Validator Commissions:
A Victimless Crime

Stakers want to make as much money as possible.

It is perfectly reasonable to expect that your validator charging a 0% commission is the best way to maximize your return on investment.

The Pesky Penguins validator charges a 5% commission, and for the individuals who stake with us, it's a better deal than 0%.

Let's break it down:

Where does our stake come from?

As I write this article, the Pesky Penguins validator has 106,884 SOL staked at it worth an incredible $20M USD.

Half of this stake comes from the Solana Foundation courtesy of their Delegation Program, though by January 2026 this will drop to a third of our stake as a result of upcoming changes.

Then there are a number of stake pools who delegate to the validator. Then there's my wallets. Here's what the breakdown looks like:

Notable Stakers:

• Solana Foundation: 51,651 SOL
• Firedancer: 20,052 SOL
• The Valut: 10,534 SOL
• DoubleZero: 9,143 SOL
• aeroSOL: 4,945 SOL
• BlazeStake: 714 SOL
• The Snowball: 351 SOL
• NFP: 7,031 SOL

TOTAL: 104,421 SOL

This means that 97.7% of our stake at the validator comes from organizations or the project itself. Our 5% commission? It directly impacts only 2.3% of the stake at our validator. These stakers receive an OUTSIZED advantage.

Stakers Win BIG

Operating a validator is not cheap, and it's very hard to make any money at all when you have less than 6-figures of SOL staked to the validator.

Thankfully, the Pesky Penguins validator has been returning a profit, and we're also transparent about where that profit is deployed. In the past two weeks:

• 3.346 SOL of profits deployed to the Nest Egg
• 1.682 SOL of profits deployed to the Snowball

Let's do some math real quick:

There's 2,463 SOL staked to the validator by individual Pesky Penguins holders.

The amount of individuals' lost staking revenue as a result of our 5% commission is:

2463 SOL
✖️ .063 [current validator APY] 
✖️ .05 [commission] 
➗ 26 (two week's worth) 

Equals 0.298 SOL of lost revenue for stakers in the past two weeks. This is the TOTAL opportunity cost of staking at Pesky Penguins validator of all our direct stakers compared with a 0% commission validator.

Now compare that 0.298 SOL of lost revenue with the 3.346 SOL that was added to the Nest Egg. Oh yes, and we matched with an equivalent amount of $PESKY, so we deployed 6.692 SOL worth of liquidity to the Nest Egg.

Every staker who stakes with the Pesky Penguins Validator earns $PESKY that can be claimed weekly. But do you think on-chain SPL programs like the Solana Foundation Delegation Program are going to claim any $PESKY? Absolutely not.

Individuals who claim $PESKY for staking with us have the opportunity to sell it on the open market, and thanks to the Nest Egg, market liquidity gets deeper every week.

A 5% Commission means MORE SOL for Stakers

The math speaks for itself: stakers can park their SOL at a 0% validator to avoid paying a commission.

OR, stakers can stake at the Pesky Penguins validator where the profits generated from commissions is deployed into a liquidity pool at a rate 22.4x higher than the opportunity cost of staking somewhere else.

So which would you choose? A validator that charges 0% but keeps all profits to themselves? Or the one that funnels the commission charged to mindless on-chain protocols into a liquidity protocol for human supporters?

NOOT NOOT

Claim your $PESKY today at https://nootopia.app/staking

Stake your SOL at the Pesky Penguins validator at https://pesky-penguins.com or by searching for "Pesky" in your favorite Solana wallet.