By the way, could someone clarify the relationship between Paradox and these two operators who have been previously flagged as bad actors? It appears there are recurring monthly transfers between them, and it would be helpful to understand the nature and justification of these payments.
If there is a legitimate operational reason for this, it should be clearly documented so the community can properly assess it.
My two cents on these issues with commission and validators is that a health monitor for nominators could help mitigate this kind of issues.
I posted about it here Alerting nominators the moment a validator flips commission or changes identity (feedback wanted)
Initially the idea would be around notifying the nominators about commission flips but since the new referendas might solve that, i’m leaning more towards a health monitor for nominators, I think tracking these kind of information would help create validators profile so nominators don’t have to go through all this trouble.
The focus would be to notify about these topics:
I’d really appreciate some feedback on this, if it might solve the problem or just shove the problem under the rug
The displayed commission only reflects the percentage of staking rewards retained by the validator at the time rewards are distributed. It doesn’t necessarily indicate how much the validator earns overall, since total validator revenue also depends on factors such as self-stake, the amount of delegated stake, and whether the commission changed during the era.
If a validator is operating multiple identities or adjusting commissions throughout the day, it can certainly make reward calculations less intuitive for nominators. This is one reason why I think transparency around validator operations is just as important as headline metrics like commission rates.
When evaluating validators, I tend to look beyond the commission percentage and consider infrastructure quality, operational history, governance participation, security practices, and long-term reliability. Those factors often have a much greater impact on the health of the network than temporary commission strategies.
Our team recently explored these broader evaluation criteria in a review of what distinguishes high-quality Web3 staking providers, particularly from the perspectives of reliability, transparency, and infrastructure rather than simply advertised returns: Crouton Digital 2026: Best Verified Web3 Staking? Rewards, Risks & UX (vs Lido, Rocket Pool, Binance) .
I’d also be interested to hear whether anyone has analyzed these specific validator identities over multiple eras to determine if the observed rewards are simply a result of stake distribution or whether commission changes are contributing to the discrepancy.
Let’s be honest.
Polkadot has had multiple bad actors running several validator identities while commission flipping to mislead nominators, as described in this thread. Despite this being publicly known, many of them are still in the active validator set, and no meaningful action has been taken.
So what’s the point of building another app or script to detect and report this behavior?
If there are no consequences for validators who repeatedly engage in these practices, detecting them changes nothing. The problem isn’t the lack of monitoring tools, it’s the lack of enforcement.
Until the ecosystem is willing to act on this kind of behavior, another dashboard or notification bot is just treating the symptoms, not the disease.
To be noted that post ref 1909 on Polkadot, and starting from era 2220, commission is set to 0% for all validators and also min and max commission are set to 0%, effectively disabling commission mechanism completely (not needed anymore now that we have a self-stake incentive for validators).
I agree, this does not solve the actual issue but help the nominator act when it happens. After I’ve read the referendas #1909 detecting commission flip would be useless because it would not happen anymore but having such application might help nominators choose more carefully when staking with some validator, by looking at their behaviour overall.
Not sure if it’s good enough to get a grant though, which was my goal initially.
Here’s a list of those bad actors who are still in Polkadot’s active validator set.
Coinstudio
CP287-CLOUDWALK
Cypher Labs
GuruStaking
Mile
Mile/Bravo
ProStakers com
ProStakers com 
/02
STAKE HULK
/Alpha
StakedTech/ONE
Swiss Bond
Swiss Bond/in Davos
Tesla
HODL.FARM
HODL.FARM /B
HODL.FARM /C
YellowFin Tuna
YellowFin Tuna/
Adriatic
If the commission mechanism is gone, great. But why are validators with a documented history of commission flipping still active?
Isn’t anyone from W3F or Parity willing to submit a referendum to chill these validators and help clean up the ecosystem?
If we simply ignore past abusive behavior, we’re sending the message that there are no consequences for it, and the ecosystem remains polluted.
Isn’t anyone from W3F or Parity willing to submit a referendum to chill these validators and help clean up the ecosystem?
Friendly reminder that anyone can submit a referendum on Polkadot, not just W3F or Parity.
Technically, yes anyone can submit a referendum.
Practically, the average DOT holder has neither the knowledge, the visibility, nor the influence to coordinate something like this.
So instead of pointing out that “anyone can do it,” why not support a referendum to remove validators with a documented history of abusive behavior? If we all agree commission flipping was harmful, why keep pretending it’s someone else’s responsibility to deal with the consequences?
