Stake Key, My Favorite Cardano Identifier

Confession, as a human and not a computer, I’ve always preferred the Ethereum account model over UTXO. UTXO warps my mind when researching my transactions.

However, I want to call out the power of the Stake Key identifier. While the Stake Key ID probably wasn’t designed to mimic the Ethereum Account model, I greatly appreciate the ability to see my total stake balance which happens to be my total wallet balance using this identifier on the Cardano block explorers.

I wanted to share my general excitement about this Cardano feature and I was wondering if others also find it useful. I’m curious if the Cardano product managers consider this account-like benefit when the Stake Key was proposed.

Well I wouldn’t call it a feature. The downside is that you don’t have much privacy. When you send some Ada to a friend, they will know exactly how much Ada you have, where you stake, etc. The wallet software already aggregates all your Utxos so there’s really no need for this ‘feature’. I hope they can figure out a way to do staking without leaking wallet information.

The wallet aggregation is like a 1990s client server model. I prefer the cloud approach. I know I’m not typical in this space.

I guess @Klobbinger you don’t stake? Since staking would inform the curious recipient of your ADA to you staking amount?

I believe the solution is to have a spending wallet and a staking wallet.

Using adalite or yoroi is pretty close to your cloud approach I’d say.

The staking key always exists in your shelley addresses, no matter if you stake or not.

Having a spending wallet only partly helps, because it’s easy to see that it is fed by your main wallet.

I’ve used Yoroi. It’s great.

Let me ask a question. If it weren’t for the stake ID how long would it take you to find all the addrs on the Cardano explorer that make up your balance. Not long if you have a couple of transactions. Everytime I send 1ADA to someone that created more addrs that make up wallet balance. This is the problem. It’s very difficult to keep track of your balance for accounting purposes with UTXO.

Without the staking key it would not be possible to consolidate the wallet balance from the outside. Just like with bitcoin. This is what gives you a certain degree of privacy.

Luckily our wallet software knows our public key and can derive all the addresses from that so it knows which addresses belong to the wallet. The software will then add them up to show your balance.