This document explains how the rewards for validator are evaluated and displayed on the Aptos Validator Status page.

## How rewards are calculated​

Staking documentation

For a backgrounder on staking with explanations of epoch, rewards and how to join and leave validator set, see the Staking.

• An epoch starts with a finalized validator set. During the epoch, only validators in this validator set will vote.
• Epoch value on the mainnet is set by the governance. See Aptos Blockchain Deployments for epoch values for other Aptos networks.
• During the epoch, following the process described in Validation on the Aptos blockchain, a validator is selected as a leader to make a proposal. Because the validator set is unchanged during the course of an epoch, this will result in a validator being selected multiple times as a leader in an epoch.
• On successful proposals, i.e., proposals achieving the quorum consensus, the leaders earn rewards based on their stake and on the reward rate that is configured on-chain. The reward rate is the same for every validator.
• If all the proposals in an epoch achieve quorum consensus, a validator earns the maximum reward for the epoch. Rewards are given only to the leader validators, and not to the voters.
• On failed proposals, i.e., a proposal that did not achieve the quorum consensus, the leaders do not earn any reward for that proposal.
• If all the proposals in an epoch fail, a validator earns zero rewards for that epoch.

### Example​

Rewards are given only at the end of the epoch

Note that the rewards are given only at the end of the epoch, not on every block.

The reward a leader receives is calculated by multiplying the maximum possible reward with the leader's proposal success rate. For example:

• A leader with 8 successful and 2 failed proposals will receive 80% of maximum reward.
• Similarly, another leader with 80 successful and 20 failed proposal will also receive 80% of maximum reward.
• Also, two leaders with no failures but one with 10 and another with 100 successful proposals will get the same % of the maximum reward.
Reward rate is the same

Note also that the reward rate is the same for every validator. Hence the maximum reward is directly proportional to the staking amount, i.e., the more a validator stakes, the more the validator can earn in absolute terms.

## Rewards performance​

• The REWARDS PERFORMANCE column shows the rewards performance of a validator. It is calculated as a % of reward earned by the validator out of the maximum reward earning opportunity i.e., (rewards earned across the epochs)/(maximum reward opportunity across the epochs). This is a cumulative metric across all the epochs.
• A validator can improve their performance by improving their proposal success rate.

## Last epoch performance​

The LAST EPOCH PERFORMANCE column shown on the leaderboard is reported as (number of successful proposals)/(number of total proposal opportunities).

• This metric gives you an early indicator if your performance is slowly reducing.
• You can see the JSON dump (link on the leaderboard) to see the performance across all the epochs.
• On mouse hover, you can see the last epoch for the validator.

The GOVERNANCE VOTES column shown on the leaderboard is reported as (governance proposals voted on)/(total governance votes).