Regarding the discussions on potential node provider collusion in this forum thread and the motion proposal, we would like to provide the following input from the perspective of DFINITY:
We recognize that community scrutiny on this issue is valuable, and we appreciate the transparency provided by the responses from some node providers in this thread. In our view, there is no substantial evidence to justify the offboarding of any node provider.
Furthermore, as a sample analysis, we looked into the set-up of nodes located in Lithuania looking for potential similarities in the infrastructure of these nodes across different node providers. We confirmed that the nodes were indeed located in Lithuania and that they had different data centers with distinctly different uplink patterns: George’s nodes in Lithuania were using IP ranges belonging to an ISP in Georgia, while nodes on the local ISP Baltineta provided very good connectivity to neighbouring countries.
In the short term, to address the concerns raised, we encourage all relevant node providers to provide explanations on relationships to other node providers, as some have already done. In the meantime, in order to allow further time for the discussion we are considering submitting subnet management proposals to the NNS to temporarily reduce the number of concerned nodes in critical subnets. This approach would not adversely affect these node providers, as they would continue to receive rewards, and it would allow more time for information sharing and community review.
In the mid-term, we agree with suggestions in this thread to continue discussions on enhancements for node provider governance, including the possibility of node audits.