Hi All,
I’ve been inspired by Cardano’s progress as of late and have been researching ways to become involved. I’ve worked as a DevOps engineer for the past 5 years, so I have experience with systems administration. Becoming a stake-pool operator intrigues me, but I’m limited on what ADA I own. It seems like I would need a rather large amount of ADA to become noticed as a reputable stake-pool, is this correct? I’m ok with marketing my stake-pool brand, but wouldn’t want to waste money or time if I’m limited on what I could pledge. Thanks
A stake of ~150k ADA should give you a ~10% chance of minting a block every epoch. There is of course the factor luck which could bring you a block with less than this amount, but I guess you would loose delegators if you are not minting blocks every epoch or be too unattractive if there is not even one block minted per epoch. I also have recently started a stake pool by myself with only 10k staked so far and I’m aware of this huge starting problem, but I can say that it makes fun to set everything up, especially if you are an engineer. Also it is a good feeling to be part of the whole system and contribute to a more decentralized ecosystem. Also in march the saturation point will be reduced so lots of delegators will go over to unsaturated pools, which can give you a chance to even succeed with a smaller pledged pool.
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Welcome! I think currently you need around 2m Ada of computed stake to consistently get elected for at least one block per epoch. If you don’t have this much to put into your own pool, it’ll be tough to consistently get rewards to compensate yourself for your time and operational costs. You may be better off just delegating to other pools for now, unless you’re ok with putting in your time & money pro bono. It’s definitely a great experience to build and run a pool. I’ve seen some pools with very little stake and a lot of luck produce a block, but the luck wouldn’t be consistent.
You could also look into Project Catalyst and propose ideas you think would be beneficial for the Cardano Community as another option to contribute.
Thank you both for the input. I like the idea of standing up the infra and exploring what the ecosystem has to offer. I’ll definitely take a look at Project Catalyst. Much appreciated.
If your only plan is to get profitable, becoming a SPO by establishing a pool is not a good idea.
Majority of the stakepool operators are inspired by Charles’ vision of decentralization. In fact I’m one of them. I’m running a pool with 0% return. And I own ada since 2017.
When comes to wasting time/money:
- Plutus/Haskell are programming languages on top of Cardano block chain - Aim to learn them. Create your own DApps
- Lot of other things lined-up for next 10 years like Social meadi on blockchain, etc