Well, it's been way too long since I've posted an update and much has changed. The Vault Staking validator has been running strong from its inception over 6 months ago. In that time, we've signed roughly 5,000 checkpoints! 

Thank you to all Delegators

Seriously guys and gals, I'm humbled by the support the community has given the Vault Staking validator. I was happy the first time we crossed 1 million, and was just hoping to break 10 million some day. But right now, we're sitting at 87 delegators with over 23 million Matic delegated in total. These delegators range from about 300 Matic up to 8 million Matic! To have this many delegators (some of who have reached out!) is beyond amazing and I hope to keep you all happy for as long as you're a Matic holder (which is hopefully a long time!).

Let's talk Commission

Although my self-stake isn't necessarily low, and that I have had a pretty good checkpoint record and total uptime percentage, I'm guessing one of the biggest attracters to Vault is the 0% commission. I've been quite fortunate to have received grants and funding for server costs, but the cost for being selected to aggregate transactions and send those to the Ethereum network is getting expensive, especially with today's gas prices. On the bright side, a few weeks ago, the Polygon team upgrade the contracts to make these transactions more efficient. On average, a proposed validator who sends a checkpoint to Ethereum used to have to spend 0.3 to 0.4 ETH (~$700) in gas per checkpoint. The new contracts are estimated to spend around 0.1 ETH (~$200) in gas per checkpoint. That’s a huge improvement and will make a big difference for all validators. Kudos to the Polygon team for fixing such a huge cost.

To keep you all informed, I plan on increasing my commission to no more than 3%. (Edit: It might not be this month, still seeing how much we sign checkpoints. There are a lot of positives with this. First, it will allow me to add additional servers to ensure I keep the validator running. Having redundant hardware will help mitigate if one server fails that the Validator does not miss any checkpoints. Second, it give my current and prospective delegators an idea of what I will charge. No validator can survive on 0% commission forever. Some validators start with 0% commission to entice people to delegate, then raise their commission to 6%-10% to make up for it. By raising my commission now instead of waiting longer, I'm still able to provide great support while keeping costs to a minimum. Third, all commission profit will be used for Matic. Most if it will go to buying Ethereum for checkpoints (right now, the validator spends about $200 on gas every 3 days) and server costs. Any leftover funds will either be held (since there is much more room to grow), or transferred to the Matic Mainnet (Polygon) to support apps that made the switch. If you have any thoughts about using the funds for the community (giveaways, raffles, etc) let me know in the comments. It would be great to do giveaways on Polygon/Matic since gas is practically 0.

Uptime

Uptime is probably one of the most important metrics of a validator, in my opinion. Missing checkpoints means missing out on rewards for both the validator and the delegators. I used to check the website every few hours to make sure we did not miss any checkpoints. This was both time-consuming and inefficient as it was easy to forget or assume everything was working just from the UI. After not catching a missed checkpoint last month, I needed a better way to monitor the validator throughout the day. Now I have a monitoring suite installed on the server, and also wrote an application to send texts, emails, and telegram notifications each time a block is made or missed. This way, I do not have worry about forgetting to check the validator, I have many different means to be notified if there is an issue. This is also important since the "Checkpoints Signed" metric on the website has changed. That percentage represents the past 200 checkpoints as opposed to previously where it represented the full history of the validator. Each missed checkpoint counts for 0.5% off the Checkpoints Signed percentage.

Thank you!

If you haven't yet, go over to Vault Staking and check us out. As always, let me know if you have any questions. You can always reach out in the comments, find me active in the Polygon/Matic Discord server, or reach on on DM (AlgoRhythm#2931). Thanks for reading!