“Hope” and “maybe” are not good terms in business. You don’t these terms in business: “I hope to make money” or “lets maybe make it work.” Instead, it should be “how can I plan for success” or “how can I plan to make X amount to retire by this timeframe.”
My suggestion (and my opinion), if you are hanging on and not getting anywhere, I suggest a re-evaluation of goals, and instead, get involve in other ways (i.e., learning to code and develop on the blockchain) that does not consume time and resources with no/less dividends.
This was a risk-adjusted and calculated decision to retire the stake pool.
TL;DR
I believe not enough game theory/theory or thought might have been focused on the stake pool/SPO mechanism (just my personal opinion). Decreasing the K and increasing the K parameter will help disburse/consolidate stakers to other pools. But most users look at staking as a form of passive income so they’ll flock to whats most profitable.
So what is the most profitable? Higher capitalized stake pools that provide consistent results (unless smaller stake pool have a bigger benefit - which they don’t). Having a lower amount of stake automatically puts you at a disadvantage (i.e, adapools shows your net return = 2.5% APY vs the 5% APY because of the 340 min operator fee).
It’s honestly disheartening because I’ve seen people voice their opinions but have yet to seen any changes or they “plan” to the 340 required fee. I’ve been with the community since 2017 and I know that “plan” can take a long time, especially in Cardano-terms. By removing this 340, the 2.5% APY will be up to 5% APY (at the cost of operating expense for stake pools / epoch) which puts them up against the bigger stakepools.
I don’t need a full debate on “ohh - people will stake to a good cause.”
Yes, I agree a handful of people might; but majority of the population stake and invest to retire… because they believe their investment will have a return. You can’t say profitability doesn’t matter, because deep down it does and those drop in profitability will affect who wants to stake to the smaller pools, and make the entry point difficult for new SPOs or SPOs with low capital.
At the end of the day, time itself is considered a resource and I truly believe everyone’s time should be considered valuable. I’ve spent 9 months with Cardano (albeit not as deep in the community as others) but it did not make sense at this moment in time to continue operating a Cardano stakepool.
