Call to all "inactive" pools (+/- 400 pools)

Hello,

To all pool owners that are not part of the 100 “active” pools, what is your feeling about this?

Many pools have monthly fees.
Many hodlers delegate their stake to those pools.
0 rewards for pools and delegators.

Is it normal? What if the 100 pools test phase last for 1 year or more…?

Investment have been made, time has been spent, energy too.

This can not stand the way it is. So all “inactive” pools need to raise and speak to IOHK and CF for a more equal test phase.

When some pools will make +/- 700.000 ADA per year, some other pools will just lose money in maintenance and time.

1 Like

From CH last AMA (Last night)

Hello @Karma_Pool,
I think you are getting something wrong. The fact that the “number of desired pools” is set to 100 does not mean that all other pools are inactive (like for example in other POS projects)

Rather it means that for the protocol itself it would be “optimal to have” a number of that amount, and the incentives are set in a way, but the system itself is totally dynamic and adapts to any number of pools.

I mean you are right, that there are many inactive/orphaned pools but that is mainly the fault of the stake pool operators. (and because there is no good way at the moment to retire a pool)

For a better understanding please watch:

6 Likes

Thank you Sir, totally agree with you. I did not see it that way before.

But isn’t there a risk of pools flying away?
Those that lose money instead of earning some…

1 Like

Please consider not to delete your posts/thread, because this is interesting for many people.

1 Like

Thank you Sir,

Well, thank you for caring.
What I am upset about is that IOHK and CF chose 48 pools to delegate millions of ADA. That make the game unfair IMHO.

What is your thoughts on this, Maybe I am wrong again…

1 Like

It’s more or less what’s keeping me from investing time into getting a stake-pool up… It feels like I’m kinda late to the party and will have a very hard time to find delegators to the pool and therefore probably will not get any blocks to produce. (If I can get one up and running anyway).

1 Like

The real party will be the main net. So, keep faith and try to find an honest dude that will care of setting up the pool for you. 100% trust needed in this case. There are some passionate honest people in here.

They do it to boost the pools, as well as the network as a whole, and it’s not a static set, they keep moving it to different pools.

4 Likes

It’s exactly like @RobJF said in the above post. It was a great surprise for the community that IOHK does this at all, but of course you can never please everybody.

4 Likes

Agree, but with the risk to lose pools on the way.

This PoS system is not about pampering stake pools but about to create a self-regulating system that works with or without IOHK. Everybody has to think of his own if what he does makes sense or not. So “losing” pools on the way is just a very normal thing.

By the way: I believe if a pool operator takes care about his pool, keeps his pool up most of the time, then eventually he will create a block and get a good ROI which then is being noticed by delegators who then delegate to this pool. Coming late to the party is no problem at all. But coming late, with high fees and maybe a mediocre pool performance will not be very attractive to delegators.

I don’t think that on mainnet we will see many pools with fixed fees or with 10% or more relative fees due to a quite good competition between pools. The system works already now with misleading information in Daedalus, so I don’t have any doubt in it for the future.

4 Likes

1 Like

How would they be losing pools? IOHK seems to be randomly dropping large chunks of test net ADA on different pools - they’re picking high stake and low stake pools. It seems they are picking pools that are relatively high performers (ex. not dropping test net ADA on inactive pools). My guess is they are doing this to jump start the system and test out their game theory mechanics… it’ll take some time for an equilibrium to establish itself.

If a pool is high performance (i.e the operator is clever enough to solve 100% of blocks while the system is relatively shaky) and also low fee, they will eventually rise up the ladder.

If you’re a pool operator frustrated by not having enough stake to earn blocks, then you’ll need to promote your pool and encourage people to join. I’ve jumped pools several times now. I look for high performing pools with low fees that are also a distance away from being saturated.

Without any delegators I will never get a chance to get a first block. So the pool perf will stay at 0%

That is why IOHK and CF delegate HUGE bags to just a few friends.

Unless IOHK and CF delegate a small bag to my pool no one will put ADA on a pool that has only 200 K ADA (My 200 K).

I would not care much, but it represents a huge amount of ADA at the end of the test net.

The entire community was shocked when they find out what IOHK and CF did. Me too.

Have you tried messaging them to ask if they’re willing to help you kickstart your pool?

Without any delegators I will never get a chance to get a first block. So the pool perf will stay at 0%

Small pools still have a chance at being elected for a block, but it’s going to be low each epoch with only 200k. I can understand why pools with a small starting stake may take some time to prove their fitness, but this is the situation for all pools unless they have a large personal holding to commit, or as I said, they advertise their pool in order to attract delegates.

That is why IOHK and CF delegate HUGE bags to just a few friends.

What makes you assume it’s ‘friends’? Please point to the evidence that they are playing favorites?

I’m suspect of this claim based on my own experience. When the testnet first launched I committed to a pool that had only 200k invested just like you. This pool also had low fees (1%) and a good website. I created a thread about this pool on reddit as I figured people should be made aware of the small independent pool owners who seemed legit. I had no association with this pool - but just thought it was a good pick. The pool grew from a small amount to about 80M in the first few weeks. Many small pledges each day.

Only when the pool was nearing the 1% threshold did IOHK dump about 50M on the pool making it over saturated! I’m not sure why this happened… perhaps to test willingness of delegates to leave the pool… perhaps it was random. In any case, I have no reason to believe it’s because the pool operator was ‘friends’ with IOHK or CF. Furthermore, dumping bags on a successful pool and over saturating it does nothing for the pool operator (who is capped at saturation), and nothing for IOHK (they earn less rewards), so they certainly weren’t helping their ‘friend’ if this was the intention.

I would not care much, but it represents a huge amount of ADA at the end of the test net.

Yes. Pool operation is a competitive game by design. Did you expect this to be otherwise? The system benefits the most savvy pool operators who can run the pools at the lowest cost. This strikes the balance between network efficiency and sturdiness. It seems good for anyone holding ADA as a sturdy and inexpensive network is likely to be competitive against incumbents like ETH, Tezos, Alogrand, etc.

The entire community was shocked when they find out what IOHK and CF did. Me too.

Shocked about what? Perhaps I’m missing some major news. If you would please link to this shocking event.

1 Like

Well, Rick and Philip (DIGI and SCAR). to make a short list…
Both Cardano Ambassadors.
Self homemade cooking IMHO.

Ask ADA North Pool ANP and others… It was a surprise for all. (bad or good, but still shocking move.) Many pools are saturated with IOHK/CF stakes. IOHKL/CF should desaturate those and redelagate to smaller pools.

Them… IOHK and CF ?