Commission and Foundation Nodes
Understand the commission and foundation nodes in Aleph Zero's staking process, a secure blockchain with zk-proof technology.
At the current stage of evolution of the Aleph Zero platform, the Aleph Zero Foundation runs 10 validator nodes that help to preserve the chain stability on the road towards full decentralization. The full list on the Mainnet Fountation Validators can be seen below. Similarly, the Foundation is running 10 validator nodes on the Aleph Zero Testnet.
In the previous stage of our journey towards decentralization, right after the introduction of staking on Aleph Zero, but before any members of the community were able to join the validator ranks, all the Foundation validators charged 0% commission from nominators.
This changed in early December 2022, when the Aleph Zero Mainnet welcomed community validators. At that time, to avoid so-called "commission wars" among validators, a minimum commission of 2% was introduced for all validators. Hence, the Foundation Validators began to charge a 2% commission.
To improve the decentralization of Aleph Zero by incentivizing nominators to nominate community validators (see https://alephzero.org/blog/mainnet-validator-commission-schedule/ for details), the following schedule of increasing Foundation nodes' commission and the global minimal commission was announced in December 2022:
Dec 16th, 2022: Foundation nodes — 3.5%,
Dec 30th, 2022: Foundation nodes — 5%,
Jan 13th, 2023: Foundation nodes — 6.5%; Minimum for everyone — 3%),
Jan 27th, 2023: Foundation nodes — 8%; Minimum for everyone — 4%),
Feb 10th, 2023: Foundation nodes — 9.5%; Minimum for everyone — 5%),
Feb 24th, 2023: Foundation nodes — 11%,
Mar 10th, 2023: Foundation nodes — 12.5%,
Mar 24th, 2023: Foundation nodes — 14%.
The goal of the above scheme is to reach the state when at least 50% of all staked AZERO are with community validators - if this goal is reached at any point, the increase of the commission of Foundation nodes will stop.
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