🤝Delegation Strategy

Which validators do we delegate to and why?

Philosophy

Our deep belief is that in order to be a good staking pool, we must deliver both for our users AND the network (which ultimately is good for everyone of course). In essence this means that we must prioritize both selecting reliable high yield validators, but also support diversity among validators in order to futher decentralization of the network. Furthermore, we also want to support as many validators as possible. As TVL grows, the amount of validators we delegate to will grow as well.

We believe in simplicity and transparency for users and validators alike. Validator scores are available at https://www.zippystake.org/validators. Join our Discord if you have any questions.

Thanks for supporting Solana, and thanks for your interest in Zippy!

How many validators do we delegate to?

The number of validators, N, that are delegated to are dependent on the TVL of the pool and is calculated as follows:

• 0 < TVL < 100k: 60 validators

• 100k < TVL < 500k: 80 validators

• 500k < TVL < 1M: 100 validatorss

• >1M: sqrt(TVL/100) validators

Basic requirement

In order to be considered for delegation, all of the following criteria must be met:

• Total stake requirement: at least 1000 SOL and no more than 3.5 MSOL, both of these must be met for the last 10 epochs

• Percent low-latency votes (LLV) >= 50% averaged over the past 10 epochs, as determined by https://stakeview.app/poor.html

Method for selecting which validators to stake

The method applied is a basic ranking according to the following formula:

score = (10 * v + 3 * d) / 13 averaged over the last 10 epochs

Where

• v = commission weighted vote credits. Calculated as: (1 - commission) * (vote credits / max credits). Comission is the maximum commission for each validator over the past 10 epochs.

• d = decentralization score. Calculated as: stake weighted concentration per ASN. Normalized to [0,1].

Max credits for an epoch is the highest vote credits reported by a validator in that epoch. Ranking is done by score descending order, and the top N validators will get a delegation.

The scoring for the latest epoch is fully transparent and can be viewed at https://www.zippystake.org/validators

Delegation amount

The delegation amount of the selected validators (see above for how to select which validdators to stkae) is determined by the following:

• Validators are ranked according to the their total stake

• The validator with the least total stake will receive twice the amount of stake as the validator with the highest stake

The rationale for this is simple: we want to support smaller validators, while not fully excluding the bigger ones as they also have an important role to play and support the network.

Rebalancing

The pool is rebalanced at least every 5th epoch. If we detect behavior from a validator that is directly hurting the network or the users, the validator will be immediately removed. For example (but not limited to):

• Commission rugs

• Delinquent for a full epoch

• Vote lagging