NetOps WG · Decide the validator subsidy future & pseudo-jailing

The validator subsidy underwrites network liveness and is one of the DAO's most consequential early decisions. The RFC weighs ending it immediately, a phased reduction, or continuing it, alongside an optional pseudo-jailing mechanism to enforce uptime.

Where it stands (August 2026)

Re-measured on 16 August 2026 at epoch 335598, the concentration figure in the RFC has moved, and against the target. The RFC weighs the decision on a top-50 share of roughly 85% and asks for a median around 1%. A whole read of the validator list returns 4,773,496,229 XRD staked, of which the top 50 validators hold 90.66%; the top 10 alone hold 39.94%, and the median of the 100-slot active set – the 50th validator, on 20,791,259 XRD – is 0.436% of stake, under half the target.

The survey question the RFC poses therefore lands on a narrower base than it assumes. Only 89 validators hold a million XRD or more, and the bottom of the active set runs to tens of thousands: rank 100 holds 45,500 XRD. Those are the operators for whom ending the subsidy is a decision about whether to keep a node running at all, and they are the same operators the recruitment card is trying to add to.

Deliverables

• Vote the subsidy timeline (immediate / phased to ~2-month transition / continue).
• Decide whether to implement pseudo-jailing (committee votes, stake-weight thresholds, 70%+ opt-in).
• Address validator-set concentration (top-50 hold ~85% of stake; target ~1% median).
• Survey validators on how many would exit if the subsidy ends.

Dependencies & cross-references

• Governed by Daffy's Radix DAO framework (repo Shadaffy/radix-dao); see the Governance Framework Reference Repo and Charter (Round 1).
• Funded from operating budgets.
• Administered by a subsidy-administration entity.

Sources

• RFC: The Future of the Validator Subsidy & Pseudo Jailing