Nothing here is a test. It needs no wallet and costs nothing. Pick one real indexer and put it through the criteria properly.
Evaluate one real indexer
- Open Graph Explorer or Lodestar and pick an indexer that is not in the top three by size.
- Write down its self-stake and its current delegated stake. Compute how much headroom it has under the capacity multiplier.
- Find its indexing reward cut and query fee cut. Say out loud which side of the split you are on, to be sure you have the direction right.
- Find how much of its stake is currently allocated versus idle. This is the ratio that explains most of the difference between operators.
- Look for its parameter history. Have the cuts moved in the last six months?
- Search the community forum for the operator’s name. Do they post under it, and do they answer questions?
- Put your intended amount and holding period into the calculator in the rewards entry, and read the two right-hand figures rather than the two left-hand ones.
- Write one sentence saying why you would or would not delegate to this indexer. If the sentence contains only a rate, go back to the top.
Before you commit anything
Where next
- Curious what your indexer is doing all day, and why allocation matters so much: indexer.
- Curious what determines whether a subgraph earns anything at all: curator.
- Curious who decided the issuance rate, and how GIP-0089 passed: governance.