This is the MOST OVERLOOKED metric costing Flare stakers & delegators rewards right now.
Anyone staking to Flare validators or delegating to providers must be aware of the “minimum conditions” introduced in the last major FTSO update. Although this system has been in place for some time.
If you're delegating FLR, understanding these conditions and their impact on your rewards is crucial.
Every reward epoch, each entity (data providers/validators), is graded on their performance and either earn or lose "passes".
This is a system that decides if the entity (and their delegators) will keep their rewards.
They are judged on four protocols (conditions):
1⃣ FTSO (anchor feeds): Submit prices close the consensus median within a 0.5% band in at least 80% of rounds.
2⃣ FTSO (block-latency feeds): Submit at least 80% of expected updates (based on entities weight, entities with <0.2% of total wait are exempt).
3⃣ FDC (data connector): Participate successfully in 60% of rewarded rounds.
4⃣ Validators (staking): Validator must maintain 80% uptime and maintain at least 1m FLR self-bond.
Passes are like "get out of jail free" cards, and each entity can have at 3 passes at most.
When an entity fails to meet any one of the previously mentioned conditions, they lose a pass. Rewards are not at risk so long as the entity finishes a reward epoch with at least 0 or more passes.
In other words, an entity may fail at most 3 of the conditions and still be eligible for rewards. But if they fail all 4 conditions or have no passes AND fail a condition, their rewards are burned for that reward epoch (again, including their delegators).
All entities start with 0 passes and can earn passes (up to 3) by meeting all conditions for a given reward epoch.
There is a small caveat for entities to earn additional passes which is that they must have 3M FLR self-bond AND 15M FLR total active stake. This applies only for earning passes and does not lose strikes (as noted, only 1M FLR self-bond is required to meet the minimal staking condition.
For clarity, a provider who doesn't meet minimal conditions and has no passes will have all their reward burned, not just for individual protocols they fail, but for ALL. This includes "delegation" to data provider AND validator delegations.
It is typically okay for a provider form time to time to lose a pass, so it is more important to view the providers HISTORY of minimum conditions.
How quickly did they regain passes? Do they often lose passes?
Where can you see this? Flare Metrics.