How stake distribution works
Validator statistics
The validators are tracked by an automated bot that collect statistics on each validator, several times per epoch. You can access that information directly at www.metapool.app/stakevote.
Top performers and voted nodes
Each epoch, if there is NEAR to be distributed, the bot takes the top 50 performing nodes, considering the AVG APY for the best 5 of the last 7 epochs), plus voted nodes with more than 5% of the votes (if they have good performance), and that list of nodes are staked first, starting with the highest performers.
Having votes in a validator means that the assigned stake is increased, for example: if a validator should get 20,000 NEAR because its performance, but it also has 30,000 NEAR assigned by votes, the total assigned stake for that node will be 50,000 NEAR.
Read the Vote for Validators section to learn how to get votes if you're a validator.
The rest of the nodes (below the top 50 performers and less voted nodes) get stake if, after processing the initial list, there's more stake to distribute.
Remember that staking distribution is a slow process. Moving stake from one validator to another, takes 4 epochs time, and during those 4 epochs the stake is not receiving rewards.
Forced Rebalance
If there's no natural stake movement (users staking and unstaking), the automated bot rebalances between 1% and 2% of the stake every 4 epochs (it takes 4 epochs to unstake and re-stake). This rebalance ensures that the assigned stake is fulfilled in terms of performance and votes, but you must consider that if 30% of the stake is assigned by votes, and 1% is rebalanced every 4 epochs (30 hours), it could take up to 40 days to fully re-balance the voted (30%) part of the stake.
Selection criteria
Any validator node can obtain a delegation, if it meets the following criteria:
Above average APY (AVG APY is computed from the best five of the last seven epochs)
Up-time > 95%
Fees <= 10% (Note: the fee also affects the APY)
Staking in the validator doesn't reduce the Nakamoto Coefficient (the validator is not part of the top concentrated set)
Notes:
30% of the Meta Pool TVL provided by users staking will be delegated by vote of DAO members
70% of the Meta Pool TVL is distributed by performance and programs like the node-studio
If the TVL increases, the distributed amount increases, so the support of validators and the community is very important in order to grow the stake at Meta Pool.
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