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 last 5 epochs), plus voted nodes, 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, when the bot reaches that validator to stake, instead of 20,000 it will stake 50,000 NEAR if available.

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 voted nodes) get stake if, after processing the initial list, there's more stake to distribute.

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. That's why the staking rebalance must be kept to a minimum.

Forced Rebalance

If there's no natural stake movement (users staking and unstaking), the automated rebalances between 1% and 1.5% of the stake every 4 epochs (it takes 4 epochs to move stake), in order to execute on the stake assignment, but you as a validator must consider that if 25% of the stake is assigned by votes, and 1% is rebalanced every 4 epochs (2 and a half days), it could take up to 3 months to rebalance 25% of the stake.

Selection criteria

Any validator node can obtain a delegation, if it meets the following criteria:

1. Above average APY for the last 5 consecutive epochs

2. Uptime > 95%

3. Fees < 10% (the fee % affects the APY)

4. Staking in the validator doesn't reduce the Nakamoto Coefficient (the validator is not too concentrated)

Delegation

25% of the Meta Pool TVL provided by users staking will be delegated by vote of DAO members

If the TVL increases, the distributed amount increases. It is very important to promote the Meta Pool DAO Liquid Staking Pool, for which we require the support of validators and the community.