You highlighted a quote from @katiep that was referencing NDAs with data centers, which is different than the question you are asking about node provider NDAs. In regards to data center NDAs, they are likely protecting pricing agreements. Every user in the data center has to sign expensive contracts that are negotiated individually and there can be pretty big price differences based on scope. A smaller user would likely need to pay higher prices than larger users. Data centers are also big business and each one is competing for customers. They each probably have their own intellectual property and know how that they want to protect. The NDAs could range from the protecting technology behind their power and cooling distribution systems, services offered, arrangements they have with ISPs, ensuring customer confidentiality, etc.
In regards to node provider NDAs, I’m not sure we can arrive at a productive result with this line of questioning. It doesn’t really matter why they entered into non-disclosure agreements. The parties involved felt that their business interested needed protecting, so they did. There was nothing that prevented it as far as I know.
Regardless, having an NDA in place does make it difficult to verify independence. Hence, it seems more constructive to focus on ways to improve the work process such that revealing this information cannot be protected by these types of NDAs in the future. For example, we could establish that NDAs are acceptable, but they must be declared and they must be presented for viewing during an audit. That way node providers could still protect what they feel is relevant to protect while still enabling auditors or reviewers an opportunity to verify independence. It might even be necessary to require that node providers file legal documentation with their local jurisdictions, or on the NNS, that lists specific relationships and/or NDAs. I don’t know what that might look like, but at least it would be a paper trail that could be used as evidence of agreements if needed later.
I’m not sure that these kinds of changes could be implemented now though. The time for establishing the ground rules for what constitutes acceptable relationships and acceptable proof of independence was back in late 2023 and early 2024 before a lot of node providers had to make changes. They all made business decisions and investments based on the accepted criteria for transferring nodes and/or onboarding new nodes. It may not hold up in court if we try to change the rules now if any of the node providers are unwilling to comply with new rules and they feel they have a grievance.
It would be nice if the NNS can agree to some new criteria that could be applied now, but if not then for sure these things could apply to the next round of node provider onboarding. Perhaps the NNS could offer a new remuneration incentive in the near term for voluntarily disclosing certain information or going through a more stringent onboarding policy again. The promise of higher remuneration might convince folks to do it without changing the rules of the existing onboarding policy. Or maybe there could be a progressive remuneration penalty that is applied that starts at zero penalty and slowly increases over a couple of years.
Anyway, understanding the reason that each node provider has felt the need to protect their business or investment with an NDA doesn’t seem like something that will result in a productive outcome. I think identifying the rules and work process that can ensure a higher degree of transparency in the future is the place to focus. In the meantime, establishing relationship clusters is the best idea I have heard so far on how to mitigate the risk of assigning too many nodes from node providers with a relationship to the same subnet.
These clusters could be defined by node transfer parties and assumed relationships, but with no remuneration penalty. The DRE tool could take these relationship clusters into account in the topology targets. However, the NNS could offer higher remuneration to node providers who are willing to prove a higher degree of independence and can be convincing enough to be separated out of the cluster that they have been assigned.