Data Sources & Methodology
Where the numbers come from, how rewards
are calculated, and what the limits are.
are calculated, and what the limits are.
1
Data Sources
Metal Blockchain RPC — api.metalblockchain.org
What
The Metal Blockchain P-Chain RPC is our authoritative source for every on-chain number. It powers four things: (1) our own node's live data — uptime, stake weight, delegation fee, validation-period dates, active delegators, and remaining capacity — behind the Overview, Node Health, and Delegation History pages; (2) the network-wide validator set behind the Validator Browser, covering every active validator on the network; (3) the current circulating METAL supply, which feeds the remaining-supply factor used in every reward estimate; and (4) live, on-demand lookups of any node you compare — whether you enter it on the Compare page or open a comparison straight from the Validator Browser.
Frequency
Our own node is polled about every 5 minutes and stored in the database, and the network-wide validator list is refreshed on the same ~5-minute cadence. Current supply is refreshed hourly, and uptime is snapshotted every 4 hours. The dashboard shows the most recent stored snapshot, and the status bar shows when it was captured — "Node data updated X ago." The page itself re-checks our server every minute. If our node's snapshot stops refreshing for more than about two polling cycles (~11 minutes) — whether from a stuck poller or an upstream RPC outage — an amber banner flags that live data may be delayed, while the most recent stored figures stay on screen. If the page cannot reach our server at all, a red banner notes that live data is unavailable and is being retried each minute. Comparison lookups — whether run from the Compare page or opened from the Validator Browser — are fetched live when you run them and are not stored.
Limitations
The feed reports stake as a value the network calls "weight," measured in nMETAL (the smallest unit of METAL). For our own node it also includes a "potentialReward" — a live, in-progress estimate of the validator's own reward that shifts a little every time it is checked. You will see this on the Overview page as the "Validator's Estimated Reward," clearly labeled as a live estimate, and we deliberately keep it out of the Delegate page calculator so the numbers you use to plan a delegation do not move every time you reload. For the network-wide list, the RPC reports only aggregate delegation figures per validator — a delegator count and total delegated weight — not a per-delegator breakdown; full per-delegator detail exists only for our own node.
CoinGecko — METAL / USD Price
What
The current METAL/USD spot price (and its 24-hour change), used to display USD equivalents alongside METAL figures throughout the site and to drive the price shown in the header. CoinGecko also provides the recent daily closing prices on the Price History page — every daily close from June 8, 2025 onward comes from CoinGecko.
Frequency
The spot price is refreshed about every 5 minutes, and the daily closing-price history is updated hourly. The figure displayed may be a few minutes old.
Limitations
CoinGecko's free data reaches back only about 365 days, which is why its daily closes on this site begin on June 8, 2025; earlier dates are covered by CryptoCompare (below). CoinGecko prices reflect broad market rates and may differ from prices on specific exchanges. All USD figures on this site are informational estimates only and should not be used for tax reporting or financial accounting without independent verification.
CryptoCompare — Historical METAL Closes
What
Daily closing prices on the Price History page for dates before CoinGecko's range begins — covering August 7, 2024 (the validator's launch) through June 7, 2025. From June 8, 2025 onward, closes come from CoinGecko.
Frequency
A one-time historical backfill stored in our database; it does not update. CryptoCompare's free historical data is no longer available, so these earlier closes are preserved as stored records, with a clean handoff to CoinGecko at June 8, 2025.
Limitations
Historical closes are point-in-time daily figures and may differ slightly from other price sources. Like every USD figure here, they are informational only.
Metal Blockchain Explorer — explorer.metalblockchain.org
What
Used to add human-friendly details the raw P-Chain RPC does not carry. On the Validator Browser: each node's name and the software version it runs, plus the "network version" (the version most validators are running) so a node can be flagged as current, outdated, or unknown. In a comparison, whether opened from the Compare page or the Validator Browser: the compared node's name, software version, and first-ever validation date. On the Performance page: each completed period links out to its on-chain validation transaction on the explorer, so any record can be independently verified.
Frequency
Explorer details for the Validator Browser are refreshed alongside the validator list, about every 5 minutes, and held in memory only. Compare lookups happen live when you open a comparison and are briefly cached. Nothing from the explorer is stored long-term. The Performance links are plain outbound links built from transaction IDs already in our own records — no data is fetched from the explorer to create them.
Limitations
This is a public, third-party service with no guarantees, so we treat anything it returns as a helpful extra — never as a source of truth. Not every validator reports a name or version, so some appear without one (we fill in known operators from our own curated list where we can). If the explorer is slow or unavailable, the Validator Browser and Compare pages still load from the authoritative RPC using the node ID.
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Reward Calculation Methodology
Minimum consumption rate10.00% per year
Maximum consumption rate12.00% per year
Minting period365 days
Maximum METAL supply666,666,666 METAL (hard cap)
Uptime threshold80% (binary gate)
Delegation feeRead per-period from validator records — not hardcoded
1
Duration fraction
Your delegation length is measured against the 365-day minting period to find what fraction of the year you are staking — a 90-day delegation, for example, is about a quarter of the year.
2
Consumption rate
The rate lands between the 10% floor and 12% ceiling based on how long you delegate. A delegation that runs the full 365-day minting period earns close to 12%; a shorter one lands closer to 10%. This mirrors how the Metal Blockchain protocol itself rewards longer commitments.
3
Remaining-supply factor
Rewards are paid out of METAL that has not been minted yet, so the estimate is scaled by how much of the 666,666,666 hard cap is still unissued, measured against the current supply (the amount issued so far). As more METAL is issued, this factor gradually shrinks — which is why the same delegation earns a little less in later periods than it would have earlier on.
4
Gross reward
Calculated as: stake × remaining-supply factor × consumption rate × duration fraction.
5
Net reward
The delegation fee percentage is deducted. Net APR is then annualized from this figure relative to the stake amount.
The uptime gate
If the validator's uptime finishes below 80% for the period, our reward estimates return zero — regardless of stake size, duration, or delegation fee. This reflects how the protocol's uptime threshold works under its current rules; the threshold itself is set and enforced by Metal Blockchain, not by BlockEmpowered.
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Historical Validation Period Data
Records for completed validation periods — start and end dates, stake amounts, and rewards — are recorded directly from each closed period. The validation transaction for each period can be confirmed on-chain: every period on the Performance page links to its transaction on the Metal Blockchain Explorer. Per-period uptime is shown only where we have our own monitoring data for that window; periods that predate our monitoring show a dash instead of a number.
We chose to record these figures directly rather than rebuild them automatically. Automated reconstruction of older on-chain history is not guaranteed to be complete or in order, and for periods that have already closed and can never change, carefully recorded figures are more reliable.
Historical USD values for completed periods are fixed closing prices captured for each period's end date. They are point-in-time figures, not live market data — so a past period's USD value will not shift as today's price moves.
These historical rewards are the actual amounts each closed period earned — fixed records, not outputs of the Delegate page estimator — so refining the estimator never changes them. You may notice a completed period implies a slightly higher return than the calculator estimates for a new delegation today. That is expected: earlier periods were paid from a larger pool of unminted METAL, and as the current supply grows the remaining-supply factor, and with it the effective rate, gradually declines.
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Known Limitations
- Reward estimates are calculated from network conditions at the time of the query. Actual rewards depend on conditions at period close, which cannot be fully predicted in advance.
- Displayed node figures reflect the most recent stored snapshot, so they can trail the live network by up to the polling interval (about 5 minutes). When a snapshot is delayed, the dashboard keeps showing the most recent figures and flags them with a banner rather than hiding the gap; if our server cannot be reached at all, a banner says so and live figures may be unavailable until the connection recovers.
- The delegation fee shown reflects the current active period. Earlier periods may have carried different fees; we do not currently break out a separate fee figure for each past period.
- The Delegation History page reflects the current validation period — the delegations active on the node right now, plus those that recently ended. It is not a complete archive of every delegation the node has received across all past periods.
- METAL/USD conversions use live CoinGecko spot prices, and the Price History page combines CryptoCompare closes (Aug 7, 2024 – Jun 7, 2025) with CoinGecko closes (Jun 8, 2025 onward). None of these figures should be relied upon for tax reporting or financial accounting.
- The Validator Browser and Compare pages read the live network. Other validators' names and software versions come best-effort from the public Metal Blockchain Explorer and may be missing or briefly out of date, and their delegation figures are shown as an aggregate count and total rather than a per-delegator breakdown.
- This site covers a single validator node operated by BlockEmpowered. It is not a general-purpose Metal Blockchain explorer.