StakeWars III DNP Delegation discussion

Hello guys,
First and foremost, we’d like to thank the StakeWars III organizers.It was a really interesting event, and we had nice days.
Now it’s time for us to join the Mainnet. And we have an economic issue here.
When the StakeWars began, one NEAR token was almost $5, but it is now $1.7 and has been lower.
Let’s do some simple math: (10% APY, 3% reasonable validator commission, and 50K - maximum possible delegation).
50000 * 0.1 * 0.03 = 150 NEAR/year
It is 12.5 NEAR/month. At now this is 21 USD.
I believe it is obvious that we cannot rent a reliable server for this amount of money, and we require at least two servers.
We propose that Near Foundation consider proportionally increasing the delegation size to reduce validators’ losses in today’s market conditions.
@kiskesis

@blaze @DDeAlmeida @Alpar_NEAR folks could you please help tag ppl who can help with this question or are responsible?

+1
important notice!

I support this question, I know that it worries a lot of potential validators.

I understand them, because since January 2022 when I became the mainnet validator (my pool cryptogarik.poolv1.near with 1% commission), most part of the time I spend much more than I earn. And this despite the fact that 100k delegation from the NF has already turned into 700k+ total delegations from other users.

I think people’s reluctance to keep unprofitable nodes is quite healthy. But such conditions pose threats to the decentralization of the network.

hi there, I want to support this request, I think, I and others, have been waiting for such a great opportunity for a very long time - to get a delegation, but there are difficulties with payback

Sure - I’ll escalate this internally and get back to you.

There are two main points that could improve small validators performance:

1. Inverse the order in which validadores are shown in explorer and wallet, so the first ones are those with the lowest delegation amount. This will communicate that small validators are better to support.

2. Make the rewards for small validators bigger. Maybe made Universal Basic Income for the small validators. So this can get higher benefits not linear to the amount of delegation. This extra rewards should come from bigger nodes so having a lot of stake could be unmotivated.

By the moment, chunk producers could think on having high fees to cover expenses…

I am also interested in this question! I won second in the stake wars - and I’m really proud of it - but the validator is also a business. In the current conditions, even in the absence of the opportunity to use cheap and high-quality hosters such as hetzner, this is not profitable, but minus $ 1,500 per year, minus the time spent on work.

Even if we hope for the growth of the token to the previous high-$20, then the net revenue will be about $2000 per year!!! And it’s HYPOTHETIC!! Is it worthy of 147 best trained people? The competition was left behind - he only made the selection. Now purely business relations.

NEAR needs skilled workers who will ensure decentralization and stable operation of the network.

And we are ready to do it, but not for free. I’m not saying that we should receive $100,000 per year as if we were full-time employees, but the figure of $20K per year is the normal, even taking into account the expectation of a price increase. a total of 1000-1500 nears per year - I consider it a fair price for our competence. at 5% commission we need 200,000-300,000 nears delegation.

I think this is the opinion of the majority and perhaps they will confirm their intentions here.

thank you for attention

Thank you for this discussion. As one of Stake Wars winners, I agree. There is no sense to be a validator at Near with such condition. Especially when we have to rent servers not from the relatively cheap Hetzner, but from other providers. Being a validator is a job. And it should be paid accordingly.

Thanks for bringing up this issue.

I recall this issue being raised towards the beginning of the competition. Some of the competitors from Australia that I recruited actually dropped out early for that reason.

I am obviously biased as I represent a Liquid Staking protocol.

The total amount delegated to Stake Wars is ~1% of the total NEAR Staked. The total amount delegated across all Liquid Staking providers is also tiny. From a community perspective, there should be a push for stalkers to migrate some of their stake to liquid staking so we can in turn spread it across more validators (keep network secure and decentralised).

Even then, the question of NEAR Foundation increasing the delegation for Stake Wars directly is a valid one. Specially when considering there have been over 10x that delegation going to a handful of private nodes (there was a thread on here on the forum a while back that was ignored).

I support all of the above.
Once again, I would like to remind you that NEARCON2022 was held in Lisbon in September, where Ilya Polosukhin and other representatives of the NEAR Foundation spoke about one of the important tasks for the NEAR project - decentralization, on increasing validators on the main NEAR network. I believe that in order for NEAR to become more decentralized, it needs to offer a fairer economy for new validators, where rewards cover server costs and incentivize validators to keep NEAR’s mainnet running smoothly.
Thanks for the discussion.

Fully support. Working at a loss doesn’t add motivation.

I fully agree with Garik.
The aim of the delegation is not to pay you enough, it’ a start for your pool.

I also joined mainnet in December/January and haved the same issue as mentionned by Garik.
With this bear market, it’s hard for small validators and we call for a decentralization.

We saw huge tokens delegation dropping from … to news validators like kiln etc. Why don’t share it to all new onboarded and lastest onboard (Decemmber/January)

I support all of the above.

Hi y’all!

To provide a brief update: your feedback has our attention. It might take a little time to share a meaningful response, but we’ll get there.

Totally agree with the people, check this thread from @hairen asking for full information about the nodes: [Discussion] Who Runs the Nodes?

Focus on the 46m N delegated in the last month…

[Discussion] Who Runs the Nodes?

tldr;

• Heavy concentration of NEAR in a handful of nodes
• Nodes anonymous
• A lot of NEAR seems to be coming from the NEAR Foundation to these nodes
• Over 46m NEAR delegated over the last 4 weeks to new pools

Yeahh you right, we need more transparency about potentional golden delegation / partnership

Hey everyone. This is George, from Pagoda.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic. The economics of running a NEAR validator is important, and at the end of the day it has to be viable.

Stake Wars, as a series of programs, is intended to help those who are only getting started.
The rewards we are offering through Stake Wars aim to be the starting point for the people who want to be a validator: help them with the initial setup, help them to get a seat and start producing blocks. From there onwards, the journey to be a validator needs to be owned by every single team/group: attracting more delegations, optimising the operational parts of running a near node, building a good reputation in the community. We do not intend to offer a regular-job alternative by running a validator, but to help those who want to get started and do not have the required resources.

This distributed ownership is fundamental in creating a decentralised community, and moves us away from depending on a single entity for the success of the NEAR ecosystem.

That being said, the general conversation around the economics of running a NEAR validator is important and is very healthy to have it as part of the community. Technical deliverables such as the chunk only producer help in this context, since they reduce the minimum resources needed to run a node.

Thanks,
George

Hi George,

As you said:

Stake Wars, as a series of programs, is intended to help those who are only getting started.
The rewards we are offering through Stake Wars aim to be the starting point for the people who want to be a validator: help them with the initial setup, help them to get a seat and start producing blocks.

This is an important chain Near Protocol, and we appreciate it. But what about Stake Wars Program itself? You waste 2 months on the everyday job in the program, then you win 150-200 Near(300$±) then you become the mainnet validator and waste 2000$ on servers for the year.

I understand everything, but it looks like something is wrong with this program.

As I see only people who did multi accounts could earn some money and I’m not sure that they will run a mainnet validator.

Hey George,
Thank you for your reply.

We do not intend to offer a regular-job alternative by running a validator, but to help those who want to get started and do not have the required resources

OK, no job, no salary, just reducing a validator’s costs. So, we don’t need to buy many NEAR tokens from the market because of a delegation. This is great. But the second cost is the hardware.
You could probably plan the delegation size in such a way that a new validator does not get lost right away…

The NEAR price has dropped significantly since the start. You can choose to ignore this fact, or you can listen to the validators’ community and support us.
Based on our internal community discussion, I think that this is the opinion of the majority of StakeWars III winners.

Do you afraid to lost your 300K advisors NDC salary?

I believe we should follow the Community Etiquette principles when discussing any issues. Personal attacks on people hinder the achievement of the goals of the discussion rather than help. Thank you.

@pathfinder I failed to reply. Here are the two actions taken based on the communities feedback on Dec 7th:

1. Communicated with StakeWars III workgroup regarding this issue and the review of the tokenomics for Chunk Only Producers and the review of the threshold for delegation set at 5%.

2. Reached out to the MainNet validators to circle the idea of starting a Validator Working Group to tack three open items:

– Chunk Only validators rewards / tokenomics
– The V2 staking pool deployment, adoption, and benefits for Chunk Only Producers
– NEAR Wallet Ownership / Progression

@denysk stepped up to the challenge and created a working group for validators. @garikbesson @DDeAlmeida @cloudmex-alan and many other validators are starting the discussion. It will take some time for the group to gain traction. Having the working group(WG) started is a major win for validators! @denysk has long been a Champion for the Validator community, and it’s stellar that he is there as he will help move things forward.

One Decision is that it is recommended for validators to continue to run the V1 pool since that is the pool most Liquid Staking providers are integrated with.

In tandem, the NEAR Foundation and Pagoda are reviewing the feedback from this post.

Hi Blaze!

Thank you for your impact for this question.
And I just want to understand, how do you see this issue could be resolved from action points that you mentioned before?

The StakeWars program has always been about competition. This was true for the first validators that launched MainNet from StakeWars II. The delegation from the NEAR Foundation never came with the promise or commitment to hold a seat or to be profitable. Every validator needed to find their audience in the ecosystem and work to have good uptime while attracting new delegations. Many were not profitable for some time.

It has never been the intent for the StakeWars program to be a subsidy, make validators profitable, or keep them online, but to only provide an opportunity.

This still holds today. The delegation that StakeWars III participants will receive from the Liquid Staking providers is enough to join MainNet and run and has no bearing on token price or profitability as that is not part of the program. With this in mind, It is up to each potential validator to assess if it makes sense for them to join the network.

So Why the Validator Working Group, and what is the impact?

The NEAR Ecosystem is in the process of continuing to decentralize and transition governance to the community. As many may be aware, I am helping to Champion the NDC initiative, which is to establish a community-governed treasury to develop, grow, and sustain the ecosystem. As part of this and other initiatives, working groups are starting to form, and a Validator working group has long been overdue. The validator community is strong on NEAR and full of bright and talented individuals that have done more than validate. So what can they directly achieve?

1. Review and propose potential protocol staking reward distribution improvements
2. Work with wallets teams to create different ways to present validators with lower stake first
3. Create awareness and outreach around having top-tier validators to delegate to liquid staking providers.
4. Collaborate on new staking contract standards and integrations with wallets

These will not occur overnight; however, the conversations started.

Hi @blaze . Where are discussions of this Working Group being conducted. Telegram ? Discord ?
What channels ?
I think that many new validators (as is my case) would like to participate.
Certainly more voices will improve the results for all.
Best regards,
Mario

Hello @mariozito here is the link for the Telegram group: Telegram: Join Group Chat

Thanks very much.
Hope we can work together some points that are critical for new onboarding chunk producers and the good and sustainable health of NEAR network.
Best regards all.
¡¡¡ Feliz Navidad para todos y todas !!!
Mario

Hello, recently my node was delegated from Meta Pool and I have some comments:

As people are discussing in this thread, rewards are not enough to maintain a node in a VPS with all the resources involved and, given the market conditions, we need more than 400,000 N staked by users and other delegators to be profitable, according to an analysis made by @mariozito .

Being a chunk-only producer gives us a disadvantage in attracting new stakers, first of all due to the high fee that we need to set to gain some income, and secondly due to an average of 12 chunks received every epoch. With just losing one chunk in the epoch, I lost the Meta Pool delegation, and losing a second one would kick my node out.

My conclusion:

*NF needs to find a way to prioritize staking and more chunks by epoch in small pools.

*We cannot maintain a node that loses money every month, and if we made our node profitable by reaching more than 400,000 N we will become a block producer.

image1096×399 44 KB

As we have never received a rule in Stake Wars regarding the node fee, I propose a 60% decreasing fee that will help us to maintain our node with a good uptime. According to the market conditions and staking in the node, we can decrease our fee until it is equal to or less than 10%.

I fully agree, i m a winner of stake wars
I think the foundation has the resources to delegate more

Most of the winners will receive average of 30k near…
I m sure most of them would not attract new delegators, as new comers would go to already established nodes…

So be sure, most of the winners in stake wars will stop over time…due to loss of profitability…yes it s a business…
And foundation should have taken this into acvount…

I think they can multiply dnp allocation to reflect the market…

At least x10 is needed to make running a node sustainable…

And foundation should be fair and transparent and not only delegatting to their friends…

I think too that NF has resources.

But apparently, validators (except those who got millions under 100% fee) are not the part of the community that NF sees the point in taking care of.

So you are on your own.

But you can join the Working Group and try to make your voice heard.

Open Call for Validator Working Group validators

The validator community is a critically important part of the NEAR ecosystem. Validators operate the blockchain and without them, every project would grind to a halt. Historically, there have been some attempts at organizing NEAR validators around a common objective of making NEAR more decentralized––which would make the network more secure, resilient, and antifragile––but none has yet achieved traction. In the meantime, Pagoda assumed a lot of responsibility in building a healthy validator com…

Hello, sorry if this doesn’t belong here but I promise this is the last time. I “won” 110 UNP and 40 DNP, I passed KYC in October - and haven’t received anything yet. I don’t plan to run validator, but I hoped to get something for the hosting I paid and time spent… I seriously don’t know where to ask (not on twitter, discord, telegram). zilinear2 shardnet, stiavnik.near Good luck everyone. (I could also list things I didn’t like during the wars but not sure if anyone cares)

Hi, let me check. I will reply in few minutes

Edit: Indeed, your payout was marked as Done but the TX don’t show your payout…
We will do it ASAP.
I will ping you when done.

Hello David, thank you but after one week no transaction received… if something’s wrong I’d like to know so I can at least close this topic mentally, no problem.

Hi, i just ping again NF to make the payout
Will edit my answer when it’s done

You got the rewards
Sorry for the delay and thank you for your participation in StakeWars

Yay! Thank you very much, I didn’t know where to ask or wasn’t sure if I did something wrong… thanks again and sorry for derailing the topic a bit.

I’ve been having a hell of a time getting rewarded…

No one responds to the emails despite getting automated acknowledgements and mya is mia!

The kyc form never worked and just kept erroring out

Apparently I can’t embed media but I have screenshots and records of all of this.

pool: branft.factory.shardnet.near
discord: braNFT#1505
name: Shizuka Marikawa
mainnet: branft.near

It would be nice to get my reward after all the work… and on the chance that NEAR one day becomes the new Bitcoin! This could be a significant amount. Hopefully someone sees this and can help.

Hello, You have to contact Fractal via the KYC website.
They reply in less than 2days.

FYI: Contacted them a week ago and still no response.

Created a Telegram account and contacted Mr Potato Head and yet just silence…

Trying to get this reward secured so I can start a new project on NEAR! I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to get help. Fractal doesn’t respond to my emails either… NEAR email responses are just automated garbage “we received your message and someone will get back”… yet no one ever does.

What the heck!