Today for the first time, my node earned just ~20 PRV (2 epoch) and swapped out. Up to now, I earned at least ~30 PRV (3 epoch) consecutively. As I remember, in Telegram, @duy had said something like that: “Once a node swaps in, its earning period goes on for X epochs”. I think the reason was the stability of the network or something like that. Here, I remember that X was 3. So, my question: do I remember wrongly or is something changed in the swap algorithm?
Minimum epoch number for consecutive earning
I think I remember correctly :), possibly a refreshing problem. My last earning became ~30 PRV, too.
So the rule of at least 3 consecutive epochs in earning is correct, isn’t it? @duy
Due to randomized mechanism, I think X = 3 is the maximum value, which means that you can get 1 or 2 epochs earning only. @thaibao can you confirm please?
I don’t agree with you @Peter @thaibao 
X =3 is the minimum value as I remember from @duy said in Telegram and my experience supports. I found @duy’s sentences:
bushkill… random in this context means random selection into the committee. once you’re in the committee, you earn multiple epochs until you’re swapped out. >say W is in-the-committee/working, O is out-of-the-committee/waiting-for-work, ( is when you get selected into a committee, and ) is when you get swapped out… the pattern is like this
O O O (W W W W W) O O O O O O O (W W W W) O O O O O O
not O O W O O O W O O O O O O W O O O O
and
the reason we design it this way so that we can have randomness in the committee so that it’s harder to attack a shard. however, “too frequent” swapping is a mess, because all the new nodes must sync all the shard data and be ready to work. so we swap a few nodes a time. and thats the reason nodes earn/don’t earn in multiple continuous epochs.