Ah yes, the lava floor. The thing you do not want to touch!

The “lava floor” is shorthand for one of the requirements a validator must contend with in order to be a validator and earn money.  A validator must be active to be earning and they do this by having enough tokens delegated to their validator.  How much is enough?

Well that depends on the chain – each chain determines for themselves how many active validator slots exist and the number can be modified with a vote. If a chain has determined to have 100 validator slots, then the 100 validators who are running an active node that have the most tokens delegated to their validator will fill those slots. As you can imagine, the list is weighted heavily at the top and then validators get smaller in size (fewer tokens delegated) as you go down the list.

So, what’s on the mind of the validators that are in the last few slots?

The lava floor!

In this example, if a new validator brings their node online and has more tokens than the 100th validator, that 100th validator gets kicked off the active list to make room for the newer validator with more tokens delegated. This is a constant, 24/7/365, battle to stay on the active list. For those further up the list, this is mostly a non-factor so getting out of the danger zone and away from the lava floor is one of the top priorities for validators at the bottom of the active list. As one of the validators who spent several weeks battling it out near the lava floor on Stargaze, it’s an exciting stressful time!  We got kicked from the active list several times.  When that happens, our immediate thought is for our current delegators because along with us, they stop earning as well.

Thankfully, we were able to return to the active list and eventually work our way up to a safer spot.