What happens when your validator goes offline
You lose rewards, not SOL. When a validator goes offline it stops voting, so the stake pointed at it earns nothing until it's back. Your SOL stays in your stake account, and Solana has no slashing today, no on-chain penalty that takes stake away. A short outage isn't a reason to move. A long or repeated one is.
Will I lose my SOL if my validator goes offline?
No. On Solana forums one question comes up again and again: "What will happen if the validator suddenly dies? ... Or will we lose our SOL?" The answer doesn't change.
Your SOL sits in a stake account that only your wallet controls. The validator gets your stake's voting weight, never the coins. The network pays rewards for voting, so once the validator goes offline and stops voting, your stake earns nothing for as long as the outage lasts. When the validator comes back, rewards start again without you doing anything.
Solana has no slashing today, so no on-chain penalty takes stake away from a validator's stakers when it goes down. There are proposals to add slashing in the future. If that happens, this guide will say so.
What does "offline" or "delinquent" actually mean?
A validator is a computer that checks transactions and votes on which blocks are valid. Each vote cast on time earns it vote credits, the points that decide how much it and its stakers are paid.
When a validator's votes fall too far behind the rest of the network, it's marked "delinquent". That's the word block explorers use. We say "offline", because that's what it means for you: the validator isn't working, so your stake isn't earning. The cause can be something as ordinary as a crashed server, an update that went wrong or a network problem at the data center.
There's a milder version too. A validator can stay online but perform badly, with a high skip rate, which is the share of its turns to produce a block that it misses. That also costs you rewards, just more slowly.
How much does an outage cost me?
Rewards are settled once per epoch, Solana's reward period of about 1–2 days. What you lose depends on how much of an epoch the validator missed.
| How long it was offline | What you lose | What you keep |
|---|---|---|
| A few minutes | Almost nothing; you probably won't notice | Your SOL |
| A few hours | A slice of that epoch's rewards | Your SOL |
| A whole epoch or more | All rewards for that time | Your SOL |
| Several days in the last 90 | Rewards each time, and it's become a pattern | Your SOL |
Rewards for the missed time are gone for good. The network doesn't pay them later when the validator recovers. An offline validator also misses its turns to produce blocks, and with them any MEV tips (extra payments from traders who want their transactions in a certain order) it would have shared with you.
We lower the validator's Score too. If it's offline when we calculate the Score, the result is multiplied by 0.4, which moves it down the list for anyone choosing a validator today. How the Score works has the full formula.
How do I check if my validator is offline?
Needs verification: Verify against the current app (step 1 only: where each wallet shows the validator).
- Open your wallet's staking section and find your stake account. It shows the validator's name or its vote account (the address your stake points at).
- Search for that validator on our validators list and open its page.
- Read the verdict line under the name. If the validator isn't voting right now, the line starts with "Offline now" and says your rewards have stopped.
- Look at the uptime strip, which covers the last 90 days, day by day. One bad day in three months is a blip. Bad days spread across the strip are a habit.
- Compare with your wallet. If your latest reward is missing or smaller than usual and the validator was offline, the outage explains it.
"I can't see my rewards" doesn't always mean the validator is offline. If its page shows it online for the whole period and your wallet still shows nothing, the problem is more likely the wallet screen than your stake. Look up your stake account in a Solana block explorer, which lists the rewards credited to it each epoch.
Should I wait or move my stake?
Moving takes time, and your stake earns nothing while it's between validators. You deactivate, wait for the cooldown (usually until the next epoch, about 1–2 days, sometimes longer when many stakers exit at once), then stake with the new validator, which starts earning from the epoch after that. Expect roughly one epoch without rewards. After a short outage, waiting usually costs you less than moving.
Here's what we'd do in your place:
| What you see | What we'd do |
|---|---|
| Offline for a few hours, the first time in months | Wait. Check again after the next epoch. |
| Back online, and the rest of the 90-day strip is clean | Stay. |
| Still offline after a whole epoch | Move. |
| Offline on 5 or more of the last 90 days | Move. Repeated outages are a habit, not bad luck. |
| Offline, and it raised its commission recently | Move. |
How do I move my stake to another validator?
Needs verification: Verify against the current app (steps 2 and 4).
- Pick the new validator first. Check its verdict, fees, uptime strip and Score. The beginner list is a quick place to start.
- Deactivate the old stake. In your wallet, open the stake account, choose Unstake (or Deactivate) and approve.
- Wait for the cooldown. The stake is usually free by the next epoch, about 1–2 days, and sometimes later when many stakers exit at once.
- Stake with the new validator. Once the old stake shows as inactive, you have two routes. You can withdraw the SOL to your main balance and stake it again, as in How to stake SOL. Or, if your wallet offers it, you can point the same stake account at the new validator.
- Wait for one more epoch change. The new stake turns active and starts earning again.
With a Ledger, each of these transactions needs approval on the device.
How do I find out sooner next time?
Plenty of people stake once and stop looking. One wallet reviewer found "tokens I had forgotten I staked months ago." That's fine while everything works, but it's also how an outage goes unnoticed for weeks.
Our Telegram bot does the checking for you. Give it your wallet's public address, the same one you share to receive SOL. The bot will:
- report what your stake earned, every epoch;
- message you when your validator stops voting;
- message you when your validator changes its commission.
A public key can't sign transactions or move SOL. The bot never asks you to connect your wallet or to share your seed phrase.
Questions
No. Your SOL stays in a stake account that only your wallet controls, whether the validator is online or not. The validator only ever gets your stake's voting weight. Offline means it isn't voting, so your stake earns nothing until it's back. Solana has no slashing today, so there's no on-chain penalty that takes stake away.
Yes, from that point on. As soon as the validator is voting again, your stake starts earning again, and you don't need to do anything. The rewards for the time it was offline are lost, though; they aren't paid later. If outages keep happening, the fix is to move your stake.
Delinquent is the technical word for offline. A validator is delinquent when its votes fall too far behind the rest of the network. While it's delinquent, neither the validator nor its stakers earn rewards. On our pages we just say "offline", and the verdict under the validator's name tells you if it's offline right now.
It can help. With two or three validators, one outage only hits part of your rewards. The trade-offs are that every stake account needs the minimum stake (currently about 1 SOLNeeds verification) plus a small deposit, and you have more to keep track of. For a few SOL, one validator with a clean 90-day uptime record is simpler.
Yes. If a validator is offline when we calculate its Score, the result is multiplied by 0.4, so one that would score 80 shows 32 at the next Score update. That moves it down the list for anyone choosing today. Scores are recalculated every epoch, and the uptime strip keeps past outages visible after the validator recovers.