PIP-70: Increase Minstake to 100k POL

[H_Rook]

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PIP: 70
Title: Increase Minstake to 100k POL
Author: Harry Rook, Kaitlin Beegle
Description: Increase the minimum self-stake for new validators to 100k POL
Status: Draft
Type: Contracts
Date: 2025-07-29

Abstract

Polygon PoS requires each new validator to self-stake a minimum amount of POL before joining the active validator set. This minimum self-stake is enforced by the StakeManager contract via a minDeposit parameter on the stakeFor function.

Currently, the threshold is municipal at 1 POL; we propose to raise the minimum self-stake for new validators to 100,000 POL tokens. This higher threshold will apply only to validators onboarding in the future.

The goal is to strengthen network security and integrity by ensuring new validators have a significant stake at risk, without disrupting current validators or delegators.

Motivation

The existing self-stake threshold for Polygon PoS validators is inadequate to ensure optimal security and incentive alignment. With the minimum currently at just 1 POL, an aspiring validator can join the validator set with virtually no skin in the game. This low bar presents several problems:

• Weak incentive alignment: Validators with negligible self-stake have less financial incentive to behave correctly. A higher self-bond means new validators have more at risk, aligning their interests with network health and security.

• Opportunistic behavior (“sniping”): The low entry requirement enables opportunistic validators to quickly spin up nodes with minimal stake to exploit situations like validator slot openings. By substantially raising the requirement, we aim to discourage “slot sniping” and ensure only serious, long-term participants enter the validator set.

Specification

We propose to update the minDeposit parameter in the Polygon PoS StakeManager contract to 100,000 POL (100k * 10^18 in base units).

Changing the minDeposit does not require a contract code upgrade; it is a configurable parameter. For this purpose, the StakeManager contract exposes a governance function:

updateMinAmounts uint256 _minDeposit, uint256 _minHeimdallFee

Because the StakeManager is an upgradeable proxy contract, no redeployment is needed; we are simply updating a storage variable in the existing contract.

This change affects the requirements for initial self-staking of new validators as follows:

• StakeManager minDeposit: The StakeManager contract on Ethereum maintains a public variable minDeposit denominated in POL. The stakeFor(address user, uint256 amount, ...) function enforces that any new validator’s stake amount must be ≥ minDeposit.

We will raise this parameter to 100,000 POL. After the update, any call to stakeFor with an amount less than 100k POL will revert with the "not enough deposit" error.

Backwards Compatibility

This proposal is fully backward-compatible with the current Polygon chain system in the sense that it does not introduce any breaking changes to consensus or contract interfaces.

Security Considerations

Overall, increasing the minStake substantially risks pricing out potential validators should the USD valuation of POL rise dramatically.

For this reason, we have opted for a conservative 100k POL initial increase.

Copyright

All copyrights and related rights in this work are waived under CC0 1.0 Universal.

[diminiko]

Agreed, need a solid min stake for security reasons alone

[0xD0A4004d1916C0F93D]

100K POL is US$21K today, July 31, 2025.
The current system requiring just 1 POL stake could lead to hundreds of thousands of validators with just 1 POL each launching some form of attack. Increasing the minimum stake makes these types of attack far harder.

I support increasing the minimum stake because it will improve the security of the protocol.

[infra_john]

Weak accept from me

Improving incentive alignment and preventing sniping is good. 100k POL is a reasonable number compared to the Polygon staking TVL size, as mentioned in the call.

As discussed in the governance call, this change is not retroactive and won’t cause a massive exit of existing validators who do not meet the requirement.

Long answer: https://medium.com/@nodeinfra/polygon-governance-pip-70-96862c82a095

[Tane]

We generally agree with the intent here.
While we do not think that having some validators staking only 1 or 10 POL would cause catastrophic damage to the network, setting bonding requirements so that validators have a meaningful economic stake is an effective way to align incentives with Polygon’s growth.

The proposed 100k POL requirement, which is around 24k USD at current prices, does not seem excessively high in absolute terms. That said, in other networks, within Ethereum’s liquid staking ecosystem, for example, the bond requirements for non-professional node operators are often in the range of 2 ETH or 4 ETH. At current prices, 2 ETH is roughly 7.3k USD, and 4 ETH is about 14.6k USD. Compared to these figures, 100k POL is on the higher side. We understand the reasoning for raising the threshold, yet for small-scale or individual operators, a 100k POL threshold could present a relatively high barrier to entry.

We support the idea of increasing the requirement, but preserving a healthy degree of decentralization will depend on keeping entry barriers at a reasonable level. In this context, we would like to understand why 100k POL was selected instead of a lower figure, such as 50k POL, for instance.

[H_Rook]

Currently the active validator set is limited to 105, a parameter which can be amended via Governance approval.

BNB which employs a similar style of staking architecture (though there are some differences), has a minimum of 2000 BNB =~$1.5m. Avax minimum stake is 2,000 AVAX which =~46k, Ethereum 32 ETH which =~133k.

As this parameter doesn’t require a complex upgrade the stakeManager there is little risk in increasing to 100k POL as we can simply change the minstake requirement at a later date.

[cupojoseph]

I don’t really understand the point of this one, given the number of validators is capped at 105 (if I understand correctly) it doesnt really matter if the size of a validator is too small in terms of performance. This would effectively kick 3 validators which are healthy (Forbole, pier 2, and google), and 2 unhealthy validators.

Pier Two has a 99.86% checkpoint signed. this is really good! I see no reason to kick them. Do you really want to kick google cloud? What kind of brand risk does that create?

If the motivation is to get rid of validators who arent meeting the checkpoint threshold, then we can just do that. I would instead suggest a rule that if you miss the threshold for too long you can get kicked. Although that might be more complex technically to implement.

I dont support this for now.

EDIT: looks like actually this would not kick anyone out, and only apply to new validators. My mistake. I would still like to hear from Pier Two is possible before going forward.

[H_Rook]

Regarding validator performance management, see PIP-4.

Your edit is correct - the current spec makes the minStake only apply to new validators. No existing validators need be kicked.

[everstake_masha]

I support the intention behind PIP-70 to strengthen the network by ensuring that new validators have a significant stake at risk. Since the validator set is effectively closed and few new participants are joining, this increase in minimum self-stake is unlikely to negatively affect decentralization.

This change is backward-compatible and does not impact existing validators, making it a sensible step to improve security and incentive alignment.

Open questions for further discussion:

• Could the 100k POL threshold be revisited if POL’s USD value rises significantly in the future?

• Are there other mechanisms to maintain accessibility for new participants if needed?

Overall, I support this approach and look forward to seeing its implementation and effects on network security