Although it’s too early to make conclusions, especially since blocks are randomly authored, here are some preliminary findings after 200 minutes on MainNet:
- Compared with other nodes in Asia, XX-Validator is processing 8% fewer cMix rounds
- In the first election only ~25% of validators (100) have been onboarded
- By round 12,111 I’ve participated in 500 successful cMix rounds (~4%)
- At this moment, points for authoring a block are 130 and 10 for a successful cMix round (this may change in the future)
- Assuming 14,400 blocks per day, 400 validators and 130 points per block (one every 6s), I expect to author 36 blocks a day (4,680 points per day on average)
- Assuming 3.26 successful cMix rounds per minute (my current pace - 555 rounds over the past 2h40m in epoch 3), that (1,440 min * 3.26) is 4,694 points per day
Again, these are just guesstimates, but they indicate there’s potential for a 50-50 breakdown between block-authoring and cMix points, and daily earnings of 9,400 points.
For a comparison, fast nodes with similar failure rates would author the same number of chain blocks, but participate in (let’s say) 10% more rounds, so 4,680 + (4,694 * 1.10), totaling 9,800 points per day.
Now that I think about it - that’s easy enough to figure out without any math: once you assume a 50-50 breakdown between Chain and cMix rewards, then a 10% faster node would earn 5% more points per day (week, month).
Remember that the operator takes their share from the pot before it’s distributed to nominators like so:
- A 9% guy who averaged 9,800/day would leave 8,900 to their nominators
- A 10% guy who averaged 9,400/day would leave 8,400 to their nominators
- That represents a 5.9% difference in ROI
I’m not entirely sure this is correct, so please try this on your own.
And mind you, there are also other factors that sooner or later impact nominator’s ROI:
- geo-risk (which is something I wrote about before)
- stake size (helps to get a validator elected)
- skills (lowers the risk of planned and unplanned downtime, and even slashing)
- reputation (based on track record and more)
That is why I believe nominators will evaluate more than just the commission and make choices that better reflect their true ROI.
As I mentioned in regular XX Network Notes from ProtoNet time, I will watch this topic and plan to modify my commission (or cloud setup, or both) accordingly.