Frequently Asked Questions

How do Solana validators earn income?

Three streams: (1) base fees — a fixed 5,000 lamports per transaction signature, paid by every transaction; (2) priority fees — optional extra users pay to outbid others for inclusion (100% to the leader since SIMD-96, no burn); (3) Jito MEV tips — on-chain SOL transfers from traders bidding to land bundles in the validator's blocks. Inflation/staking rewards exist on top but aren't covered by this site.

What is "skip rate" and what's a good number?

Skip rate is the percentage of leader slots a validator was scheduled to produce but failed to. 0% is perfect; under 2% is excellent; consistently above 5% suggests an unhealthy node, misconfigured peering, or undersized hardware. Skip rate is one of the cleanest validator-quality signals because it's stake-neutral — small and large validators are graded on the same scale.

What is MEV and how does Jito pay validators?

MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) is profit traders extract by reordering, inserting, or front-running transactions. On Solana, most MEV flows through Jito's block engine: searchers send bundles with on-chain SOL tips deposited to one of 8 tip accounts. This site reports those raw on-chain tips from each produced block, so the running epoch can update before any post-epoch payout publication.

How fresh is the data on this site?

Slot production updates every ~60 seconds during the running epoch. Block fees and on-chain Jito tips update every ~30 seconds as produced blocks are ingested. Closed-epoch rows have isFinal=true; running-epoch rows are lower bounds that grow until the epoch closes (every ~2 days). hasSlots and hasIncome tell callers whether each family has been ingested.

Are these income numbers before or after commission?

BEFORE commission. This site reports the OPERATOR side — the raw income the validator collects from block production and on-chain Jito tips. Delegator-facing yield is roughly (1 - commission) × the numbers shown here, modulo whatever fee structure the specific validator uses. Use this site to evaluate operator skill; use a delegator-staking dashboard for your own expected yield.

What's the difference between a vote account and an identity pubkey?

The vote account is the on-chain account stakers delegate to — it lives across the validator's lifetime as the canonical identifier. The identity pubkey is the validator's hot key, used to sign blocks and votes; operators rotate it periodically for security while keeping the same vote account. This site accepts both as input on /income/{pubkey} and resolves either to the same validator's history.

What does "income / slot" mean on the leaderboard?

Income / slot = (block fees + on-chain Jito tips) / leader slots in the selected window. In the default live-trend view, current epochs use elapsed assigned slots and final epochs use assigned slots. It's stake-neutral (a 100k-SOL validator and a 10M-SOL one can be compared directly) and commission-neutral (commission applies after block production).

What is the Decade leaderboard?

The Decade leaderboard ranks the latest complete 10-epoch block by income / leader slot. A validator must have income rows in all 10 epochs to qualify. This makes the badge harder to game than a one-epoch spike, reduces noise from tiny samples, and gives delegators a more durable operator-quality signal.

Can I search by validator name?

Yes. The homepage and Compare page both let you type part of a validator name, or paste a vote / identity pubkey directly. The search endpoint is DB-only, so it reads known validator metadata without triggering Solana RPC. If you type a name, select a result before submitting so the URL uses the canonical vote pubkey.

Why doesn't my favorite validator appear in the leaderboard?

The default leaderboard is live-trend, but it still only ranks validators with enough observed leader slots in the selected window. Validators below the minimum window slots are filtered to avoid noisy per-slot metrics. If a validator is brand-new or rarely scheduled, search by name or visit /income/{vote-or-identity-pubkey} directly.

Can I use this data in my own dashboard or research?

Yes — the underlying data is released under CC0 (public domain), the code is MIT-licensed, and there's a public HTTP API at /v1/* with an OpenAPI spec at /openapi.yaml. There's also an MCP server at /mcp for AI agents and an llms.txt at /llms.txt for crawlers. The site rate-limits at 60 requests/minute/IP; for higher volumes self-host via the Helm chart.

What does AI-assisted mean for WhoEarns?

AI helps 0base.vc operate WhoEarns: monitor freshness, detect unusual validator income patterns, draft public explanations, and keep AI-agent surfaces such as MCP and llms.txt useful. AI is not the accounting source. The source of truth is Solana block data, and serious claims should reference closed epochs, tracked-sample boundaries, and reproducible API fields.

How does this site differ from solanabeach.io / validators.app / stakewiz.com?

Three differences: (1) validator income is normalized per leader slot and compared against the indexed-validator average, so you can tell if a validator is over- or under-performing peers; (2) MEV tips are derived from each produced block, so current-epoch income can update in near real time; (3) all derived data is CC0 with a documented public API. Other dashboards typically gate this behind login or vendor-specific endpoints.

I'm a validator operator — how do I claim my profile here?

Visit /claim/{your-vote-pubkey}. The flow asks you to sign a short challenge with your validator identity keypair (`solana sign-offchain-message`); the site verifies the Ed25519 signature on-chain. After claiming you can edit a small profile (Twitter handle, footer-CTA mute, narrative paragraph). A claimed validator earns a verified-badge ✓ next to its name on the leaderboard and income hero.

How can I stake with a validator I found here?

This site is read-only — it does not handle wallets or staking transactions. To stake, copy the validator's vote pubkey, then use a wallet (Phantom, Solflare, Backpack) or a staking dashboard (Solana Compass, Marinade, Jito) to delegate. Stake activations take one full epoch (~2 days) before they earn rewards.

Question we missed? Open a GitHub issue or ping 0base.vc.