What Is Credible Neutrality?
Credible neutrality is the principle that a protocol should not discriminate between participants. It should not favor validators over users, early adopters over newcomers, or large players over small ones. The rules are the same for everyone, and the mechanism by which those rules are enforced is transparent and verifiable.
This is not just an ideal — it is an engineering requirement. A protocol that can be captured by special interests will eventually be captured. The only defense is to design systems where capture is structurally impossible.
The MEV Problem
Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) is one of the most visible failures of neutrality in blockchain systems today. Validators and searchers collude to reorder, insert, or censor transactions for profit. The result is an invisible tax on every user — estimated at billions of dollars annually across major networks.
COOL addresses MEV through multiple protocol-level mechanisms:
- Encrypted mempool — Transactions are encrypted until they are ordered, preventing frontrunning and sandwich attacks
- Fair ordering protocol — Transactions are ordered by arrival time within deterministic windows, not by fee bidding
- Proposer-builder separation — Block proposers cannot see transaction contents during ordering, structurally eliminating the incentive to extract value
- Protocol-level routing — The integrated routing engine finds optimal execution paths without relying on third-party searchers
Validator Fairness
In many proof-of-stake networks, validators with larger stakes earn disproportionately higher rewards due to economies of scale, priority in block production, or access to MEV. Over time, this creates centralization pressure where a small number of validators control an increasing share of the network.
COOL's validator system is designed to resist this concentration. Reward distribution is proportional to stake with no compounding advantage. Block production uses VRF-based random selection that gives every validator a fair chance proportional to their stake. There are no minimum hardware requirements beyond what a standard cloud instance provides, keeping the barrier to entry low.
Governance Without Plutocracy
Token-weighted governance is the default in most blockchain projects, but it has a fundamental flaw: it gives wealthy participants outsized influence over protocol decisions. COOL implements a hybrid governance model that combines token-weighted voting for economic parameters with quadratic voting for protocol upgrades, ensuring that broad community consensus is required for fundamental changes.
Additionally, core protocol parameters (like the fee burn rate and emission schedule) are governed by algorithmic rules rather than discretionary votes, reducing the surface area for political capture.
Transparency as a Feature
Credible neutrality requires transparency. Every aspect of COOL's protocol operation is observable on-chain: validator performance metrics, fee market dynamics, lane allocation decisions, and governance votes. There are no backroom deals because there are no backrooms. The protocol operates in the open, and anyone can verify that it is behaving as designed.
Why This Matters for Adoption
Mainstream users and institutions will not adopt blockchain infrastructure they cannot trust to treat them fairly. The promise of decentralization rings hollow when insiders extract value at the expense of ordinary participants. Credible neutrality is not a philosophical luxury — it is a prerequisite for the next billion users.
COOL is built on the conviction that fair infrastructure creates better outcomes for everyone. Read more about our technical approach in the whitepaper.