I understand that a decision has already been made… I just want to throw something out there that occurred to me.
Isn’t setting a minimum fee similar to setting a minimum wage?
I understand people have different thoughts about the minimum wage, but my understanding is that it is generally not a good idea.
Simply let the market decide what the fee is… things will work themselves out. New validators (much like low skilled workers) can charge a low or 0% fee in order to “get a chance”. More “experienced” validators (much like high skilled workers) can charge a higher fee.
I don’t know if we have identified the right problem – is the issue that validators are setting their fees too low in an unsustainable way? Or is it that there aren’t enough ways for validators to compete with each other?
I wonder if there would be a way to create more ways for validators to “gain skills” that come with experience and time which allows them to set higher fees but still have those “skills” which attracts delegates in some way.
Hello everyone.
I see I am a bit late to the party.
In my opinion the 5% fee is too high and I would prefer to let my validator stay at 1%.
Two other things:
I think it’s a good path to let new validators offer some advantage (even if it is at their own cost) to get into the party.
Maybe the team could add to the code a percentage increase based on the number of epochs being elected. Let’s say each epoche adds 1/20 fee until the minimum fee is reached.
I would prefer if there would be a way to add the fee percentage based on the number of bls keys signing. 10 bls keys 2% fee, 50 bls keys 10% fee, of course you could still add the option to increase even further.
@ValidatorONE yes i agree so too. @rongjian@leo@OgreAbroad and the rest, do you agree that 50 epochs is enough for the 0% fee for newly elected? We should also consider those that are elected with less than 50 epochs at the time we make this upgrade, so its completely fair.
@BBIT as a validator, if you believe 5% is too high after the work and the costs you put in, that is fine, i respect your opinion. However we are trying not to make it too complicated and easy to understand for everyone. On top of EPoS already being hard to understand for most, and quite difficult to manage, we dont want to add extra complexity in terms of changing min fees based on epochs, or create brackets based on # of bls keys or stake size. Lets try to keep it as simple as possible while still helping to enhance new validator experience.
Hello everyone, since we are mostly there, let me do another poll for the longitude of the 0% fee for new validators.
Here is where we are: We will submit a proposal for network governance, changing minimum fee for “older” validators to 5%, while newly elected ones will have an X epoch grace period where they will be able to have 0% fees.
The poll is to decide on what that length should be. Keep in mind 1 epoch is now quite shorter than a day, and can be even shorter in the future.
How many epochs grace period for newly elected validators?
50
60
80
0 (i disagree with this)
0voters
After this vote, which ends on sunday, I will make a formal proposal in the governance app, available for voting.
Imagine you are shopping for a new validator. You notice a young one that has 0% fees and reasonable uptime. You choose it because you like the 0% fees.
Fast forward a few days/weeks/months and you check back on your stake and the validators. You are upset or surprised to find that the validator now has x% fees instead of the 0% fees you began with. The staking you thought you’d be earning is gone. At the very least, you are upset that you could have earned more by chosing a validator that kept there fee at a constant rate over the same amount of time which averaged out to less fees charged.
You then later find out that this was a requirement of the validator to increase their fees after x amount of epochs. You, as a delegator, may feel somewhat slighted or deceived, regardless of how available the information was – it may come across as “sneaky” or otherwise deceptive.
Friends, please consider what we are doing here. I think validators should be in free control of what they set their fee too. No one can sustain 0% for long. Validators that stay at 0% will fail. Let stupid people make bad decisions.
I would rather have delegators blame a particular validator for being “dishonest” about advertising 0% fees only to later change them. If we follow through on implementing this change, we are giving people legitimate reason to blame harmony as a whole or, at the very least, leave a bitter taste in their mouths.
that’s the right calculation. I think 90~100 epoch would probably make sense. 50 epochs seem too short for a new validator to bootstrap enough delegators. They are free to raise to 5% anytime once they have the understanding of the delegators and clearly communicated to them. And, delegators are always free to re-delegate.
to not repeat the poll… it seems 80 epochs is winning now, so either we go ahead on the proposal with that, or we can change it to 90 or 100 even (in that case im for 100) and just use that one. If we repeat the poll it will just prolongue the process again.
Some very good points! The Validator always has the option to implement a fee beforehand, and delegators can move their votes if they are unhappy with the Validator for any reason.
Most of the validators are quite happy with the 5% fee which is fine. How about delegators? This should be a free market and allow validators to set whatever fee they prefer. There will be no point as a delegator to stake whereby all the validators has got 5% minimum. If this 5% thing happens you will see the total number of tokens staked will reduced drastically. I would rather day trade and unstake if this 5% fees happens.
No other chain, apart a few exceptions, have lower fees than Harmony validators. The normal rate is at about 10% actually. As a delegator, you should be quite happy with 5% fees for just delegating your tokens, not needing to manage the nodes and participate in EPoS election every ~18h. If you feel that is too much and the validators do not deserve to charge commission on their work, then youre ofc welcome to day trade.
I’m confused and will be by next weekend a new validator. Does the 5% fee go to the network/foundation/dev’s or whoever or is the 5% fee for the validator themselves? Either way, charging 0% fees for any portion of this operation is madness. I would say the 80 epochs is “ok” but a little larger would be better. Not too much longer though. I believe someone mentioned 100 which is even a nice round and pleasant number to look at so if that were an option I’d vote on that. No longer than that though.
The Fee listed on the staking.Harmony.one site goes to the Validators. They are currently able to charge whatever fee they want. This change would merely change the floor from 0% to 5%, to ensure that Validators are earning enough to pay for their servers, and possibly even make a small amount for the service that they provide.
When a delegator looks at the fact that they will still be earning 95% of the rewards for doing almost nothing… it seems quite reasonable, especially compared to most other chains… as mindstyle pointed out a couple messages ago.
Hi everyone,
A bit late to the discussion, although I was reading it since the begining. Overall, I agree with the conclussions of this talk, thats why I didnt participate sooner. But I was thinking this morning… with the change that new validators will be able to have a 0% fees for x epochs, is it expected that some nominators will rotate their nominations looking for those “new” validators with lower fee than the rest? What if majority does it? Will this bring to old validators creating new validators every x epochs?
Honestly, I dont think so. I think well stablished delegators/nominators value more the stability rather than a 5-10% commission fee. But I got a bit stuck in this scenario, so I would like to bring the topic here.
