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.
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Fully support. Working at a loss doesn’t add motivation.
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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)
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I support all of the above.
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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.
15 Likes
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…
6 Likes
Yeahh you right, we need more transparency about potentional golden delegation / partnership
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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
2 Likes
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.
6 Likes
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.
10 Likes
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.
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@pathfinder I failed to reply. Here are the two actions taken based on the communities feedback on Dec 7th:
-
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%.
-
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.
5 Likes
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?
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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?
- Review and propose potential protocol staking reward distribution improvements
- Work with wallets teams to create different ways to present validators with lower stake first
- Create awareness and outreach around having top-tier validators to delegate to liquid staking providers.
- Collaborate on new staking contract standards and integrations with wallets
These will not occur overnight; however, the conversations started.
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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
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
1 Like
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.
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%.
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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…
3 Likes
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.
2 Likes