afaik when you stalking to maximize luck of your mined block to get accepted on network, your wallet need to connected to many nodes/peers. for example my wallet are connected to 13 - 15 peers. of course your wallet balance also into calculation, the bigger your balance meaning more "mining" power.
from where you got those peers? my wallet has a very connection and i couldnt find more nods to add there
about the stake performance, i noticed heavily reduced rewards since 2 days ago, it seems more and more wallets are coming up for stake lately
Yes, because people buy coins on market to start staking and reward remains the same but block finding becomes harder