Hello Flow community,
We want to let everyone know that we are making an adjustment to the structure and timing of reward payouts and epochs ending. Previously, staking rewards were paid out at 6:00am PT on Tuesday, every week, for all users that had FLOW staked. Epochs would then end at 10:00pm PT on Tuesdays later in the day, leaving a window to restake rewards earned earlier in the day for the next epoch.
We will be now unifying staking reward payouts, and epoch ending times, at
8:00am PT Tuesday (15:00 UTC) going forward. This update was needed to ensure better security for the network. With the prior model, rewards were being paid out before the work (epoch) was completed, which could create some potential attack vectors. With the new update, both Rewards and EndEpoch will be executed in the same transaction.
How will this affect stakers/delegators?
Because epochs end before the reward is paid out, participants will not be able to restake in time for the next epoch. The staking request will be processed by the network at the next epoch.
Will this affect staking rewards?
This will affect only the earning of the restaked amount, not the existing staking, and the impact should be negligible. Your staking reward is calculated based on your staking percentage of the total tokens staked. If everyone were to restake their rewards, your actual ratio will remain the same as before. Given all participants across the network will have the same delay with the reward staking by a week, the actual reward should not change significantly.
This was not a decision the Flow team made lightly, however, it is one that had to be made to ensure long-term stability throughout the entire ecosystem. We appreciate your understanding as we make this change to rewards. Our team is here to answer any questions you have regarding this new structure.
For more information, we’ve updated our Rewards page on our DocsSite:
https://docs.onflow.org/staking/rewards
