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What happens if a validator node misses many consensus rounds?

In short, these validators may begin to lose potential emissions XRD or be excluded from participating in consensus for some time. This is important to ensure that node-runners have a strong incentive to keep the network stable, reliable, and performant.

Of course, in the real world, things happen.  Regions go offline; cables get cut; data centers get flooded.  Unfortunately, the Radix Protocol can not establish a “reason” for a validator node not participating in consensus. We recommended that validator node-runners employ strategies to ensure high availability, such as those presented in our technical documentation.

The good news is, as long as such problems are infrequent, validator node-runners and stakers won’t miss out on many emissionsPenalties are calculated per-epoch, and with epochs occurring roughly between 30 - 90 minutes, a node-runner that brings their node back online quickly will also quickly pick back up earning rewards.

Further reading: