How is this supposed to achieve decentralization?

Staking & Delegation Operate a Stake Pool
#1

Given the 1-2M initial stake requirement to be able to operate a profitable (long term viable) staking pool, how is this supposed to further the decentralization? At adapools.org one can see that about 70% of all registered pools has a 0 BPE (Block per epoch) reward = no income (right?).

Even if the initial staking requirement was reduced by 99% by some mechanism it would still mean that 10’000 - 20’000 ADA would be required to be able to run a long term viable staking pool, which is probably far beyond what many average income end-user has available has “play money” for an “interesting project”.

In my mind it should result in an increased centralization, instead of de-centralaziation?

Or am I missing something important regarding the staking model?

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#2

Hello,

For a small pool only few blocks are required (3-4 per year) to achieve the performances (ROA / ROS) of a BIG POOL.

on the other hand … are delegators… which are not understanding that delegating to a small pool will not affect the rewards, they will receive the same ROA/ROS at the end of the year… but perhaps they feel more confortable if they are receiving small reward each epoch than a big reward once in a month for example. I really really hope they will eventually understand and they will prefer small pools running by a single operator instead a pool operator which running more pools (not good for decentralization)

Anyway… the pool operator should work hard to make his pool known by the community!

it’s like any small business … if you can’t handle it you are bankrupt by the competition :slight_smile:

Cheers,

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#3

Welcome @autonic ! :wave:
I Agree with everything @Alexd1985 said.
Additionally -

  • We have portfolio delegation coming that will let people easily split their stake between many (small) pools, and will push delegation to the edges of the network.

  • Consider it’s very early, and there is a price for that. Increasing ADA value alongside the evolution of the network will make things more sustainable in the future imo.

  • Running a pool is for everybody but not for anybody. It’s a revenue machine with potential! And a responsibility to the network - so it’s fine by me if it won’t qualify as a hobbyist side project.

My own concern is corporations and such who will want to take over once the potential becomes evident…

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#4

Ok, I see.

I understand that the initial confusion on my part was due to the rounding on adapools.org (if your pool gets 0,001% of all BPE it will be rounded to 0 on the website.

However, there is still a problem with the presentation of the pools in Daedalus application. One suggestion to increase decentralization would perhaps be to automatically sort pools with the lower saturation weighted higher than high saturation pools in the list?

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#5

I agree the wallet dashboards have a long way to go.

They would need to be usable but mostly unbiased (at least the official ones), so I imagine in the future we will have better portals/platforms that will help us compare and delegate.

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