Monitoring and restrictions

Rules for ensuring decentralisation, validator performance and fair play

Validator removal

Each epoch, all validators in the pool are monitored across multiple criteria, and according measures are taken as necessary. Validators are removed if one of the following is true:

• Validator falls into the Supermajority

• Validator's 10-epoch APY falls below the top 350 nodes

• Validator's commission is above MaxCommission (currently 10%)

A validator is also removed and blacklisted if it is proven to be a so-called "Sybil": a validator run by the same operator as one of the Supermajority nodes.

Suspicious behavior

If one of the following events occur, the validator's status is set to 'Suspicious'. Its stake is cut by 50%, and a moderator is informed to perform a manual check:

• Validator raises its commission by more than MaxDelta in one epoch (currently 3%)

• Several commission increases are observed over T days, with total increase of MaxCumulativeDelta (currently 3% over 30 days)*

• APY drops by over MaxAPYdrop compared to previous epoch (currently 20%)

• Percentage of low latency votes falls into Proof 2 range of the Gaussian distribution**

• Validatos.app delivers a warning: "Suspicious activity with vote accounts"

• Validator does not have a name, website, or logo anymore***

* Commission decresases are ignored; this is checked to prevent validators from sneakily, temporarily raising their commission at the end of an epoch to steal their delegators' rewards

** Basically, this weeds out validators tampering with code to vote after the correct block has already been decided upon by others (don't worry about the fancy words if you don't understand them, but if you're really curious, here's a Wiki page explaining Proof 2)

*** If the problem persists after 1 epoch, the validator is removed from the pool