What is a Solana validator?

A Solana validator is a server running the Solana node software (Agave or Firedancer). Validators are the computers that produce blocks, vote on the validity of other blocks, and keep the network running. There are roughly 1,400 active validators at any given time.

What validators actually do

• Vote on blocks. Every slot (~400ms), one validator is chosen as the leader. The rest vote on whether that leader's block is valid. Voting is what costs validators SOL — every vote is a transaction.
• Produce blocks when leader. About every 432nd slot, your validator gets a turn to produce blocks. Block production is where rewards (and MEV) come from.
• Hold stake. Validators are weighted by how much SOL is staked to them. More stake = more frequent leader slots = more rewards.

What it costs to run one

Solana validators are expensive to operate compared to most chains:

• Hardware: ~$500–2,000/month for a dedicated server (AMD EPYC class, 256GB+ RAM, NVMe SSDs).
• Bandwidth: 1–10 TB/month of egress.
• Vote credits: ~1 SOL/day in voting transaction fees, regardless of whether you earn rewards.

This is why most stake is concentrated in larger validator operators — running one full-time costs at least $30k/year, and you don't break even on operations until you have ~30,000 SOL staked to you.

How a delegator chooses a validator

If you are staking SOL (delegating, not running a validator yourself), three things matter:

1. Commission. Validators take a cut of staking rewards as commission. The chain-wide weighted average is around 6–8%. Below 5% is generous, above 10% is high. Watch out for 0% commission validators — they are sometimes loss-leaders that flip to high commission later.
2. Uptime / vote performance. Validators that miss votes or skip leader slots earn less and pay you less. Look for >95% vote success.
3. Decentralization. The Solana Foundation explicitly asks delegators to avoid the largest validators (the "superminority" — the smallest set of validators that together hold >33% of stake). If you delegate to a smaller validator, you make the chain harder to halt.

Where to find validator data

• Stakewiz — sortable list with commission, vote success, APY, and a "Skip Rate" metric.
• Solana Beach — comparable explorer with delegation distribution charts.
• Validators.app — older but has good historical data.

If you do not want to choose a validator yourself, liquid staking tokens like JitoSOL or mSOL distribute your stake across a diversified set automatically.