Top 10 Tezos validators for staking - March 2022

Alan Sunny

Mar 27, 2022 — 3 min read

Tezos validators

If you are looking to stake your Tezos token but unsure of which is the best Tezos validator to pick for delegation, then this guide will help you choose a validator to stake.

Tezos Baking & Validator

“Baking” is the act of signing and publishing blocks to the Tezos blockchain. Bakers are a crucial component of the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism by ensuring that all transactions in a block are correct, that the order of transactions is agreed upon, and that no double-spending has occurred. - Tezos.com

In other words, baker is the name for validator in Tezos protocol. Baking means validating.

How to select validator/baker to stake Tezos?

Fees. How much of the rewards the baker is keeping?
Capacity. Each baker has a capacity of how many coins it can accept, which is based on how many coins it currently holds itself. A baker is "overdelegated" when it has exceeded the amount of delegation it can take considering the coins they currently hold.
Reliability + Responsiveness. Does this baker pay out on time? Does this baker pay correctly? Will this baker respond to my questions about their services? Many bakers operate forums and chat rooms in which they engage with delegators.
Security. Is this baker's staking setup secure? Does this baker have a track record? Has this baker double-baked in the past and lost coins?

Warning: Tezos Validators selected in this post are only relevant for the time of writing as the state of validators can change any point in time. The below selected validators are chosen just based on personal opinion factors and you should always do your own due diligence. Highly recommend everyone always monitor staking rewards and their bakers using Baking Bad or Tezos Nodes.

Best Tezos validators based on high rewards

The Tezos validators are chosen based on high reward (Yield), free space of minimum 1000 Tezos & reliability points above 60%+. The current annual yield on staking Tezos is around 6%, minus a validator's fees.

Also interesting our article on the topic of the best staking platforms for AVAX.

Tezos validators metrics explained

Tezos Nodes.com is a reliability rating service for public Tezos Bakers and a service for monitoring the state of node performance for non-public Tezos Bakers. Below are the metrics used by Tezos nodes dashboard on rating bakers/validators.

Lifetime — the number of node operation cycles
Yield — yearly profit taking into account efficiency and fee
Efficiency — the effectiveness of the node for year
Last 10 — the effectiveness of the node over the past 10 cycles
Fee — charges to run their node service
Support — availability of support 24/7 for delegates
Projects — Baker's personal projects
Payouts — payout period
Free Space — free space for delegation
Total Points — points reliability