Many people discuss the proof-of-stake mechanism, often with a single phrase—staking equals rewards, simple and straightforward. But from a different perspective on storage networks, you'll find that the operation logic of Delegated Proof of Stake (dPoS) is far more complex than it appears on the surface. Essentially, it's an economic game centered around data orders.

Put yourself in the shoes of a storage node operator. Your work isn't just about shouting slogans every day; it's about real money—delivering data, maintaining availability, retrieving data on demand, and periodically generating verifiable network states. This isn't a business where you can do as much as you want. First, you need to earn qualifications and trust.

Where does the qualification come from? Delegation. Stakers vote with their tokens for you; your security weight increases, and you get more data orders to handle. And trust? It all depends on performance—stable operation, quick responses, and not dropping the ball even during network fluctuations.

Thus, the entire system forms a self-reinforcing feedback loop: good performance → more delegation → handling more data assignments → increasing continuous income → budgeting for hardware upgrades and maintenance → further performance improvements → attracting more delegation. This isn't some virtual incentive scheme; it's a tangible economic effect.

The reverse is also true. Once performance declines, delegation is lost, fewer orders can be allocated, and income drops sharply. At this point, there's no budget for hardware upgrades or maintenance, and service quality deteriorates further. A vicious cycle begins.

The key point is this—dPoS here isn't just replicating other public chains' proof-of-stake models; it's deeply tied to actual service quality and economic output. Nodes are not just competing for voting rights; fundamentally, they're competing for data storage orders that can directly convert into cash flow. Security, economic incentives, and service quality are tightly interconnected. That's why the dPoS mechanism at the data infrastructure layer appears more "business-like" than other applications—because it truly is a business, a competition driven directly by economic feedback.