Accelerated Decentralization: Elrond Foundational Nodes Make Way For More Community Nodes

Staking Phase 3 is perhaps the most exciting advancement in the Elrond PoS ecosystem. Thanks to the recent mainnet upgrade, a series of new features have gone live. Anyone can stake eGold, secure the Elrond mainnet, and be rewarded by the Elrond protocol for doing so.

Demand has been overwhelming and the new validator slots were quickly filled by the community. But as we mentioned initially, everyone that has staked eGold will earn rewards.

To be able to do so, we have researched all possible solutions, and have chosen the most productive one to move forward with. So here are the main details of the solution proposal:

• 25% or ~363 of Elrond Foundational Nodes will be removed
• Their stake will transition as top-up for the remaining Elrond Foundational Nodes
• Elrond foundational nodes will have 831,8 EGLD top-up
• Elrond foundational nodes will decrease the service fee to 10%
• “Active Delegation” (delegation towards Elrond nodes) APR will be in the range 16-17%
• Community Nodes will replace them, thus making more room for community staking

Please read on for the details.

Highlights of Staking Phase 3

• Validator nodes increased from 2169 to 3200
• Delegation Manager enables non-custodial delegations via staking partners
• The Validator “base-stake” of 2500 EGLD can now accept additional stake as “top-up” for additional rewards

All these new features have created excitement in our community:

• 9,9 million EGLD are now staked, up from 8,3 million before Phase 3
• 1476 new Validator nodes are ready to enter the network

A Push For Decentralization

The key to the success of the Elrond Network is adoption. That is achieved through the attractive properties of eGold. In the Staking context, that simply means enabling as many eGold holders to stake and earn rewards.

Staking eGold is now extremely simple: either directly via Maiar, the Elrond Web Wallet, or via our staking partners’ Delegation Dashboards, everyone has easy access to staking. With no UX barriers and ever-growing interest, the need to accommodate more stake has quickly become apparent.

So here is our proposed solution:

• 25% or ~363 of Elrond Foundational Nodes will be removed, transitioning to top-up
• Elrond foundational nodes will have 833,3 EGLD top-up
• Elrond foundational nodes will decrease the service fee to 10%
• Community Nodes will replace them, thus making more room for community staking
• “Active Delegation” (delegation towards Elrond nodes) APR will be in the range 16-17%

Action Needed: none.

The implementation of this solution will be entirely done by the global Elrond development teams, tested with our Validators community. The solution requires a change to the legacy RUST staking smart contract. Thanks to Elrond upgradable smart contracts, this is doable on the fly, without any network upgrades.

Tentative Timeline

We will remove Elrond Foundational Nodes starting with April 6, thus enabling the nodes in the queue to become Validators. This time frame could potentially be postponed by 5 days for security reasons.

The main goal of Elrond is to build the backbone for (1) a high bandwidth, low latency, transparent financial system, and (2) give anyone, anywhere, easy access to this financial system. Onboarding the next billion people to the Elrond ecosystem will bring the largest opportunities yet.

To reach our goal, we will have to reinvent ourselves every step of the way, solving the challenges that emerge in the most creative way possible, striving to find the optimal solution to ensure more adoption and growth for the Elrond ecosystem. It is remarkable to share this journey with many resourceful partners from all over the world.

Thank you for your ongoing support and contribution.