Great article Faraz!
I would like to add that fees don’t really impact APY that much, for example:
The APY for a node with 1% fee and the APY for a node with 3% fee is very close: 11.68% vs 11.44%.
Thus, uptime is more important than fee!
Also, as a TL:DR I would add:
Things to consider to choose a validator node:
- Total Delegated Stake (less than 1% would be great)
- Uptime (avoid 98% or lower, prefer 100%)
- Infrastructure (hardware, backup node, backup internet connection…)
- Owner reachability and community presence
- Owner delegation (important for nodes outside the top 100)
- Geographical location
- Fees
And a few starting tips:
DO your own research on the node runner
DO delegate to at least 5 different validators with less than 2% of total network stake
DO prefer validators to the bottom of the list
DO contact the node runner if you have any questions or doubts
DO NOT blindly stake to the top validators
DO NOT put all your eggs in a basket by delegating to just one node
DO NOT stake your whole balance. You need 0.6 XRD to request an unstake to ONE node.
If you want to read more, check out this article on my wiki!