Solana staking rewards lose 1 key field: validator fee rate

Solana staking rewards lose 1 key field: the validator fee rate

Solana reward records have left the validator commission field empty since Sept. 8, P2P.org said in a report CryptoSlate cited on Nov. 1.

Solana staking rewards still reach stakers as usual, but the records behind them no longer show what validators charge. Reward data on Solana ($SOL) now leaves the commission field empty, a change staking firm P2P.org traced to Sept. 8 in an Oct. 30 report, CryptoSlate said on Nov. 1.

The quick take

Price: $SOL trades at $94.76, down 1.2% in 24 hours (CoinGecko, 15:41 UTC).
Trigger: Agave, Solana’s main validator client, blanks the fee rate in reward records once a feature called SIMD-0232 is on.
Watch: An open request asks the network’s RPC to show the fee rate the software really uses each epoch.

What happened

Anza builds Agave. Its pull request 12588, merged on May 20, sets the commission rate in reward records to empty once SIMD-0232 is active. That proposal, written by Anza’s Justin Starry and now marked “Activated,” lets validators send their fee income to custom collector accounts.

The empty field appears in block data that apps read through the getBlock call and blockSubscribe streams. The pull request says one rate for a combined reward “doesn’t make sense anymore,” since income can now mix across collectors.

Why it matters

An empty field is not a zero fee. SIMD-0232 says it does not change how commission is calculated. P2P.org found that fees are still charged and reward amounts still add up, according to CryptoSlate.

The change is about proof. To check the fee behind one payout, a staker now needs the validator’s past settings and the stake account’s history. CryptoSlate describes missing evidence, not proof that anyone was overcharged.

What to watch next

On Oct. 18, a contributor opened Agave issue 16135. It asks the getVoteAccounts call to return the fee rate used for the current epoch, plus that epoch and its slot. At 15:50 UTC on Nov. 1 the issue was still open, with no replies and no linked fix.

Bottom line: Solana stakers are still paid as before, but checking the validator fee behind each payout now takes extra work, and no fix is in place yet.