# the psychology behind avalanche's delegation problem—and how acp-247 fixes it 52.8% of avalanche validators have zero delegations. 200m avax sit idle. why? not technical failure. not distrust. behavioral economics. the issue: delegation fees are too small relative to self-stake rewards (0.08x-0.2x). validators mentally categorize this as "not worth the effort." it violates their reservation effort rate—the minimum reward increase required to justify new work. the math says "earn more." the psychology says "this marginal gain isn't worth marketing and community building." ambiguity aversion + loss aversion + salience failure colliding simultaneously. the solution: acp-247 increases the delegation multiplier from 4x to 24x, creating a 6x increase in delegation fees: 2% fee: 9.6 avax → 57.6 avax (48% of self-stake) 5% fee: 24 avax → 144 avax (120%+ of self-stake) now the reward crosses the psychological threshold. validators think: "this is worth real resources—marketing, community, professional operations." when incentives cross behavioral thresholds, everything changes: validators compete for delegations. differentiation emerges (better service, brands, community). delegators gain real choice. 200m avax unlocks. network security improves. this isn't financial engineering. it's applied psychology. the 6x increase looks modest on paper. but it crosses four critical psychological boundaries simultaneously: - salience threshold (now attention-worthy) - reservation effort rate (now worth the work) - loss aversion tolerance (partial success = acceptable roi) - ambiguity premium (uncertainty becomes manageable) result: a stable behavioral shift from "ignore delegations" to "compete for delegations." acp-247 recognizes what many miss: protocol design is behavioral design. the validator economics problem isn't math—it's human nature. link to blog post below 👇🏼