I had staked to about 8 different pools using a separate Daedalus wallet for each. Thought that would help me keep my stake pools straight in my mind. Over time I redelegated 4 staked wallets to better performing wallets. So now I’ve got 8 wallets staked to 4 pools. I want to combine the wallets to just 4. One each for each of the stake pools I’m involved in.
Could it be as simple as moving one wallet to another of the same stake pool? Or do I have to do something like pull out of the stake pool and then stake again? I suppose I would lose rewards doing it this way while waiting for my stake to be registered?
To receive the rewards, the stake key has to still be registered.
So, I would move all funds except for one or two Ada to the wallet that should stay, then wait three epochs until all rewards for the high funds have arrived, then deregister the stake key and get the 2 Ada deposit back and then move everything together also to the other wallet.
(Since the other wallet is already registered to the correct stake pool, you do not have to do anything there. As soon as the amount from the to-be-retired wallet arrives there, it will be used for staking (and lead to higher rewards three epochs later). A wallet always stakes with everything that is in it.)
I’m not changing the stake pool just the wallet those tokens are kept in. Moving from one wallet to another should take minutes and not 3 epochs or 15 days. Sounds like I’ll lose rewards for those 3 epochs which makes it the same a clearing out my wallet and staking all over. Not sure what keeping 2 ADA in the old wallet gets me?
If I understand redelegating correctly when I make the move I wait 3 epochs until the ADA is registered with the new pool and earning rewards in that pool. In that time I am still earning rewards for 2 epochs in the original pool.
There is an infographic for the staking epoch timeline here:
It takes only minutes to move the funds to the other wallet, but you still get rewards for the high amount in the old wallet for three more epochs. The system cannot automatically redirect them to the new wallet. How should it know that they both belong to the same person?
So, to not miss out on these (perhaps condiderable) rewards, you can wait with deregistering the old wallet until they have arrived.
You can, of course, also decide that you do not care, deregister immediately, move everything to the new wallet and miss out on these rewards.
You do not loose rewards by delegating a given stake key to another pool. This is because your active stake for epoch N+1 is determined by a snapshot at the beginning of epoch N.
The term “wallet” may be a little confusing here. If you look at ADALite you’ll notice that is uses the term “Account” for the first level in your address space hierarchy. Have a look at BIP44 to understand deterministic hierarchical wallets.
In any case, it is best to use a HW wallet that supports BIP44 (e.g. Ledger X). If you do, each account in can be staked to a different pool. Consolidating to accounts is a variation of unstaking an account. The process is …
Move all but 2 ADA to another account in epoch N
Wait for epoch N+2 to unstake your stake key
Move those 2 ADA + 2 ADA deposit that other account
When you move your stake around, you may want to be familiar with the concept of “cost per block” and perhaps more importantly “effective cost per block”. The difference in reward can be significant i.e. >30% In short, I’d recommend to look for a pool with low “effective cost per block” that also does some good in the world.
In step 3, it’s those 2 ADA + 2 ADA deposit - transaction fee for deregistering + rewards - transaction fee for the transfer to the other wallet. Without the rewards, this whole waiting wouldn’t make much sense.
(If you really get a lot of rewards, it might even make sense to repeat the “move to new wallet, wait for last rewards to come in” process to not miss out on the rewards for the rewards.)
Yes, I saw this graphic this morning. This is for ADA that is not already staked. My ADA is already staked and I don’t want to change the staking pool. Just the wallet it’s in.
hmmm…I just sent 100 ADA from one wallet to another where both are staked to the same pool. In the Delegation Center panel on Daedelus it recognizes the change correctly. One went up by 100 and one went down by 100 and it looks like there’s no effect on staking.
Yes and no. The process shown there starts again every epoch.
At the beginning of epoch N+3 you get the rewards calculated during epoch N+2 for stake used during epoch N+1 based on a snapshot taken at the beginning of epoch N.
If you move Ada from old wallet to new wallet during epoch N, the rewards for these Ada will still be paid to the old wallet at the beginning of epoch N+3 10 to 15 days later.
From the point of view of the blockchain, different wallets/accounts are not connected in any way. They could belong to totally different persons.
That you happen to manage both of them in the same Daedalus/Yoroi/AdaLite/whatever instance is not known to the blockchain and cannot be taken into account when distributing rewards.
If you move 100 Ada from wallet A to wallet B during epoch N, the rewards for these 100 Ada will be paid to wallet A until the beginning of epoch N+3 and to wallet B from the beginning of epoch N+4.
I suppose what I need to do is to keep these wallets around until the payouts to them are showing 0. That’s epoch N+4. Or more. I assume that if I were to delete those wallets prior to epoch N+4 I would lose those rewards?
When you reduce the stake in N, the snapshot for N+1 has already happened. Your old stake is still active in N+1. The network calculates rewards in N+2 and in N+3 you get the last payout.
The reward you get in N+4 is likely 0 because you reduced the stake in that account to almost zero. Keep at least 1 ADA + unregister fees. 2 ADA is plenty.
The thing with the HW wallet is quite important, please don’t ignore it if you don’t have one already.
I think through my security and fault tolerance risks and backups from time to time. It seems nothing is bullet proof. It would seem to me that the safest thing to do is print out my keys and keep them in a safe deposit box. Theoretically that would protect against fire or some other catastrophe.
What are the weaknesses of the HW wallet? Suppose it’s stolen? Or I lose it? How can I recover from that?
Suppose I want to enjoy an adventure of traveling about with no home base? I’d want to be able to spend my ADA to pay for that. Not sure what strategies I could use to do that?
Of course this is probably best suited for it’s own topic.
I just noticed this in the Delegation center tab. At the bottom it tell you where your wallets rewards are at. “Now 305 306”
Also describes the process.
The 24 word mnemonic is the encoded (not encrypted) form of a very large random number (i.e. 2048^24). Your root private key is derived from that random seed. All other private keys in the BIP44 hierarchy are derived from the root key. Public keys are derived from their respective private key.
In short, your 24 word mnemonic is the root of everything and can therefore be used to restore the key hierarchy on another device that adheres to the same standard.
A HW wallet comes with a guarantee that the root key (or any other priv key for that matter) will never leave the bounds of a special security chip on the HW wallet. Additionally, it adds another layer of security, which is related to the F2A principal: To gain access you must KNOW something AND must HAVE something.
If you give you 24 words to a piece of software, the attack surface is massive. In case your computer gets lost/stolen the attacker has all the time in the world to extract the root seed from it.
There is really no ground to stand when arguing the benefits of a SW wallet - definitely not from a security perspective and not even from a convenience perspective. I can travel with my HW in the pocket to any internet terminal and have instant access. The device can get lost/stolen/brocken any time - when an attacker gets the unlock PIN wrong three times - it erases itself.
I’m sold on the HW wallet. I’ll probably get a Ledger Nano X as soon as it starts shipping. Don’t we come back to having a backup copy of the 24 mneumoic to fall back on should the HW wallet get lost, destroyed, stolen, or erased? It’s the only way of recovery I know of?
Yes, you need a safe place where to store your mnemonic. I you find yourself touching that more often than every few years, you are probably doing something wrong.
And never let it come near a smartphone or a computer, not in a text file, but also not as a photo or in any other form. That would spoil the reason for a hardware wallet.
The 24 words are the key that should never leave the hardware except for this backup. With these 24 words you, but also everyone else can completely restore and get access to your wallet.
