Title: AVAIL: a virtual validator for Algorand
Source: https://nodely.io/blog/avail-virtual-validator/
Updated: 2026-11-06T14:54:00.000Z
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# AVAIL: a virtual validator for Algorand
Urtho
Nov 6, 2026
[services](https://nodely.io/categories/services)
[Watch the video (MP4)](https://media.algo.green/v/share/avail-nothing-happens-1920x1080.mp4)
AVAIL (Algorand Validator Adaptive Infrastructure Layer) is our virtual validator. We run and rotate your Algorand mainnet participation keys in highly available, load balanced compute slots. Your account and your ALGO stay yours. If a node fails, your key moves to another one, with less than 60 seconds of voting downtime.
### What you get
- **Node failures don’t stop your vote for long.** Less than 60 seconds of voting downtime on hardware failure.
- **Upgrades are our job.** No voting downtime during node upgrades.
- **Key handling is automated.** Rotation and monitoring are automated. Key bundles are pruned continuously, so stolen material would not include keys used in the past, and any leaked keys are invalidated with an automatic key registration.
- **You pick the region.** North America, Europe, Singapore or Australia, and you can change it at any time.
- **You choose on rewards.** Choose to be eligible for protocol rewards or not. Eligibility depends on the key registration method and the account balance.
### Your funds stay with you
AVAIL is not a staking pool. Each participation key is linked to the customer’s single, non-custodial account, and our docs state: “Nodely has no technical means to spend or manage customer’s funds.”
Key registration is either a periodic email, for a Pera QR code or Ledger, or fully automated through an external API call or a smart contract call. The Reti node manager is not compatible with AVAIL key management, so a Reti pool cannot run on it.
### Voting on consensus upgrades
A consensus upgrade needs 9,000 yes votes in a window of 10,000 blocks. Nine blocks in ten.
algod v5.0.4, which introduced consensus version v43, was published on 2026-10-20 at 15:41 UTC. Thirty windows of the v43 vote fell short. The 31st closed with 9,301 yes votes on 2026-10-30 at 12:06 UTC, 9.9 days after the release. Measured the same way, release to approval took 2.0 days for algod v4.3.0 in September 2025 and 3.5 days for algod v5.0.0 in August 2026. The chart at the top of this post shows those windows, from public block headers.
On the v43 vote, AVAIL’s online accounts voted yes 5.6 to 5.7 hours after the v5.0.4 release. Ten of 52 large accounts were earlier.
On day five, sampling every 17th round, 32% of the blocks from the top ten accounts voted yes. Ranks 11 to 50 were at 53%, ranks 51 and up at 64%. The ranks use stake on 2026-11-06, the day we measured, not stake during the vote. This split covers this one upgrade.
Nobody did anything wrong. We never measured why the count sat where it did, so we offer no cause. Moving your node to AVAIL makes one less account to wait for, and that is the whole claim. The cooldown after approval stays whoever runs the node.
### SLA
The service is under an SLA: less than 60 seconds of unavailability a month, with proportional reimbursement of the service fee. The docs state this as a guarantee with a remedy. It is not a claim of zero downtime. Our [terms of service](https://nodely.io/legal/terms-of-service) cap liability at the fee and exclude lost profits.
### Price
Pricing depends on the number of active participation keys, not on stake.
- $64/mo per active key, with no choice of primary provider tier
- $256/mo for 8 active keys ($32/mo per key), with a choice of provider tiers
All prices are for business entities, paid annually upfront.
### Get started
Details and the FAQ are on the [AVAIL docs page](https://nodely.io/docs/solutions/validator/). To talk to us, write to [sales@nodely.io](mailto:sales@nodely.io).
[#AVAIL](https://nodely.io/tags/AVAIL)[#validator](https://nodely.io/tags/validator)[#Algorand](https://nodely.io/tags/Algorand)[#consensus](https://nodely.io/tags/consensus)[#participation keys](https://nodely.io/tags/participation-keys)