Why should nominators care about geographical diversification? ¶
For the same reasons XX Network creators care about it - to disperse geopolitical risks.
What are main advantages of nominating hosts in Asia? ¶
It’s not about nominating hosts in Asia, but about not nominating hosts in only one region (or two).
Anything special about XX Network compared to other networks when it comes to geo diversification? ¶
Yes, XX Network is meant to primarily transmit speech.
Other crypto networks - let’s say Bitcoin - are practically useless for speech transmission. It may be more censorship resistant than XX Network and it’s great for transfer of bitcoin, but has no speech-related applications.
In other words, XX Network nodes could be made unwelcome by service providers or governments where Bitcoin hasn’t been.
Why should I care - I can just start nominating other validators! ¶
Yes, except:
a) it takes time to get out. If a region gets taken down (cough, Parler, cough) or a country starts blocking CMix service (cough, China, cough), slashing will happen
b) you are probably aware that validators can go to their node settings and select “No, block all nominations”. In that case it may not be possible to easily find other nodes that can be nominated.
One potentially significant disadvantage for nodes outside of Europe might be the higher precomp failures, which could translate into smaller earnings. But it’s currently unclear if this will affect nominators’ earnings and how.
Censorship and attacks on part(s) of the network wouldn’t “benefit” other nodes and validators in the long term so even profit-motivated validators are unlikely to want that to happen. As far as survival of the network is concerned, geo-diversification is useful to validators, nominators, the network and its users.