🤝5. Delegating your ADA
Delegating your stake in Cardano is easy and rewards you for securing the network.
Last updated
Delegating your stake in Cardano is easy and rewards you for securing the network.
Last updated
When you delegate your funds, these remain in your full control. Cardano also has no lock-in period.
Now that you've created your wallet and funded it, you want to consider delegating to a Stake Pool.
Your first delegation will incur a (refundable) delegation fee. Should you delegate your funds to a different pool, your operation will only incur a small transaction fee (non refundable).
There is no valid reason not to delegate your stake to a Pool and it can be done by following the steps below. If you would like to know more about Staking on Cardano, please refer to the original post by Prof. Aggelos Kiayias, Chief Scientist for Cardano.
Making recommendations about individual Stake Pools is not the scope of this guide. There are some excellent tips in Selecting a Pool for your Delegation.
Do your own research!
You can also check out these Stake Pool Alliances if you wish.
Use Explorers to monitor the performance of your stake pool of choice: if a pool does not mint any new blocks in an Epoch, neither you nor the stake pool operator will earn rewards.
Navigate to (1) the Delegation Centre and choose (2) Stake Pools:
Search for the pool you wish to delegate to and select "Delegate to this pool":
In the following dialogue, select the wallet to delegate from:
You will now be prompted to enter your spending password to confirm delegation preferences:
It is recommended to change your spending password every time you use it.
Once delegation is successful you should see this dialogue box:
From the "Delegation List" tab, 1) search for your selected stake pool and 2) click "DELEGATE":
Next, confirm the transaction. You will be asked to enter your spending password:
We recommend changing your spending password each time you use it.
Once delegation is successful you should see this dialogue box:
The pools in the images below are intentionally deleted. Your staking page will look slightly different.
Click on Staking from your Wallet's page:
Type the name or ticker of the pool you wish to delegate to:
In the dialogue that follows, enter your spending password and click Sign:
Back on your wallet's main page (Account > Summary), you'll see the updated balance (after fees and deposit of the stake key) and your pool preference.
Your ADA is now delegated to a stake pool 👏 : you are actively securing Cardano, while earning ADA rewards!
Success! Now that your wallet is delegated to a pool, you will start accruing rewards. The funds are still in your full control: you can spend them, transfer them, delegate them to a different pool.
All changes in Cardano take 2 epochs to take effect (delegation, reward distribution, etc). More on this topic on Cardanians' Medium.
