Here’s an example of what a proper self-introduction / pitch by an aspiring validator should look like.
Despite all the whining in Discord over the years I don’t remember if anyone has done anything like this since Era 0.
That’s true but this job has been done during betanet for oldest validators.
If someone need nominators it can do it here or on Haven/Discord/Telegram.
Most time people never elected at a low commission are elected and we can see their performance during these elected eras. For now it’s still not a huge issue to be elected. It will most probably be down in a near future when staked coins increase and one slot will be more expensive.
Early validators have benefited immensely from Team Multiplier, so many of them (not all, e.g. some are struggling with poor connectivity) are safe. Those in the bottom 20% are already at risk and would be better off if they wrote one, adjust commission and increase their community activity.
I don’t know how many of those in Waiting would benefit from having a pitch, but unless they write a terrible pitch I can’t see how having one doesn’t help.
I haven’t seen any analyses of how Simple Staking benefits or hurts certain categories of validators, so that should be another area of concern for the bottom 10-20%. They shouldn’t assume they’re safe because it’s much harder to recover from dropping into Waiting compared to making some preemptive adjustments.