Low Voting

What are Low Voting alerts?

When your node receives a block proposal from the leader node in the current view of the Flow protocol, they must vote for this block if it meets the requirements as laid out in the Flow protocol. If this block receives enough votes (66%) then it will be finalized; if your vote was used in the production of this block then you will be deemed to be a ‘parent voter’ of that finalized block and your vote will be deemed ‘successful’. Ideally, your node would be a parent voter for 66% of finalized blocks. Your ‘Vote Success Rate’ is the number of blocks for which you are deemed a ‘parent voter’ divided by the number of finalized blocks.

In the future, if your node is no longer voting for proposed blocks, or your vote success rate drops below a certain threshold then you may be liable to be slashed. This Low Voting alert is designed to help mitigate this and ensure that nodes continue to vote as they should as defined by the Flow protocol.

How are Low Voting alerts triggered?

Every thirty minutes the vote success rate is calculated for your node, this is defined as the number of finalized blocks for which your node’s vote was used to produce the block divided by the number of finalized blocks. If your vote success rate drops below 25% for this period then the alert will be triggered.

What notifications will I receive?

You will receive a notification when your node’s finalization rate drops below 25% for a given thirty-minute period, it will remain firing as long as the rate for follow-on periods remains below 25%. If the rate goes back above 90% then you will receive a clearing alert.

Note: You may need to wait until the next thirty-minute checkpoint to see this clearing alert.

How do I resolve it?

In most cases, this alert is triggered by an issue with your node's internet connectivity. In order for your node’s vote to be deemed successful, it needs to be within the first 66% of votes that the leader node receives in order to create the block. If your node is too slow to receive the block proposal from the leader node, or your vote in response to the proposal is transmitted too slowly back to the leader node, it’s likely that your vote will not be included. Your first place to investigate should be your internet connectivity, or the geographical location of your node to improve network latency.

If investigating network latency doesn’t improve your vote success rate, we recommend you run through our standard checks:

• Check that the clock of your node has not drifted.

• Check that your node has not fallen behind the rest of the network.

• Check that key system-level metrics (e.g., CPU usage, RAM usage, Disk Space) of your node exhibit normal behavior.

• Check that your node is configured to receive requests and respond to other nodes on the network.

• Check that your node meets the minimum requirements for hardware outlined here.

• Check that your node meets the minimum requirements for networking outlined here.