📘Delegation Strategy

How are validators chosen and included in the BlazeStake pool?

What is our goal for selecting validators?

BlazeStake aims to strike the right balance between high-rewarding validators, high-scoring validators, and smaller validators to ensure that we can help decentralize the network without sacrificing on staking rewards. All of our validators are monitored by automated systems and reviewed by a real human in case any suspicious behavior is detected.

What is the long-term vision of the delegation strategy?

As the stake pool TVL grows, BlazeStake hopes to spread stake across a wider range of validators to further increase and strengthen the decentralization of the Solana network. In the future, BlazeStake hopes to open up programs where new validators can get bootstrapped with temporary additional stake to help them launch and where existing validators can get bonus stake to reward unique contributions to decentralization. Furthermore, the BlazeStake delegation strategy will become more decentralized over time as governance over the strategy and distribution to validators gets voted on by BLZE holders (the upcoming SolBlaze governance/utility token) through gauge-based mechanisms.

What is the security group?

The security group refers to the group of around 32 validators that control greater than 33% of the staked SOL. If these 32 validators hypothetically colluded (which they are heavily disincentivized from doing), they would not be able to submit fake transactions, but they would be able to stop new transactions from being approved (since new transactions require at least 2/3 of the stake to agree).

Given that these 32 validators are already heavily established and have a high amount of SOL staked to them, we do not add them to our stake pool.

Any validator that is not within the security group is instantly pre-qualified to join our stake pool as long as it follows our guidelines.

What is the stake coefficient and base stake amount?

In the BlazeStake pool, each validator is assigned a stake coefficient based on its APY, performance, and how it contributes to the decentralization of the network. The next sections on this page detail in depth how the stake coefficient is determined for each validator. The base stake amount is a dynamic value that changes based on the sum of the stake coefficients and the total amount of SOL staked to the pool.

The amount of SOL staked to each validator is determined using the following simple function:

$$s(v) = c(v)*b(s,t)$$

where s represents the staked amount, v represents the validator, b represents the function to determine the base stake amount (based on the sum s of the stake coefficients and the total staked amount t), and c represents the function to determine the stake coefficient based on the validator.

The base stake amount is determined using another simple function:

$$b(s,t)=0.998t/s$$

99.8% of the total staked SOL is used in this calculation, since the other 0.2% is held in the stake pool reserves and is used for instant (liquid) unstaking.

How is the stake coefficient calculated for high-rewarding validators?

The top 50 validators with the highest APY according to stakeview.app are included in the stake pool with the following guidelines:

1. If the validator is in the top 10 by APY, their stake coefficient increases by 2000.

2. If the validator is in the top 11-25, their stake coefficient increases by 1000.

3. If the validator is in the top 26-50, their stake coefficient increases by 500.

How is the stake coefficient calculated for high-scoring validators?

The top 50 validators with the highest scores according to validators.app and stakewiz.com are included in the stake pool with the following guidelines:

1. If the validator is in the top 50 on validators.app and not in the security group, their stake coefficient increases by 150 (with an added bonus increase of 25 if the validator is in the top 25).

2. If the validator is in the top 50 on stakewiz.com and not in the security group, their stake coefficient increases by 150 (with an added bonus increase of 25 if the validator is in the top 25).

3. If the validator is in the top 50 on both validators.app and stakewiz.com and not in the security group, their stake coefficient increases by 50 on top of any increases detailed by guidelines 1 and 2.

How is the stake coefficient calculated for smaller validators?

If the validator does not satisfy any of the previous guidelines and is outside the security group, their stake coefficient increases by 130, provided they follow all of the following rules:

1. Skipped slot rate must be less than 5%.

2. Voting success rate must be at least 95%.

3. Commission must be no greater than 3%.

If the validator does not satisfy the above guidelines but does satisfy the following guidelines, their stake coefficient increases by 110 instead:

1. Skipped slot rate must be less than 10%.

2. Voting success rate must be at least 90%.

3. Commission must be no greater than 5%.

If the validator does not satisfy the above guidelines but does satisfy the following guidelines, their stake coefficient increases by 90 instead:

1. Skipped slot rate must be less than 15%.

2. Voting success rate must be at least 85%.

3. Commission must be no greater than 7%.

If the validator does not satisfy the above guidelines, their stake coefficient increases by 70 instead, provided that the validator is not delinquent, has a commission of no more than 10%, has a skip rate of no more than 50%, and has a vote success rate of no less than 50%.

Is there any human component to the review process?

While stake distribution calculations are automated, validators that get flagged for suspicious behavior are manually reviewed by a real human in case a removal from the pool is warranted. Additionally, the stake changes are verified by a real human before being applied to the pool in case the automated program has a bug that results in abnormal stake distribution.

Can stakers decide validators?

Of course! Through Custom Liquid Staking, users can choose to delegate their stake to specific validators, and through SolBlaze Gauges, delegators can utilize BLZE to direct extra stake to their favorite validators. These validators will get stake as long as they are not delinquent and have a commission of no more than 10%.