For the past two weeks, I have had a lot of problems with my nodes. I have had mass slashings and lost rewards as well as time because I have had to restake them. The reason for this is that I was not prepared for the new larger committee size. I’ve always pushed my hardware to the limit and have been doing so successfully over the past year. When the committee size increased, it meant that my nodes started going into committee more often and also stayed active longer. Combined with the ever-growing size of the full blockchain, my hardware reached its breaking point.
Since the approach of this thread has always been focused on real-world empirical data, I will not recalculate or compensate for any of these problems as it is part of the reality of hosting a validator. Shit happens.
I’m currently in the process of building a replacement server and testing out the new database modes, trying to find a new balance of how hard I can push each host. Over the next couple of weeks, I hope I can get my nodes stable so we get more accurate earning numbers.
Now for the good news, as @SPAddict25 would have put it…
NODES GO BRRRRRRRRR!
Despite my hosting problems, my nodes are earning like crazy! I had to double and triple-check my numbers, but they are correct. It’s a good time to host validators!
We can also see that I’m not the only one that has realized this, because we have almost 150 new nodes in 12 days.