StakeNet Terminology

Steward Program: An Anchor program designed to manage the staking authority for a SPL Stake Pool, selecting and managing validators based on performance metrics.

SPL Stake Pool: A Solana program that allows for the creation of stake pools, enabling users to delegate their stake to multiple validators through a single pool and receive a Liquid Staking Token (LST) representing their stake.

Validator History Program: A Solana program that maintains historical performance data for validators. It records and stores various metrics over time on-chain.

Delegation: The amount of stake targeted to a specific validator by the Steward Program.

State Machine: The core logic of the Steward Program that manages different operational states and transitions between them.

Cycle: A period of time (currently 10 epochs) in the Steward Program during which validators are selected and delegations are managed. The scores and validator selections are fixed for the duration of a cycle.

Validator Score: A numerical representation of a validator's performance and desirability within the Steward Program.

Yield Score: A component of the validator score that represents the validator's efficiency in generating rewards for delegators, taking into account factors like epoch credits and commission.

Rebalancing: The process of adjusting stake allocations among validators to maintain desired proportions or react to performance changes.

Instant Unstaking: A process that allows for immediate removal of staked SOL under certain conditions from a validator, bypassing usual rebalancing.

Blacklist: A list of validators that are excluded from receiving delegations through the Steward Program.

Delinquency: A state where a validator is not its duties adequately, often measured by missed vote opportunities. In the context of the Steward Program, this is measured by voting less than a specific threshold in a given epoch.

Epoch Credits: A measure of a validator's performance, representing the number of times it has correctly voted on blocks in a given epoch. Directly impacts validator staking rewards. Also known as Vote Credits.

Commission: The percentage of rewards that a validator keeps for itself before distributing the remainder to its delegators.

Superminority: The highest-staked validators in the network who collectively hold more than 33.3% of the stake.