「thecoding」 Validator Update: Status, Milestones and Roadmap

A look at thecoding.pool.near validator. What we have achieved so far and what the next steps are, attached to delegation milestones.

In October 2025, 「thecoding」 became a NEAR blockchain validator: thecoding.pool.near. Much has happened since bootstrapping the node and the validator, receiving significant support from thecoding readers and the NEAR community.

We will take a look from where we came from, where we are right now, and where we are going to next — regarding this project.

Where we came from

Running a NEAR validator was the perfect fit for my plans with thecoding and my content creation on X.

• NEAR is a fantastic blockchain and tech stack, worth supporting as a validator node

• NEAR has many interesting things happening, worth writing about

• Writing high-quality, human-crafted content requires a lot of time, and time is money

• Validator rewards via pool fees can help funding these activities (not much, but honest work)

• Running a node is a great learning opportunity and gives me a direct endpoint to the NEAR network, all helping with specialized content creation

• Likewise, it adds skin-in-the-game and connects everything together

For that, I chose Meta Pool’s Node Studio Cohort 2, providing setup support, good node/validator UI, ongoing support for node maintanance, and an initial 40,000 NEAR (Ⓝ) stake delegation.

With Ⓝ40,000, 7% pool fees, and ~4.5% APY, thecoding was receiving approximatelly 10.5 NEAR per month, enough to cover for infrastructure costs.

(Ⓝ40000 * 0.045 * 0.07) / 12 =
(Ⓝ1800 * 0.07) / 12 = 
Ⓝ126 per year

Ⓝ126 / 12 =
Ⓝ10.5 per month

Since then, thecoding.pool.near has received delegation from NEAR holders and LST (liquidity staking tokens) projects like stNEAR and rNEAR → from Meta Pool and Rhea Finance, respectively.

Increasing staking delegations is not an easy job and, above all else, it requires building a good reputation in the ecosystem and trust that you will act in the network’s best interest by the people deleagting this stake. This is only achieved with consistency and high quality contributions.

「thecoding」 is doing it!

Where we are right now

As of this writing, on NEAR Epoch #4249, thecoding.pool.near has Ⓝ287,573,896 in stake — with the vast majority coming from community delegations.

thecoding.pool.near

.-----------------------------------------.
|               Epoch №4249               |
|-----------------------------------------|
|         |   Previous    |    Current    |
|---------|---------------|---------------|
| current | validator     | validator     |
| next    | validator     | validator     |
| stake   | 287,573.896 N | 287,585.429 N |
'-----------------------------------------'
Stake changes: 11.533 N |  ↑ 0.004%
.------------------------------------.
|              | Expected | Produced |
|--------------|----------|----------|
| Blocks       |        0 |        0 |
| Chunks       |        0 |        0 |
| Endorsements |    43186 |    42736 |
'------------------------------------'
Previous Epoch 4248 Productivity: 98.95800%

I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate this trust and support!

When thecoding got to a Ⓝ120,000 stake (Nov 15, 2025), I published a roadmap aiming to reduce the pool fees gradually from 7% to 5%, in a way to better reward the stakeholders. Fees reduced to 6% at a Ⓝ150,000 stake (Jan 13, 2026) and to 5% at a 200,000 stake (Mar 03).

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We saw a 5x growth in 5 months. Amazing!

At this current rate, thecoding.pool.near stake is receiving ~11.5 NEAR per epoch, distributed among its delegators proprotionaly to their delegated stake. From that, 5% is 「thecoding」 revenue: Ⓝ0.575 per epoch. A NEAR epoch has between 7-8 hours, meaning there are approximately 3 epochs per day.

Excluding infrastructure costs, it’s a humble ~30 NEAR monthly revenue that is helping funding all the free content you receive here. For now, I still depend on donations and occasional sponsorship deal (fully disclosed) to keep working.

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Get in touch if you want to donate to or sponsor 「thecoding」!

I have an accessible (and below the industry’s average) pricing for sponsored mentions, guides, and dedicated research articles.

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Where we are going to next

The plan is to keep the 5% pool fees and use new staking milestones to increase the value thecoding is offering to the ecosystem, delegators, and readers by a few action steps.

On Step 1, I will start developing and deploy (when ready) a public visualizer with live information and stats for thecoding.pool.near.

On Step 2, I will start developing and implementing clear benefits for stake delegators, connected to my offerings and/or other projects. These will be easily verifiable and claimable benefits, with ongoing development and dependent on many factors.

On Step 3, I will start hosting weekly spaces (or a podcast) for thecoding, with many things yet to be decided.

Roadmap milestones

• Ⓝ120,000 = 7% fees ☐ ✔

• Ⓝ150,000 = 6% fees ☐ ✔

• Ⓝ200,000 = 5% fees ☐ ✔

• Ⓝ300,000 = Step 1 ☐

• Ⓝ400,000 = Step 2 ☐

• Ⓝ500,000 = Step 3 ☐

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