A validator's status within the Cere network can be classified into three distinct categories: active, inactive, and waiting. This article delves into each of these statuses and offers guidance for a nominator on enhancing the likelihood of receiving staking rewards. The explanation uses the Cere Explorer.

Validator Status

When nominating a set of validators (up to 16 on Cere), the validator election algorithm will circulate your stake among validators on a per-era basis. In simpler terms, you may find a different active validator among your chosen validators for each era.

Active

The term "active" refers to the validator you are presently nominating for the current era. Unless you are staking a significant amount, you will nominate a single validator in each era with your full stake. This particular validator will distribute rewards to you once the payout is triggered at the conclusion of that era.

Inactive

Inactive validators are part of the active validator set and your nomination list, but you are not actively nominating them for this era (they are not active for you), and thus, they will not provide rewards for this era.

• Initially, when you nominate validators, all of them will be in the "waiting" status for the current era. This is standard procedure. Your nominations will become effective in the subsequent era. You will only observe active validators (and commence earning staking rewards) after two eras, or on the third day at the earliest.
• If you only observe inactive validators for several days and never an active one, you might have nominated an insufficient number of validators (you can nominate up to 16 on Cere).
• If you're nominating with less than the minimum, you won't see any "active" validators. You will only notice "inactive" and "waiting" and will not be eligible for any rewards. The minimum nomination amount required to qualify for rewards is dynamic and can be located on the Nominate tab of the Staking Dashboard.

Should you encounter issues in receiving staking rewards, you can investigate the potential reasons in the article "Why am I not Getting Staking Rewards?".

Waiting

The "waiting" status applies to validators that did not make it into the active validator set in this era. They might be included in the active validator set in the future.

It's worth noting that nominating waiting validators will not adversely affect your rewards, provided you have nominated at least one validator in the active set. Your stake will back one of the validators in the active validator set.