What does 5% commission really cost?
The comparison table turns a commission into SOL over your time horizon, next to a 0% validator.
A field guide to Solana staking yield
Plant SOL.
Count the harvest
honestly.
Stakeyard reads the network's live inflation rate, epoch clock and validator commissions, then shows what staking could realistically return — compounding per epoch, after commission, with every assumption on the table.
Validator inflation—live · getInflationRate
Active stake—sum of vote accounts
Staked share—stake ÷ Jupiter-reported supply
Est. network APR—before commission · formula
Epoch length now—at live slot pace
SOL price—Jupiter
Seed packet No. 1
The harvest calculator
Every input is editable. The base APR is pre-filled from live data with the formula shown underneath.
Your net APR—
Effective APY—
After 5 years—
Rewards earned—
Per epoch now—
Your setup0% commissionSimple (no restake)
Formula. net APR = base APR × (1 − commission) × performance. Per-epoch rate = net APR ÷ — epochs per year (live slot pace). Compound: amount × (1 + rate)epochs. Estimates only; excludes MEV/tip sharing, liquid-staking fees and price changes.
Commission side by side
Same amount, base APR, performance and years — only commission changes.
| Commission | Net APR | APY (compounded) | Rewards over period | vs 0% |
|---|
Live from getVoteAccounts
Walk the validator field
Every active vote account, read straight from the chain. Click Use to load a validator's commission and last-epoch performance into the calculator.
Examples:
Loading the vote-account list (~300 KB, cached for 10 minutes)…
| # | Vote account | Active stake | Commission | Performance | Est. net APR | Action |
|---|
Commission distribution
Share of validators and of active stake at each commission level.
From seed to harvest
How Stakeyard works
- Sow
Read the soil
We ask a public Solana RPC node for the current inflation rate, the epoch clock and recent performance samples (to measure how fast slots are passing).
- Sprout
Count the field
Every vote account's active stake is summed. Dividing the reported SOL supply by that stake tells us how thinly inflation is spread.
- Grow
Apply the commission
Your validator keeps its commission from inflation rewards, and missed votes shrink your share. Both are applied before compounding.
- Reap
Compound per epoch
Rewards land at each epoch boundary and, if you leave them staked, earn rewards themselves. We compound at the live number of epochs per year.
What you can learn
Six questions it answers
Is 100% commission a trap?
Yes for delegators: a 100% validator keeps all inflation rewards. The field list shows how many exist right now.
Does restaking matter?
Over a few years compounding per epoch adds a visible extra slice. The chart's dashed line shows life without it.
How reliable is my validator?
Last-epoch vote credits relative to the top performers reveal validators that miss votes — and cost you yield.
When is the next payout?
The sun in the hero tracks the epoch live. Rewards are credited shortly after the boundary.
How concentrated is stake?
The distribution panel shows how much stake sits at each commission level and with the largest validators.
The almanac
How Solana staking rewards actually grow
Where rewards come from
Solana mints new SOL every epoch according to a fixed inflation schedule. The schedule started at an initial rate, falls by a fixed taper each year, and stops falling at a long-term terminal rate. The live parameters, read from getInflationGovernor, are shown in the table beside this text. The current rate is reported by getInflationRate.
That newly minted SOL is split among stakers in proportion to stake × vote credits. A validator earns credits for voting promptly on blocks; a validator that votes late or goes offline earns fewer credits, and everyone delegated to it earns less. Because the whole issuance is shared by the staked SOL only, the yield on staked SOL is roughly the inflation rate divided by the share of supply that is staked. That is the base APR estimate here.
Commission and other cuts
Each validator sets a commission — the percentage of the inflation rewards earned by its delegators that it keeps. Commission can be changed by the validator, so check it periodically. Many validators also earn tips and priority fees from block production and some share part of it with delegators; this calculator deliberately leaves that out because it varies by validator and is not reported by the vote-account RPC call.
Timing: warm-up and cool-down
Delegating creates a stake account (it must hold a rent-exempt reserve of (loading) SOL, live from getMinimumBalanceForRentExemption(200), refunded when closed). New stake becomes active at the next epoch boundary, and deactivated stake becomes withdrawable after the epoch in which you deactivate it ends. If the network-wide amount of stake changing at once is large, activation can be spread over several epochs.
Native vs liquid staking
With native staking you keep custody: the stake account is yours and only your keys can withdraw. Liquid staking tokens hand your SOL to a stake pool program that issues a token you can trade or use in DeFi; the pool charges its own fee and adds smart-contract risk. Neither is “better” in general — it depends on whether you need liquidity.
Questions from the porch
FAQ
Is the APR here what I will actually earn?
It's an estimate built from live public numbers and a published formula. Real rewards depend on your validator's credits each epoch, commission changes, how much SOL is staked network-wide, and anything the validator shares beyond inflation.
Why isn't there a validator name column?
Validator names live in a separate on-chain config program that public RPC can't list cheaply. We show the vote account key, which is the address you actually delegate to — always verify it before staking.
What is “performance” exactly?
A validator's vote credits in the last finished epoch, divided by the credits earned by top performers (95th percentile). 100% means it voted as well as the best; lower values reduce your rewards proportionally.
Why does compounding use “live” epochs per year?
Epochs are a fixed number of slots, so their duration depends on how fast slots are produced. We measure the current slot pace from recent performance samples and convert that to epochs per calendar year.
Can I stake from this site?
No. Stakeyard is read-only by design: no wallet connection, no signing, no transactions. Use your own wallet to delegate.
Does 0% commission mean the best validator?
Not automatically. A 0% validator with poor performance or a habit of raising commission later can earn you less. Look at performance and history too.
Where does the SOL supply number come from?
From Jupiter's token index for wrapped SOL (total supply). The RPC supply method is blocked on the public node we use, so treat the staked-share figure as approximate.
Limits & honesty
- Data sources: public Solana RPC (publicnode) for inflation, epoch, performance samples, rent and vote accounts; Jupiter for SOL price and supply.
- Not included: MEV / tip sharing, priority-fee sharing, liquid-staking pool fees, taxes, SOL price moves.
- Approximations: the base APR divides inflation by staked share of a third-party supply figure. Performance compares last-epoch credits to the 95th percentile.
- Rate limits: the vote-account list (~300 KB) is fetched once and cached for 10 minutes; the epoch clock refreshes every 30 seconds.
- Read-only. No wallet, no signing, no personal data. Not financial advice.