Staking Pool Delegation Strategy

At the core of our mission is a commitment to Solana’s decentralisation, transparency, and resilience. Our delegation strategy is designed to support high-quality validators from underrepresented regions and emerging networks maintaining strict operational and ethical standards.

Strategy Objectives

  • Empower diversity: Direct stake to validators from underrepresented regions and non-mainstream infrastructure setups.

  • Promote operational excellence: Support validators with strong uptime, up-to-date software, and responsible behaviour.

  • Help under-performing (ineligible) validators improve: On a case-by-case basis, help validators that did not qualify for the pool stake due to low uptime or other factors, with the Stardust Academy community good program.

Validator Eligibility

To be eligible for delegation from our pool, a validator must:

  • Be based outside of OFAC-sanctioned countries

  • Maintain a commission rate no higher than 5% over the last 90 days

  • Operate Jito MEV

  • Have total stake in the range of 50K - 250K SOL

  • Preferably be based in low stake-concentration locations

  • Not be blacklisted by the Solana Foundation

The validators are ranked against the Scoring Criteria below, with around 100 validators selected for delegation.

Stake Distribution

Base Stake (50%)

Half of the total pool stake is equally distributed across all eligible validators.

Weighted Stake (Remaining 50%)

The other half is distributed based on a scoring system, rewarding decentralisation and excellence, while penalising risk factors.

Scoring Criteria

Bonus Points:

  • +100: Located in an underrepresented country or region

  • +10 to +90: Low total stake (across 50K - 500K SOL)

  • +70: Uses a less common Solana validator client

  • +10: Publicly listed website, contact info, and validator identity

Penalty Points:

  • −100: Running an outdated client version

  • −100: Commission above 5%

  • −80: Skip rate above 10% or vote rate below 90%

  • −50: Changing commission before epoch ends

  • Delinquent validators:

    • 1st epoch: stake slashed 50%

    • 2nd epoch: removed entirely

We also cap stake per validator, ensuring no single entity grows disproportionately regardless of their score.

We review the scoring points model monthly and reserve the right to adjust.

Rebalancing & Automation

  • Delegation is recalculated every two weeks, following next Wednesday epoch.

  • A mix of on-chain and off-chain tools track performance and behaviour metrics.

  • Our system automatically adjusts stake based on updated validator scores.

Treasury & Liquidity

The pool retains a 10% treasury reserve to manage token liquidity. This is rebalanced independently of the validator stake every epoch.