Why Us

We've answered this in FAQ. The validator has NO access to your delegated FX. They cannot shut down shop and run off.

You sure can just pick at random! But, factors like reliability, fees, and other items I'll discuss below should really factor into your decision.

And now, the key considerations.

The point of DEFI is to decentralise. So, what we DON'T want is one validator having huge amount of power, as that's going against decentralisation. It reduces the safety of the network, and allows those validators to have an unfair share in voting for any future changes being proposed to the chain by having higher voting power.

How to check:

1) Go to the Validator list

2) Look at the "Voting Power" column. You'll already see some of the highest power validators have >5% voting power. What's worse - FunctionX's own validators add up to over 66.7% of the overall voting power - which means right now we're not actually decentralised. This isn't great!

Take a look at three metrics when you look at a Validator's detail page:

• Commission Rate: The current commission (fees) the Validator is charging. This is a % of your earnings, not of your stake. This is a decimal - so multiply by 100 to get a %. There really should be no reason you're paying more than 5% - there are plenty of operators charging less and are as safe and stable (e.g. Aghanism!)

• Commission Max Rate: This is the maximum commission that the validator can charge and cannot be changed. You want to avoid validators with high commission max rates - e.g. someone with a max rate of 0.5 means they can bump their commission to 50% if they like - and if you don't notice for a few weeks, you're losing out on a lot of reward!

• Commission Max Change: This is the maximum % by which the Validator can change their rate in a 24 hour period. Avoid those that have high figures as it means they can bump their commission rate to stupidly high figures overnight without you noticing!

• First off - double check, triple check the max commission and max change. There are scummy scammers out there that boost their rates (see a FAQ below on this) and then drop them automatically every few hours, to scam people into delegating.

• Ultimately - look, I won't tell you not to use a 0% validator. Absolutely do - there are some trustworthy ones out there (look at other criteria in this FAQ to determine). But, if you do use a 0% validator, keep an eye out for jail time / them disappearing. While it's lovely to think of these validators as doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, when they're facing costly server hosting expenses, bandwidth costs, headaches of keeping upgraded and informed, it's hard to get an answer to "why are they doing this for free" and "how long will they do this for free for? Until they lose interest? When will that be?"

• So - my view is that this is not sustainable. If you keep an eye on your holdings daily and can quickly see if your validator has gone offline / been jailed so you can immediately redelegate, then yes this may be the most cost effective option. Ultimately, the low cost validators out there that have a more sustainable model will charge you approx. 0.14-0.15 FX for every 1000 FX you have delegated. That's not very much!

Simple one. There are humans behind the nodes. Can you get in touch with them? Do they have a webpage? Do they have Telegram? Are they active on forums like https://forum.starscan.io/? 

My recommendation is spread your funds. In the odd chance that a validator gets jailed, while your funds are safe you don't want to miss out on reward!