Staking&Delegation

What is staking?

In PlatON’s network, pledge is the act of nodes joining to PlatON network by locking a certain amount of LAT. PlatON uses PPoS consensus mechanism to select validation nodes, and the nodes joining to PlatON network will be ranked according to the pledged The number of LATs will be ranked, and each round of consensus will randomly select 43 nodes from the top 201 nodes in the ranking to pack out blocks as validation nodes.

What is a delegation?

Delegation is the act of LAT holders delegating LAT to nodes to indirectly participate in the network co-build. Delegation can not only improve the security of the network, but also bring revenue to the delegator.

How to staking?

You can quickly initiate a staking operation using the Mtool tool, please refer to here.

How to delegate?

Delegation can be done simply by using ATON wallet, please refer to here for details.

Why become a delegator?

Staking is the core feature of the PlatON network. The larger the percentage of LAT involved in staking and delegating, the higher the security of PlatON network.

Whether a validator can be selected as an active validator mainly depends on the amount of total staking, which is composed of the staking of LAT of the validator itself and the LAT delegated to it. Alternative Validator Candidates ranking top 201 can become alternative validators.

The delegating is similar to an election in that we exercise our voting right by delegating, so as to fulfill our common expectation of electing the candidate contributing the most to the development of the network to become the validator. The participation of more delegators can prevent validators from misconduct and promote the healthy and sustainable development of PlatON ecosystem and the continuous increase of PlatON value.

How to choose a validator worth delegating?

Based on the information provided by the ATON Wallet, you can examine a validator from the following aspects:

• Ranking: the higher the ranking of a validator, the higher the chance of it becoming a validator producing blocks in the consensus round.
• Expected annualized rate of yield: the yield of delegation can be estimated with the expected annualized rate of yield, which can be calculated by the yield per share of the delegation in the recent 4 Epochs.
• Delegating reward ratio: the ratio of the rewards allocated to the delegators. The higher the ratio, the higher the total rewards earned by all delegators.
• Delegation received: the total amount of delegated LAT received by the current validator. The higher percentage of the delegated LAT, the higher the rewards allocated to individuals from the total rewards received by all delegators.
• Penalty count: validators with low block producing rate or malicious dual-signing will be penalized, and the more validators are penalized, the less trustworthy they are.
• Community reputation: validators with good reputations and prestige in the community can be trusted and delegated.

When does the delegation take effect and when can I get rewards after delegation?

Delegated LAT does not become effective (i.e., being locked) until the next Epoch.

When the effective delegation is fully locked for an Epoch and the delegated validator is rewarded in the Epoch, the delegating reward is available in that settlement block.

There will be no rewards in the Epoch for delegating redeemed in the process.

If the delegated validator is revoked, all delegating under that validator will be invalidated and there will be no delegating rewards for this Epoch and subsequent Epochs.

How are delegating rewards calculated?

Rewards can be received when a validator becomes an active validator and participates in block production. The rewards are composed of staking rewards and block-producing rewards and are allocated to delegators in accordance with the delegating reward ratio.

If a validator has a delegating reward ratio of 10% and receives a block-producing reward of 1000LAT and a staking reward of 2000 LAT for a certain period of time, rewards participating in allocation would be 3000 LAT.

Total reward for all delegators: 1000 * 10%+2000*10% = 300 LAT

Each delegator gets a reward based on the ratio of its valid delegation to the total valid delegation of the validator.

Suppose a delegator has a total delegation of 1000 LAT and there are a total of 5000 LAT delegation on the validator,

then the reward that the delegator can get is 1000/5000*300=60 LAT.