That’s what I have been saying, and precisely the reason why there is no need to slash anyone in order to address this “commission flipping” behavior.
Nominators that keep taps on their nominations and use modern tools won’t fall for these little tricks. Also, once again, as I already said before:
Please, read the comments before posting “flashy” and overly-simplistic nonsense.
Hi @Megadot - Seems like my deigenvektor validator 1guBaaUmYpYPmsNmooQApqFmpmRHeaipb1CxoncMuiaqXGh was caught up in this accusation as well.
I have adjusted the commission to 0% from 5% yesterday. However I do not adjust the commission intra-day (adjustments to commissions are done extremely rarely) as you can see in the extrinsics history and this is just a “regular” change in commission that we decided to do for one of our validators. I assume that I still received the 5% reward this morning, since the new commission was not in effect yet. Cheers! 
I’m guessing that what you meant to say is that you adjusted it from 5% to 0% yesterday, right? 
(strictly speaking you adjusted it to 0.0000001% 
)
Because I have checked, and I can clearly see that the commission charged in the latest recent eras was 5%.
Anyhow, I have checked your case, and -at least at a first glance- everything seems like a completely normal change of preferences. In fact, in a way that benefits your nominators! 
Please @Megadot be more careful, because you could seriously damage the reputation of reputable validators. Ideally, please share the method that you have used to come up with these “flippers” and allow for others to review it.
I will try to carve some time to create an OSS PAPI script to surface the validators that have been acting this way. That way anyone can review/improve the script and validate the data themselves.
You’re totally right, and I’m really sorry for getting you caught up in this mess that isn’t your fault.
If you check my first message, I was asking how a validator with 0% commission could be earning 47 DOT per day. Later, another community member suggested looking at the historical commission changes, and that’s when it became clear that your behavior was completely normal, and that other validators were the ones acting unethically.
My apologies for the confusion and any hassle this caused!
Thanks for the kind reply. Maybe I could have worded it better but in my view:
and
imply the same
Regarding the larger discussion. In my view such behavior is very misleading and bad for trust, but should be expected from rational actors (who do not expect nominators to notice) in such a system. So adding tools for nominators to notice and properly choose reliable validators sounds like the right approach.
Indeed! super sorry about that! It was late and my mind played some weird trick on me… For some reason my brain read “from → to” 
The question now is, did the developer of the Staking UI not know about this problem for so long? There are two equally terrible conclusions here: incompetence, or a malicious alliance with some validators.
The PAPI tool for detecting these kinds of abuses is an excellent proposal for the community, and it’s clear that we should continue working on improving the UX and better educating nominators. Tools like this are genuinely valuable and move the ecosystem in the right direction.
That said, the behavior of these validators is completely unacceptable, especially considering that one of them is also acting as a curator in multiple bounties while receiving thousands of dollars per month from the ecosystem.
For example, Coinstudio has been a curator of **Polkadot bounties 31, 50 (**related post about this curator role in IBP) and 62, as well as several others in Kusama.
In addition, they operate multiple System Chains collators across both Kusama and Polkadot, and also act as a Paseo validator.
This represents a serious breach of trust and is extremely damaging to the credibility of the ecosystem. In my view, Web3 Foundation and Parity should take decisive action, including removing this individual from such positions and ensuring they no longer benefit from roles that require integrity and accountability.
@bill_w3f @kianenigma @Karim @Eric-W3F @alexdimes @alejandro @michalis @Birdo @ScytaleDigital
To clarify my position and address the recent name calling and accusations, I want to provide the full context around my commission changes.
For a long period of time, my commission was stable and predictable, which is easy to verify in the commission history here:
Due to the recent Phragmén election issue (roughly 20 days ago), around 30% of nominator accounts were not included in the election process. As a result, I dropped out of the active set after a long time.
Following that, I experimented briefly with commission rotation over last 2 weeks, keeping it at 5% for half of the day and 0% for the other half, to see whether it had any impact on existing or new nominations.
While I could argue that there are currently no explicit rules or time constraints around commission changes, thats not the point I want to make. I understand the concern, and I can see how this behavior may look from the outside.
To summarize, the commission changes were limited to roughly the last two weeks following the election issue. I ve since reverted back to the stable commission model I had before, which is what I intend to maintain going forward.
Regarding the alt account Megadot: since you’ve already decided to take on the role of judge, jury, and executioner while spreading repeated accusations against people, it would be appropriate to come forward with your real ecosystem identity and take responsibility for the claims you are making. Public allegations carry consequences, and accountability should apply equally to those making them.
I’m not a judge of anything, but I find it astonishing that someone receiving thousands of dollars from the ecosystem across multiple roles can behave so unethically toward the community out of sheer greed.
If there was an issue with your nominations that caused your node to be inactive for a week? Two weeks? — that is no justification for inappropriate behavior.
If that month you earned $5,000 instead of $6,000, that’s unfortunate, but you should not shift the consequences of your own nomination issues onto nominators by changing commissions. That is a clear abuse of trust and a blatant example of misconduct.
I truly believe that W3F should remove you from the ecosystem to prevent further damage to its reputation.
I’m surprised that you are pretending to be naive by claiming you left your commission at 5% for half the day and 0% for the other half, as if that would make your average commission 2.5%.
Everyone knows that your behavior was deliberate, and you always charged 5%, because you made the changes before the election.
I’d like to just give everyone a little reminder here that the Polkadot network/protocol is fully permissionless and decentralized.
Tagging people not involved in the conversation is explicitly against forum rules. Consider this a warning. Thanks!
I don’t know @CoinStudio personally, and I’m not in a position to form an opinion about the accusations that have been made against him/her/them?
That said, I do agree with this specific point: if someone is going to make repeated public allegations about others, it’s reasonable to expect them to do so under their real ecosystem identity and to take responsibility for what they’re claiming. Public accusations have real consequences, and accountability should apply to the accuser as well.
More broadly, I’m concerned by the pattern of these alt accounts. Some of them come across less like neutral “whistleblowers” and more like they may have an agenda or personal vendetta against certain people. For example, the fact that these seemingly justice-seeking alt-accounts never address issues like what happened with PixelProof, or the fiasco of the UX bounty (to provide some examples) makes me worry they’re being selective or partisan. It genuinely worries me that whoever is behind these alt accounts could be worse than the people they’re targeting.
Just as you don’t like others commenting on unrelated topics when you start a thread, let’s focus on the facts that are fully documented and leave aside any speculations or digressions. 
We analyzed staking data since the Asset Hub migration, specifically ValidatorPrefsSet events where the commission value changed.
The data is grouped by validator and by month. We filtered for validators that recorded 10 or more commission changes within a single month.
This analysis is based on chain data from Dotlake and is shared to support the discussion. You can find the data in this google sheet.
Guilty as charged😬
Started using it as an experiment to stay in the active set and not lose nominations.
I agree that this is unethical and deceiving, but wouldn’t call it malicious as some do. My actions were clearly visible to anyone looking at their rewards occasionally and browsing the chain, despite the fact that poor UI concealed this practice.
For what it’s worth - I did not invent this approach, I noticed other validators using it back in the 1kv days and even warned against such practices. However nothing was done to tackle this problem, despite some good suggestions on how UI can be improved to warn nominators of such practices.
So I resorted to this practice in a time of need since there are (currently!) no explicit rules regarding this issue.
However, I do understand the concerns and my behaviour is certainly in the gray area of unethical, despite not braking any rules of the ecosystem.
I will refrain from such practices in the future, as I did in period previous to this practice.
I would like to underline that my behaviour points to a serious problem of Dotsama ecosystem - validators are ‘evaluated’ only on the basis of their current commission since there is no other easily accessible/visible merit for nominators to use when selecting the validators to nominate. Commission is usually solely criteria used by nominators to chose validators.
Also, as others rightly suggested, this affair should be used to set a clear set of rules for all validators to abide in the future, with clear measures that can be undertaken against them if they break them.
I would say, the most effective response, without negatively affecting nominators, would be for W3F to remove its DN program nominations. Unfortunate timing though, as the program is ending this month anyway :l
First of all, congratulations on the great work of shedding light on this issue — it’s genuinely valuable for the community.
I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to go further back in time, before the Asset Hub migration, as it appears that some actors, such as YellowFin Tuna, may have been engaging in this behavior since 2024 according to onchain data.
Based on the activity visible on your GitHub profile, I understand that you are BlueFinTuna.
I was surprised by your response. It appears that this pattern of commission changes has been ongoing since 2024 according to onchain data, and is now being justified by the fact that other validators engaged in similar behavior or that the ecosytem has UI limitations.
Participation in ecosystem validator programs such as 1KV is voluntary. Given the information asymmetry between validators and nominators, repeatedly adjusting commissions in this manner raises legitimate concerns about alignment with community expectations.
Validators who benefit from special roles or privileges, such as invulnerable positions, are generally expected to operate under a higher standard of transparency and integrity than the minimum required by protocol rules.
Considering that roles such as system chain invulnerable positions @OliverTY and participation in Paseo Network @alejandro appear to be granted rather than fully permissionless, it would be reasonable for the ecosystem to review whether continued participation under these conditions remains appropriate.
It appears that these behaviors have been discussed for years across multiple validators but never properly resolved. While improving the UI and nominator education may help mitigate some of the issues, I am increasingly inclined to believe that protocol-level changes are necessary to address this problem definitively and prevent it from resurfacing.
