Manage Incentives Commission

Set and change the validator incentives commission rate (0–20%) via BeraChef; queue and activation delay.

A validator can configure the commission taken on Incentives distributed to its $BGT boosters — users who Boost a validator with $BGT. In this guide, you’ll walk through the process of changing a validator’s commission.

Requirements

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

• An RPC endpoint to Berachain
• $BERA to process the transaction
• Operator Address of the validator wanting to change their commission
• Foundry
• BeraChef Contract Address: 0xdf960E8F3F19C481dDE769edEDD439ea1a63426a

How validator commissions are updated

When Incentives are activated, all commission rates for Validator Incentives are defaulted to 5% — meaning Validators receive 5% of all Incentives. This is defined by DEFAULT_COMMISSION_RATE in BeraChef.sol.

For a validator to change their commission rate, they must first queue the change, wait for the MAX_COMMISSION_CHANGE_DELAY of 16,382 blocks, and then activate the new commission. If a commission rate is already queued, it must be activated before a new commission rate can be proposed.

Anyone can activate a queued commission rate, not just the validator.

Option A - Change validator commission using Foundry

The following walks you through updating the Validator Commission rate via Foundry’s CLI cast.

Step 1 - Get current validator commission rate

# Env Vars
BERACHEF_CONTRACT_ADDRESS=0xdf960E8F3F19C481dDE769edEDD439ea1a63426a
RPC_URL=https://rpc.berachain.com/
VALIDATOR_PUBKEY_KEY=<0xYOUR_VALIDATOR_PUBKEY>

# Command
cast call $BERACHEF_CONTRACT_ADDRESS \
    "getValCommissionOnIncentiveTokens(bytes)(uint96)" \
    $VALIDATOR_PUBKEY_KEY \
    --rpc-url $RPC_URL;

Step 2 - Queue new validator commission rate

Determine the amount you would like to queue:

# Env Vars
BERACHEF_CONTRACT_ADDRESS=0xdf960E8F3F19C481dDE769edEDD439ea1a63426a
RPC_URL=https://rpc.berachain.com/
OPERATOR_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY=<0xYOUR_OPERATOR_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY>
VALIDATOR_PUBKEY_KEY=<0xYOUR_VALIDATOR_PUBKEY>
COMMISSION_RATE=0.05e4 # 5% = 0.05e4 or 500, 100% = 1e4 or 10000

# Command
cast send $BERACHEF_CONTRACT_ADDRESS \
    "queueValCommission(bytes,uint96)" \
    $VALIDATOR_PUBKEY_KEY \
    $COMMISSION_RATE \
    --private-key $OPERATOR_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY \
    --rpc-url $RPC_URL;

Step 3 - Verify queued validator commission rate

# Env Vars
BERACHEF_CONTRACT_ADDRESS=0xdf960E8F3F19C481dDE769edEDD439ea1a63426a
RPC_URL=https://rpc.berachain.com/
VALIDATOR_PUBKEY_KEY=<0xYOUR_VALIDATOR_PUBKEY>

# Command
cast call $BERACHEF_CONTRACT_ADDRESS \
    "getValQueuedCommissionOnIncentiveTokens(bytes)((uint96,uint64))" \
    $VALIDATOR_PUBKEY_KEY \
    --rpc-url $RPC_URL;

Step 4 - Activate queued validator commission rate

This can only be done after 16,382 blocks have passed, and this can be executed by anyone.

# Env Vars
BERACHEF_CONTRACT_ADDRESS=0xdf960E8F3F19C481dDE769edEDD439ea1a63426a
RPC_URL=https://rpc.berachain.com/
WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY=<0xYOUR_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY>
VALIDATOR_PUBKEY_KEY=<0xVALIDATOR_PUBKEY>

# Command
cast send $BERACHEF_CONTRACT_ADDRESS \
    "activateQueuedValCommission(bytes)" \
    $VALIDATOR_PUBKEY_KEY \
    --private-key $WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY \
    --rpc-url $RPC_URL;