# Waitlist Criteria

Validator Board Responsibilities

#### Review and Evaluation Process

* The Validator Board is responsible for reviewing and voting on ecosystem contributions for each validator on the waitlist before they are promoted to the allowlist.

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Validator Performance Evaluation

#### Measuring Uptime & Downtime

Validator uptime and downtime are measured using existing tools:

* Stakewiz provides uptime tracking.
* The Dune Validator Dashboard shows uptime for the last 30 days using Stakewiz data.

#### Uptime Evaluation Factors

* The Stakewiz API calculates validator delinquency based on the number of minutes a validator has been delinquent.

#### Minimum Epochs Required for Evaluation

* **Preferred:** 20 epochs
* **Minimum:** 10 epochs

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Waitlist Standards

#### Standards for Waitlist Placement

* Validators must meet uptime requirements.
* Validators must adhere to commission limits.

#### Prioritization for Inclusion or Removal from the Waitlist

* **Ecosystem Contribution**
* **APY (Vote Credits)**

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Delinquency Management

#### Defining Delinquency Levels

* **Excessive Delinquency:** More than 8 hours of delinquency over the past 30 days.
* **Problematic Delinquency:** More than 4 hours of delinquency over the past 30 days.
* **Concerning Delinquency:** More than 1 hour of delinquency over the past 30 days.

#### Tracking Delinquency

* Stakewiz uptime score (via their API) is used for tracking.

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Vote Credit Requirements

#### Minimum Vote Credit Requirements

* No strict minimum, as vote credits are already captured in the uptime metric.

#### Impact of Vote Credits

* Vote credits impact APY, which will be considered when moving validators from the waitlist to the allowlist.

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Client Compliance Standards

#### Required Client Compliance

Validators must run one of the following:

* Jito-enabled client
* Paladin-enabled client

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Stake Amount Requirements

#### Maximum Stake Threshold

* 500K SOL (not applicable to direct stake)

Commission Limits

* 5% Commission / 10% MEV (exceptions can be made by The Vault Contributors)

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Validator Allowlist Criteria

#### Order of Acceptance to the Allowlist

* Validators get promoted to the Allowlist when there is room.
* If over 100 validators are on the allowlist, available seats may be paused.
* The Vault reserves the right to pause the allowlist.

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Validator Contributions to the Solana Ecosystem

#### Metrics for Evaluating Contributions

Validator contributions to the Solana ecosystem are difficult to quantify but can generally be assessed based on, but not limited to:

* Development of apps in the Solana ecosystem
* Solana community participation (e.g., notable individuals, investors with strong communications impact, etc.)
* Development of infrastructure-related tools for the ecosystem (e.g., dashboards and validator utilities)
* Open Source development within the Solana ecosystem
* Membership in Solana projects with meaningful contributions

#### Quantifying Contributions

* Validators must clearly describe how their contributions help the ecosystem when applying for the waitlist.
* Evaluations are subjective and rely on board members making qualitative judgments.
* A voting system among board members will be used to assess ecosystem contributions.