For more on the basics of staking and staking pools, please refer to Cardano’s Stake Pool Operation page.

Providing Secure Staking Rewards for Institutions and Individuals

Delegate & Forget

We created a staking pool to support the community and show our users that we have some skin in the game and truly believe in Cardano and the entire ecosystem built around it. This will also help us offset the cost of running the staking pool.

We are experts in running SaaS infrastructure for 24/7 availability for reliability and for scalability and we’re managing our staking pool the same way we managed the infrastructure for Cosential—a proper number of servers, load balancers, firewalls, security patches, monitoring, and expertise, and running a true mission-critical enterprise class system.

Monkey Contracts [MONK] Staking Pool Configuration

Our staking pool consists of 1 block-producing node and 4 relay nodes.

Our relay nodes utilize AWS t2.xlarge instances with 16 GiB of memory and 4 vCPU, and the block-producing node utilizes an AWS t2.2xlarge instance with 32 GiB of memory and 8 vCPU. These instances provide burstable performance options for larger workloads.

Monkey Contracts [MONK] Staking Pool Stats

Cardano (ADA) Price Data

Staking Pool FAQs 

How long does it take to get Cardano staking rewards?

It takes a minimum of 15 days (3 Cardano epochs) + the time until the end of the epoch (epoch duration is 5 days). So, in short, it should take between 15 and 20 days. You can check https://pooltool.io/ and refer to the top left corner for epoch “ends” time (how much time remains in the current epoch).

For more details on the subject, please refer to the following video:

Can I lose my Ada by delegating to a staking pool?

No. Staking is 100% safe. You are using your right to delegate to a pool which is a separate action from transferring Ada.

How do I delegate to multiple staking pools?

This is currently not possible. You can only delegate to one pool per wallet. Therefore you can create multiple wallets and delegate each one. (Note: This feature is on the roadmap.)

I am already delegating my Ada, but I have purchased some more Ada. How do I delegate it too?

Send your newly purchased Ada to the already delegated wallet. It will automatically be delegated to the same pool to which you are already delegating.

Do I need to keep my Yoroi, Daedalus, or Adalite wallet open if I am staking?

No. You can close the wallet/shut down your computer and you are still staking and getting rewards.

What happens if my computer breaks or I delete the Yoroi extension or my Daedalus wallet?

Your funds are safe if you have backed up your words (phrase) with which you created the wallet. Reinstall Yoroi wallet/Daedalus wallet and initialize it with the backup words. Staking awards are not affected by this event. The design takes this into account. Read the instructions before you create a wallet.

Can I use different wallets with a hardware wallet?

You can open your hardware wallet in any client, Daedalus, Adalite or Yoroi. It should always display the current state of your funds and delegation.

Which exchanges and third parties support Cardano?

Coinbase, Binance, Kraken and many others. Please research this online.

Do I lose my rewards if I switch to a different staking pool?

No. You will get the rewards for the current epoch as the snapshot is taken at the beginning of each epoch.

What is a saturated pool? Do I get staking rewards if I delegate to a saturated pool?

A saturated pool is currently a pool above ~64 million Ada. The rewards for a pool are capped, so if users delegate to a saturated pool, the pool will not get any rewards past that point. The pool splits the reward pot to more users, but with capped rewards, the individual users will get less rewards. Therefore always try to delegate to an unsaturated pool.

What is an epoch from a staking point of view?

It is a reward period for Cardano. It lasts 5 days. Also your initial delegation and redelegation is recorded at the beginning of the epoch.

What is a Slot?

An epoch consists of N slots. Pools get assigned epoch slots to produce blocks of transactions. The more blocks a pool produces the more rewards for the pool’s users. The more users, the more blocks a pool is assigned to produce.

What is ROS, ROI, ROA?

ROS means Return On Stake and has basically a similar meaning as ROI, which means Return On Investment or ROA which means Return On Ada. It is a measure of a % return in a year.

Example: Pool has 5% ROS for epoch 220. So if you stake 100 Ada this means that 5% is extrapolated over the course of a full year (the pool would have the same return for all epochs in a year) and you would get 5 Ada in a year.

Should I create my own pool?

Yes, if you have the system administrator skills and you can market the pool to attract users who will delegate to your pool.

What is a fixed fee for a pool?

The pool operator gets a fixed fee for running the pool. The minimum that can be set is 340 Ada. After this a variable fee is applied and the rest is distributed to the pool’s users.

What is a variable fee for a pool?

The pool operator gets the variable fee for running the pool. Before the variable fee is applied, a fixed fee is subtracted from the rewards. What is left is distributed to the pool’s users.

Is there a website where I can find a list of all Cardano pools?

Yes. Check out https://adapools.org and https://pooltool.io.

I have sent an Ada transaction. Where can I see it?

You can check the Cardano explorer. Paste the transaction hash into the search field at https://explorer.cardano.org

Cardano Wallet Options

Daedalus

Available at https://daedaluswallet.io/, Daedalus is the official Cardano full node wallet. Note that, after you install Daedalus on your computer, you have wait for the application to sync the entire Cardano blockchain the the first time you launch and this process can take a couple of hours.

For details on staking with Daedalus, please refer to the Daedalus tutorial.

Yoroi

Available at https://yoroi-wallet.com/, Yoroi is a light web wallet for Cardano available as a browser extension and as a mobile application. It also supports hardware wallets. For a mobile-friendly wallet search Google Play store or Apple App Store for “yoroi.”

For details on staking with Yoroi, please refer to the Yoroi staking tutorial.

Adalite

Available at https://adalite.io/, Adalite is a light web wallet for your browser. It also supports hardware wallets.

For details on staking with Adalite, please refer to the Adalite staking tutorial.

Disclaimer

This article comes as is with no guarantees. Use your own good judgement.