1. Who may initiate delegation?
Name roles—not individuals—allowed to delegate stake, change validators, or merge stake accounts. Require dual approval for validator changes if your fund treats validator slashing exposure as material risk.
2. Is delegation a custody event?
Document your legal team's view. Many institutions classify delegation as custody-relevant operational risk without treating the validator as a beneficiary under Travel Rule rules. Consistency matters more than industry consensus.
3. How are rewards accounted?
Define whether rewards accrue to the same segregated address, how often they are swept, and who approves sweeps. Reconciliation should tie on-chain reward credits to internal NAV calculations.
4. Withdrawal cooldown handling
Solana staking withdrawals follow epoch boundaries. Liquidity policies must state minimum notice periods and who communicates delays to portfolio managers.
5. Validator due diligence records
Store commission rates, geography, and slashing history you reviewed before approval. Refresh cadence should appear in the policy—annual at minimum for institutional allocations.
6. Emergency undelegation authority
Define break-glass procedures if a validator shows anomalous behaviour or your custodian flags infrastructure risk. Include after-action reporting requirements.
7. Monitoring field mapping
List blockchain monitoring tags for delegate, deactivate, withdraw, and split stake instructions. Align tags with your SIEM or compliance alert routing tables.
8. Counterparty identification for custodial staking
If a custodian stakes on your behalf, clarify whether they act as sub-custodian of rewards and how they evidence validator selection authority.
9. Board reporting minimums
Specify quarterly metrics: staked percentage, validator concentration, reward variance, and any slashing or downtime events—even nil reports should be documented.
Cross-reference delegation and custody event in our glossary. For committee prep, see our Institutional Custody Briefing.