It is very important to chose a validator that you trust and respect. Sometimes the validator you have selected may begin to perform poorly affecting your rewards, or they change their configurations (ex: increase commissions). You may also find that you would rather support another validator that supports the ecosystem in a way that better suits your vision.
With Mina (MINA), you must pay a small transaction fee to change your validator, however you will not lose any rewards in the process! When your validator updates, the new validator will take over your delegation from the old one (without any delay) to participate in block producing and generate rewards. Therefore your delegation is always being used by at least one validator to generate rewards. If the former validator is honest, they will pay out your rewards during the redelegation process.
One epoch in Mina constitutes 7140 slots, and each slot lasts ≈ 3 minutes. Therefore one epoch lasts approximately 15 days.
All the latest staking transactions are registered by the network near the end of each epoch. If you submit a redelegation transaction too close to the end of an epoch, you run the risk that it will only be registered in the next epoch. Once a redelegation transaction is registered by the network, the new delegation will be active after the next epoch.
Lets say that your redelegation transaction to P2P was included in the current epoch (remember that P2P has increased their Reward Distribution Frequency by 50%):
E1: Re-delegate MINA and registration takes place (≈up to 15 days)
E2: Wait a full epoch (≈15 days)
E3: Your new delegation activates
If your redelegation transaction to P2P was not included in the current epoch (remember that P2P has increased their Reward Distribution Frequency by 50%):
E1: Re-delegate MINA (≈up to 3 days)
E2: Registration takes place (≈15 days)
E3: Wait a full epoch (≈15 days).
E4: Your new delegation activates
As you can see from the timelines above, you will continue to receive rewards while re-delegating - as long as your old validator is honest!
For more information on staking Mina (MINA) with P2P.org, visit https://p2p.org/mina.
For additional staking support, visit the P2P Mina Help Centre.
You can also get in contact with a live agent by selecting the speech bubble at the bottom right of this page, sending a message to the Telegram bot, or emailing [email protected].