Public Representatives or P-Reps are the entities on the ICON blockchain that get elected by the community, so that they could represent certain interests of the majority and govern the network by proposing and voting for different policies. It’s also important to mention that Public Representatives are running validating nodes that process transactions on the network and participating in block producing.

You have always control over your staked ICX tokens, but in case you decide to interrupt the staking process, aborting the lock-up period, then you become the subject to 6% burn penalty. But it happens only if P-Rep that you have staking with is not an active participant, then he will be penalized by the network. So penalties occur when the P-Rep’s block producing rate decreases below 85%. Moreover, if the P-Rep was detected while conducting network disrupting activities, then he will be penalized as well, so it very important to choose a well-known P-Rep with high reputation.

APR stands for Annual Percentage Rate. This is the percent that you will receive when staking with a validator. APR should not be treated as constant as it is influenced by a number of factors: the number of nodes, service fee, top-up amount of the pool and of the network, uptime rank. Remember that the more users start staking, the less APR in the network. You may find an actual APR in the explorers mentioned above.

APY stands for Annual Percentage Yield and is the projected rate of annual return after taking compounding interest into account. In order to understand how APY is calculated, it is important to understand compound interest. In essence, compound interest is interest earned on previously earned interest.

“Validator fee” refers to the rewards received by Validator for participating in the Blockchain network Validation process. Everstake determines the validator fee through a process involving analysis and consideration of various factors, such as network requirements, operational costs, and market dynamics.

Validators don't have control over users' funds in blockchain networks. Instead, they validate transactions and participate in the consensus process based on the rules defined by the network protocol. Users retain control over their funds through private keys, which are used to sign transactions and authorize transfers. Validators' roles involve confirming the validity of transactions and blocks, but they don't have the authority to access or manipulate users' funds.