What is Commission?
Commission is the percentage of the staking rewards a validator gets to keep before sending the rest of the rewards to you, the delegator.
Historically, commission was one number applied to inflation rewards, that was set by the validator and could be seen on-chain by everyone. Commission rates generally ranged from 0-10%. If a validator set their commission to 100%, it was a big red flag. This is because every time that validator produced a new block, all the rewards would go to the operator, while delegators saw nothing.
Think of commission like a talent agent taking their cut. The agent books all of the gigs and handles all the logistics, but they do need to take a percentage of your earnings. But you still own the act and have control of when you want to change agents. Your validator manages the infrastructure and does the work of voting and producing blocks for you. In return, you pay them a fee for these services. If you don't like the way they work, you can "fire" them by redelegating to a different validator.
For example, if you delegate 100 SOL (about $8,000 USD at the $80 USD price point), and the network's gross yield is near 7%, you would generate approximately 7 SOL in rewards after a full year if you didn't have to pay any fees. With a validator commission rate of 5%, 0.35 SOL (5% of 7) would be sent to the validator, and you'd end up with 6.65 SOL.
Between a 0-10% commission rate, a validator's performance in uptime and vote performance will have just as much impact on your rewards as the commission rate you are charging them.
How Commission is Changing in 2026
Commission is being updated and improved in 2026 with Vote Account V4, which was proposed and shipped by SIMD-0185. Now, commission will consist of two separate rates: the inflation commission rate we're all used to, and a new rate called block revenue commission. Block revenue is the block production base fee and priority fee a validator collects from users whenever their validator produces blocks, or in layman's terms, when they vote with the rest of the network.
In contrast to the inflation commission, this block revenue commission will be tracked in basis points (which means hundredths of a percentage point). Additionally, with SIMD-0123, the commission will no longer be an off-chain promise by the validator operator to their validators. Instead, it will be fully enforced on-chain and each epoch, the delegators' cut of the reward will be distributed automatically.
This distinction is important because previously, block revenue commission was not tracked at all. If a validator set it to 100% it wasn't tracked on-chain, so delegators would have no clue. Most validators did. Now that the commission will be enforced and public on-chain, it is something that can differentiate one validator from another. Two validators with different inflation commission rates and both charging 5% could still have a very different yield for delegators, depending on the difference in block revenue commission.
How Commission Compares to Ethereum
In Ethereum, if you want to stake with your own stake (so-called "solo staking"), you get all of the rewards. However, you have to lock up 32 ETH ($100,000+ USD). You also have to manage all of the infrastructure yourself. If you're delegating, you most likely do so through a staking pool, and Lido charges its customers ~10% of all staking rewards, and this commission is static.
Solana is different: there are hundreds of validators and you can delegate to anyone of them who advertise an inflation rate on-chain. You only incur one redelegation tx to redelegate to another one. Even better, Marinade makes this a seamless experience where it automatically distributes its stake amongst validators based on its performance and fee criteria.
Why Commission Matters
Of all of the staking variables, commission rate is the only variable you have 100% control over. Spend the five minutes it takes to research a validator before delegating to them through Phantom and check them out on Solana Compass. You should look at the inflation commission, the block revenue commission, the uptime, the vote performance, the total stake, and other factors that can impact their ability to vote.
The easiest way to get screwed by validators is when you delegate to them in good faith while the validator is advertising their fee, and then they pull an old commission "rug," where they charge 0% fee but suddenly raise the fee to 100% right before rewards payout. The inflation rate is on-chain, which means it can change at any moment. This is something that you can't trust to not be different next month; a commission rate you saw in January is not the same as the commission rate the validator charges you in June. Commission rates change, monitoring tools can alert you if the commission rate changes, but only if you're paying attention.
The one caveat here is that a 0% inflation fee is not necessarily the best deal. Validators have to be able to cover their hardware costs and run reliably, which is a cost for them to pay. A 0% fee is usually indicative that they're selling you something for less than what it's worth; they're trying to build volume by running a loss-leader business model that isn't sustainable long-term. This is why you're more likely to see a steady 5% validator outperforming a 0% validator over a 1 year compounding period, assuming that the 5% one votes more often and is more reliable.
Should you always pick the lowest commission?
You should not always pick the lowest rate- pick the best net yield instead, which means weighing uptime, vote performance, and block revenue sharing alongside the headline percentage.
