I am uneasy about Manifold on the allow list. From the 2.0 policy:
that any and all communications are made timely and professionally.
and
Relays which exhibit poor or otherwise unacceptable communication and especially performance (such as, but not limited to, inability to performantly and timely register validators, inability to performantly and timely send/receive bids and payloads, not verify bids, not simulate payload validity etc.), and/or fail to conform with the expectations outlined above with regards to incident management (as determined by the DAO and Node Operator communities) will be subject to removal from the Lido-approved relay lists.
Following Manifold’s issues, they behaved unprofessionally on Twitter through their official account. Samples:
“There are a litany of bugs with the relay implementation, however you continue spread lies and disinformation about our relay. This isnt a bug in our relay, flashbots has blocked us on all accounts so how can you purport to be for the community?”
https://twitter.com/metachris/status/1581329826111455234
This ties also into AGPL v3 and open-sourcing, more on that further down.
and
Blame Flashbots for having a poorly implemented API specification.
https://twitter.com/foldfinance/status/1581472268982841344?s=20&t=bDqu61pFsaNqEqmLCAlXIg
I find the communication 5x more damning than the actual bug / issue that arose. What is more, this was not addressed at all in their post mortem, even after they received feedback that it should be included when they circulated an early draft.
As for open-source: AGPL v3 requires open-sourcing derivative works. Not only is the Manifold relay not open-source, it also has no published plans to become open-source. Manifold’s assertion that the relay code was “full of bugs” was challenged:
I’d love to see even a single bug report from you. Also, you are using our open source relay, but not making your fork public. Isn’t that in violation of the AGPL license?
They did not respond to this challenge.
“If it’s not open-source, it is not secure and it is not Ethereum”. This is true for all projects on Ethereum, and especially for trusted actors like relays.
Until and unless Manifold address the communications and FOSS issues, and explain what concrete steps they are taking to ensure professional communications in future - this likely involves removing Sam from their official Twitter account - I don’t see how they are a good candidate for inclusion in the allow list.