driven incubator.

3. Objectives of Participating in the Kaia Governance Council

Kaia is positioned as the settlement layer for stablecoins and onchain finance across Asia, with distribution that reaches hundreds of millions of users through the LINE messaging ecosystem and roots in both the LINE and Kakao blockchain lineages. Consumer-facing usage — LINE Mini DApps, USDT payments, and games settling in stablecoins — places real, spiky load on the network and raises the bar for infrastructure reliability.

Meeting that bar requires validator operations that hold consensus and uptime under consumer-scale demand, redundant public RPC endpoints that developers can build on without running their own nodes, and tooling that lowers the barrier to building on Kaia. This is the layer NODERS has operated across 30+ networks since 2021 and we want to bring it to Kaia in a formal governance capacity. As a GC member, NODERS will operate a Core Cell, contribute to network decentralization and uptime, and represent the validator-operator and infrastructure-provider perspective in technical policy, economic policy, and infrastructure-related governance proposals.

4. Your Commitment to the Kaia Community

Infrastructure

  • Operate a Kaia Core Cell (Consensus Node and Proxy Node) on Kaia Mainnet, with a node on the Kairos Testnet, backed by NODERS’ self-developed 24/7 monitoring and alerting system and ISO/IEC 27001:2022-aligned security practices
  • Run public Endpoint Nodes providing JSON-RPC and WebSocket access for Kaia Mainnet and Kairos — adding endpoint redundancy for developers — together with chain snapshots and node-setup guides published through noders.services
  • Provide a Kairos testnet faucet through NODERS’ Faucetlist as additional faucet capacity for builders
  • Deploy nodes in Asia-region data centers to keep latency low for LINE- and Kakao-based applications and their users

Ecosystem & developer support

  • Contribute developer-facing resources for teams building on Kaia — node and integration guides, educational content, and dev tooling — drawing on NODERS’ CommunityApp framework
  • Provide network analytics and validator-monitoring dashboards for the Kaia community
  • Support developer onboarding and respond to technical questions in Kaia’s developer channels

Governance

  • Actively participate in on-chain voting and governance proposal (GP) discussions, and attend the monthly GC meetings
  • Contribute to technical working groups and to the review and oversight of the Kaia Ecosystem Fund (KEF)
  • Publish quarterly progress reports on infrastructure performance, uptime, and ecosystem contributions

5. Your Plan for Securing 5 Million KAIA

GC membership requires a minimum of 5,000,000 KAIA staked to the member’s Core Cell. Upon GC approval, NODERS will request an initial delegation of 5,000,000 KAIA from the Kaia Foundation to meet this threshold. The full delegation will be staked to NODERS’ Core Cell, contributing directly to network security, decentralization, and uptime, and activating NODERS’ governance voting power (one vote per 5,000,000 KAIA staked).

In parallel, NODERS will draw on its public-delegation track record — 16,000+ delegators across 30+ networks — to attract public KAIA delegation through Kaia Square, broadening the stake behind NODERS’ Core Cell over time. Block rewards earned by the Core Cell will be reinvested into NODERS’ Kaia operations, including infrastructure, developer support, and ecosystem contributions.

1 Like
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While NODERS’ infrastructure experience across multiple chains is respectable, I believe there is a fundamental concern that should be addressed openly.

Why is NODERS requesting a 5,000,000 KAIA delegation from the Kaia Foundation instead of acquiring and staking the tokens themselves?

GC membership is not just about operating servers. It also represents long-term alignment with the Kaia ecosystem. However, this proposal appears to place the financial risk on the Foundation while granting governance influence and block rewards to the validator operator.

From a decentralization perspective, this also raises concerns. If large voting power is effectively enabled through Foundation delegations, then governance may remain indirectly centralized around the Foundation, even if validators appear geographically or operationally distributed.

In addition, operating validators across 30+ chains demonstrates technical capability, but it does not necessarily demonstrate long-term conviction in Kaia itself. Many multi-chain validators simply follow incentives from ecosystem to ecosystem.

A genuine long-term stakeholder should also be willing to share market risk and economic exposure alongside the community.

So I believe the community should ask a simple question:

If Kaia’s future is truly attractive, why is NODERS unwilling to accumulate and stake KAIA with its own capital?

3

Thank you for raising this - it’s a fair question, and it deserves a direct answer.

Let me take it at its sharpest first: why request a delegation rather than buy and stake 5M KAIA ourselves? Because a model in which only operators who can self-fund the full minimum may join is, by definition, pay-to-play. It selects validators for the size of their token balance, not for the quality of their engineering, their security posture, or their operational track record. Foundation delegation exists precisely to onboard operators who bring infrastructure value without being token-rich - that is the mechanism that broadens the validator set, not the one that narrows it to whoever already holds the most KAIA.

A few points of protocol mechanics are easy to overlook, and they reframe the “financial risk” concern directly. The 5M figure is not a number we chose - it is the protocol’s minimum to qualify as a GC operator. Under Kaia’s reward model, that minimum earns no staking yield: staking rewards are distributed only on amounts staked above 5M. What an operator at the minimum actually earns is the block-proposer reward, shared equally among all GC members as compensation for running a Core Cell. So a delegation at the minimum is not a return on the Foundation’s capital - it simply enables the operator to perform the role the network requires. And the Foundation transfers no ownership: the tokens remain Foundation assets, carrying the same price exposure the treasury already holds, only now made productive in securing the network rather than sitting idle.

On decentralization, the mechanics cut against the concern rather than for it. At the minimum stake, a GC member holds exactly one vote - the smallest unit Kaia’s stake-based voting allows (one vote per 5M KAIA, under KIP-81). A 5M delegation therefore confers the floor of governance influence, not an outsized share. Nor does it hand the Foundation a proxy vote: voting power attaches to the operator’s node and is exercised by the operator, not by the delegator. If anything, delegating across many independent operators disperses governance away from the Foundation - the opposite of concentrating it. As an independent operator running 30+ networks, with our own reputation on the line and beholden to no single ecosystem, we are structurally a harder governance voice to capture, not an easier one.

On conviction and shared risk, we’d argue that operating critical infrastructure is the harder commitment, not the softer one. A token position can be exited in a single transaction. Our engineering, our security posture (ISO 27001), the products we are building for Kaia, and the uptime we are accountable for across market cycles are none of them liquid - none can be unwound in a click. The operator you most want still standing in a bear market, when conviction is actually tested, is the one whose commitment is sunk into systems, accountability, and reputation rather than held in a wallet that can be emptied the moment sentiment turns. Our decision to apply to Kaia and to build specifically for this ecosystem is deliberate - not incentive-chasing from chain to chain.

So we’d reframe the question itself. We are not asking the Foundation to take on risk on our behalf - it keeps the ownership, the exposure, and the tokens themselves. We are offering to take on the work, the accountability, and the reputation: forms of commitment that, unlike a token position, cannot be sold the moment the market turns.

4

With respect, I think many long-term community members see this very differently.

There are individual investors in this community who accumulated 500,000 KAIA, 1,000,000 KAIA, or more using their own capital and at their own risk. They accepted market volatility, drawdowns, and uncertainty because they believed in the future of Kaia.

NODERS is not an individual investor. It is a professional infrastructure company operating across dozens of blockchain networks. So it is difficult to understand the argument that acquiring KAIA is somehow an unreasonable expectation.

At current market prices, is 5 million KAIA truly an impossible amount for an established validator business? If Kaia represents a meaningful opportunity, why is NODERS unwilling to commit even a portion of its own capital?

This is the part many community members struggle to reconcile.

You speak about commitment, reputation, engineering effort, and long-term support. Those are valuable. But every long-term KAIA holder has already demonstrated commitment in the most direct way possible: by putting their own money at risk.

Why should ordinary investors bear the financial risk of believing in Kaia while professional validator operators seek governance influence and rewards using tokens supplied by the Foundation?

To many of us, that feels less like partnership and more like operating a business with someone else’s capital.

Nobody is asking NODERS to become the largest holder in the ecosystem. But it is reasonable to ask whether a validator seeking governance influence should be willing to share at least some of the same economic risks as the community it wishes to represent.

If Kaia is worth securing, governing, and building on, then surely it is also worth investing in.

5

Frankly, this is exactly the kind of governance process that has frustrated long-term community members for years.

The proposal is endorsed, moved forward, and eventually approved, yet most community members have little visibility into what many existing GC members have actually contributed to the ecosystem over time.

KAIA has fallen more than 99% from its peak, and many long-term holders have absorbed enormous losses while continuing to support the network.

Meanwhile, a basic question remains unanswered:

How much value have existing GC members created relative to the rewards and benefits they have received?

Many GC members have operated using Foundation-delegated stake for years. How much staking-related income, validator rewards, and ecosystem support has been generated through those delegations? Where exactly did those benefits go? What measurable outcomes were delivered to the community in return?

Before approving more delegated positions, shouldn’t the community first receive a transparent accounting of the results produced by the existing ones?

What is even more difficult to understand is the continued assumption that new GC candidates should be granted 5 million KAIA through Foundation delegation rather than demonstrating their own conviction through investment.

We are not talking about small startups with no resources. These applicants describe themselves as leading Web3 infrastructure companies, backed by top-tier investors, serving major enterprises, and processing enormous transaction volumes.

If that is true, then why is purchasing 5 million KAIA considered unreasonable?

At today’s market value, 5 million KAIA is not an impossible amount for companies of this scale. Long-term individual investors have accumulated substantial positions using their own capital while bearing the full market risk.

Why should ordinary community members take that risk while professional operators seek governance influence through Foundation-provided assets?

A Governance Council should consist of participants who are willing to share both the upside and the downside of the ecosystem.

If a company wants a seat at the governance table, wants voting power, wants validator rewards, and wants influence over the future of Kaia, then it should be willing to put some of its own capital at risk alongside the community.

Otherwise, it increasingly looks like a system where the community bears the risk while others enjoy the benefits.

Before adding more Foundation-funded GC members, perhaps the community deserves clear answers on the performance of the current ones.

6

현 KAIA 가격 기준으로 500만 개는 서상민, 조일현 등 일부 관계자들이 받아가는 연간 인건비에도 못 미치는 수준 아닙니까?

이 정도 푼돈조차 자기 자본으로 투자하기 싫다는 기업이 과연 GC가 될 자격이 있는지 의문입니다.

카이아의 미래를 믿는다면 직접 투자하고 스테이킹해서 이해관계를 함께하는 진짜 Stakeholder가 되어야 하는 것 아닙니까?

재단 물량으로 거버넌스 영향력과 보상만 얻고, 나중에 단물만 빨아먹고 떠날 수도 있는 구조라면 커뮤니티가 왜 이를 지지해야 합니까?

At the current KAIA price, 5 million KAIA is probably less than the annual compensation received by certain executives and insiders.

If a company is unwilling to invest even that amount of its own capital, I seriously question whether it is qualified to become a GC member.

If they truly believe in the future of Kaia, they should invest their own money, stake it, and become a genuine stakeholder alongside the community.

Why should the community support a structure where companies gain governance influence and rewards using Foundation-provided assets, only to potentially extract value and leave later? ㅇ

7

Thank you all for your engagement and feedback on this application.

To provide an update, the GC membership application from NODERS has not advanced to a Kaia Square vote. Per our governance process, a GC application requires endorsement from existing GC members within the designated period (14 days) in order to proceed to an on-chain vote. As that condition was not met, this application will not be moving forward at this time.

We appreciate your participation.

8

8년된 코인이 아직까지 무슨 노드검증이 필요하다고, 저런 업체들을 GC로 불러들이려고 하나요?

카이아는 갑자기 등장한 신규 체인이 아니라, 2018년 클레이튼 시절부터 이어져 온 프로젝트입니다. 지금 와서 카카오 시절의 역사를 지우려 해서는 안 됩니다.

과거에는 "네이버·카카오 코인"이라는 이미지를 적극 활용하며 개인 투자자들을 유치했습니다. 그런데 지금은 네이버와 카카오는 거리를 두고 있고, 재단은 그 부분에 대해 명확한 설명도 하지 않고 있습니다.

또한 카카오톡 지갑과의 연계는 당연히 카이아 생태계 확장에 활용되어야 하는 것 아닙니까? 이용자 기반 확대와 실사용 사례 확보를 이야기하면서도 정작 가장 강력한 접점에 대한 성과는 보이지 않습니다.

무엇보다 투자자들이 체감하는 성과는 결국 가격입니다.

현재 카이아 가격은 50원대까지 하락했습니다. 재단은 이에 대해 어떤 대책을 가지고 있습니까?

서상민 대표는 과거 성과를 내지 못하면 물러나겠다고 직접 말한 바 있습니다. 그렇다면 지금까지의 결과를 냉정하게 평가해야 합니다.

수년간 프로젝트를 운영해 왔음에도 가격은 크게 하락했고, 투자자들의 신뢰 역시 훼손되었습니다. 책임 있는 경영을 강조해 왔다면, 그에 상응하는 책임도 져야 하는 것 아닙니까?

The project has been around for eight years. Why is the Foundation still trying to bring in companies like this as GC members primarily for validator and node operation purposes?

At this point, shouldn’t the priority be delivering growth, adoption, users, developers, and real ecosystem demand rather than adding yet another infrastructure provider?

Kaia is not a newly launched blockchain that appeared out of nowhere. It is a project with a long history dating back to Klaytn in 2018. It is inappropriate to disregard or attempt to erase the project’s Kakao-era history when discussing its track record and achievements.

In the past, the project actively promoted itself as the “Naver and Kakao coin” and attracted retail investors based on that image. Today, however, both Naver and Kakao appear to have distanced themselves from the project, yet the Foundation has not provided a clear explanation regarding this change.

Furthermore, shouldn’t integration with the KakaoTalk wallet naturally be leveraged to expand the Kaia ecosystem? The Foundation frequently speaks about user growth and real-world adoption, but there has been little visible progress in utilizing what should be one of the ecosystem’s strongest distribution channels.

Most importantly, the performance that investors ultimately experience is reflected in the token price.

KAIA is currently trading in the KRW 50 range. What concrete measures does the Foundation have to address this situation?

Mr. Sangmin Seo previously stated that he would step down if he failed to deliver results. If that commitment is to be taken seriously, then the results to date should be evaluated objectively.

Despite years of development and operation, the token price has declined significantly, and investor confidence has been damaged. If the Foundation emphasizes accountability and responsible leadership, should there not also be accountability for these outcomes?