--- sidebar_position: 6 title: Penalties description: What causes a rental-fee deduction, how much is withheld, and how to dispute it. --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.lium.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Penalties When a rental fails because of a problem on your node, Lium withholds that rental's fees for the day it fails and the day before, and refunds the renter the same amount. This page describes what triggers a penalty, what exactly is withheld, and what to do if you believe a penalty is wrong. Penalties apply to **rental fees only**. [Subnet emission](./emission.mdx) — the alpha stake that accrues on your hotkey each tempo — is never touched by a penalty. ## What a penalty withholds A penalty applies to the **single rental** that failed, not to your whole fleet, and it covers a window of : the day the penalty is applied (day D) and the day before it (D-1). | What | Effect | |---|---| | Rental fees for that rental, days D and D-1 | Withheld — not paid out to you | | The renter | Refunded the same amount | | Payouts already settled (D-2 and older) | Untouched — never clawed back | | Subnet emission on your hotkey | Untouched | | Your other rentals and other nodes | Untouched | Payouts are settled with a delay of 2 days (see [Payouts](./payouts.mdx)). That delay is what makes this window possible: when a penalty is applied, the affected days have not been paid out yet, so no money has to be taken back. ## What triggers a penalty Three events apply a penalty automatically: | Reason code | What happened | |---|---| | `POD_UNDEPLOY_FAILED` | The validator could not undeploy or clean up the pod on your node, and ran out of retries. | | `EXECUTOR_INACTIVE_MID_RENTAL` | Your node stopped sending updates for more than 1 hour while a rental was active. | | `BROKEN_BY_PROVIDER` | You marked a stuck rented pod as broken in the Provider Portal, which force-closes the rental. | A fourth code, `MANUAL`, marks a penalty applied by the Lium team by hand. It is not an automatic trigger. :::note Force-closing a genuinely stuck pod is still the right action — it frees your node and ends a rental the renter cannot use. The penalty is what refunds the renter for that failed rental. ::: ## When a penalty is recorded but not charged Some events are logged with `dry_run = true` and no money is withheld: - **Spot-tier rentals.** A rental that started while the node was [Spot](../portal/node-tier.md) is never charged a penalty. The tier is frozen when the rental starts, so a rental that started on a Secure node can still be penalized even if the node becomes Spot later. - **Scheduled notice periods.** If you set a notice period at least 24 hours ahead and then reclaim the node, the undeploy-failure and inactivity penalties are waived. The waiver extends a short time past the end of the period, because these events are detected with a delay. Two further cases skip the penalty entirely, with nothing recorded at all: the rental produced no billable usage, or the affected days have already been paid out. ## Where to see your penalties The [Penalty Events dashboard](https://grafana.lium.io/d/b7b972f3-a083-415f-886d-ae5b12e2371b/penalty-events?orgId=2) lists every penalty; narrow it down with the `miner_hotkey` and `executor_id` variables at the top of the dashboard. The columns that matter: | Column | Meaning | |---|---| | `reason_code` | Which event caused the penalty | | `amount_withheld` | How much was withheld for that rental | | `dry_run` | `true` = recorded only, `false` = actually charged | | `action` | `apply`, or `revert` if the penalty was undone | See [Grafana Dashboards](../grafana.md#penalty-events) for the rest of the dashboard catalogue. ## Effect on your node tier Penalties also feed the reliability rule that decides your tier. **Penalty coverage** is the total amount withheld by penalties over the trailing , as a share of your billed rental revenue in the same window. If it rises above , all of your nodes move from Secure to Spot and stop earning subnet incentive until your coverage drops back below . It is calculated across all of your nodes together, and reverted penalties do not count toward it. See [Node Tier](../portal/node-tier.md) for the full rule. :::note Penalties recorded with `dry_run = true` withhold no money, but their recorded amount still counts toward penalty coverage. ::: ## Provider ban A ban is not a penalty: the Lium team applies it **by hand**, for network abuse, matched by **hotkey, coldkey or GPU UUID** — so it follows the provider rather than a single node. While a ban is in force, matching nodes earn no subnet incentive and take no new rentals, and those with nothing running are deactivated. A rental already running is never torn down: it finishes, and its rental fees keep accruing and being paid out to you. If you believe a ban is wrong, raise it through the same support flow as a disputed penalty, below. ## If you think a penalty is wrong A penalty can be reverted. When it is, the withheld amount is paid to you and the penalty no longer counts toward your penalty coverage. Open a support ticket through the [official Discord support flow](../../security/official-support-and-scams.md#the-safest-way-to-contact-lium-support) with: - the node id (or hotkey) and the pod id, - the time the penalty was applied, from the dashboard, - why you believe it is wrong — for example the node was reachable the whole time, or the pod had already been removed. The team checks the event against the validator and backend records, and reverts the penalty if it was applied in error. ## Reducing penalties - Keep the node sending updates: most `EXECUTOR_INACTIVE_MID_RENTAL` events come from the agent or the host going silent, not from a GPU problem. See [Troubleshooting](../troubleshooting.md). - Schedule a notice period before planned maintenance instead of pulling a rented node offline. - Switch nodes you cannot keep stable to [Spot](../portal/node-tier.md). They earn no subnet incentive, but an interrupted rental on them costs you nothing.