Minimum viable amount of ADA to stake from a private pool

Assuming infrastructure and maintenance costs for a staking pool are 0, what is the minimum viable amount of ADA to stake from a private pool?

By private, I mean a staking pool which is not publicly listed and would only have a single delegator.

By viability, I mean where the pool would have a decent chance to win a slot, such that reward payout wouldn’t be too infrequent / random. Probably much more to consider here …

2 Likes

Hi there is a stake pool calculator here:

https://staking.cardano.org

Things are still fluid in nature as they test assumptions in testnet.

1 Like

Depends on your opinion of “too infrequent”. As an example: If once per month is ok for you, you need to create one block per month. In ITN there are on average around 3000 blocks per day, so around 90.000 blocks per month and one of these should be produced by you. That means you should have delegated about 1 / 90.000 of all staked tADA. Right now there are about 10.500 million ADA staked, so your stake should be 117.000 ADA or more for your private pool to create on average one block per month. And be aware that your pool has to be well maintained all the time. It would be a pity to miss that single block.
Why do you want to run it as a private pool? If you invite others to stake with you, you get blocks mor frequently and also earn some fees from them. I would either run a public pool or delegate to someone else.

3 Likes

Thanks @Herr_Rossi, that’s exactly the type of answer I was looking for! Indeed, there is no reason to keep the pool private. It was more of a theoretical question.

1 Like

This morning I woke up with the same question as discosultan and I’ve spent time on the forum here and at the staking calculator trying to figure out the answer to this question.

I’m new to crypto concepts (just started studying them this spring) but I do have experience with programming and operations and server environments (albeit in a galaxy long ago and far away) so I don’t feel intimidated by setting up a stake pool. Perhaps this is irrational confidence. But this is also the reason, to answer your question Herr_Rossi, why I personally would want to run it privately, I wouldn’t want anyone, at this point, to delegate to me.

I’m holding a little over 10,000 ADA so that was the only thing that I tried to account for in the default advanced settings of the calculator. I just let the default settings in the advanced options be what they were.

I’ve made 2 calculations and neither make any sense to me. One result was over 6 million ADA rewards per year, which seems exorbitant to me. But hey, I’ll do a lot of research and study for that kind of reward! And when I tried to run it again to see what sort of result I’d get I got a big 0.

So at this point I’m not sure what I’m missing and thus my questions in general:
Am I still too much of a newbie to understand what running a stake pool entails, and thus the crazy high ROI that the 6 mil result implies? Or am I that much of a newbie that I can’t perform a proper calculation?

As I implied above, setting up a server and a system that is open source and as well documented as this appears to be, doesn’t seem outside of my ability. Even if it would mean I would need to do some rather dry reading for an unknown amount of time to get up to speed, a few million ADA per year would go a long way to making the effort seem minimal.

But right now, I’m not sure what is true about the rewards to running a staking pool. So any pointer to resolving that question would be greatly appreciated. Even if it means telling me that, “hey dude, you’re probably out of your element here”, that would be great to know.

Either way, I’m “in” on Cardano simply based on concept, planning and execution so far. I’m glad to be here on the forum learning and getting to know others in the community.

In my own local small circle of people that I’ve spoken with about these things I’ve been met with unanimous disinterest and/or sneering derision. One acquaintance responded to the idea of investing in crypto as a concept responded with,“in my opinion the best investment is ammunition.”

That’s a little too glass half-empty for me, even if I understand the negativity about the world.

Anyway, any response is appreciated, thanks for your time!

3 Likes

This also interests me, and I see that it has not been answered. How do I use the staking pool calculator to arrive at a useful result?