I completed the course, finally! However, it is not clear what the next step is? How do I know if my relay/BP nodes are actually doing their jobs? And do I need delegators before my staking pool can receive rewards?
Hi @ierosvin!
You can run some basic checks on https://pool.vet/
To get rewards you need to generate blocks.
If a block is assigned to your pool depends on the amount of staked ADA including your pledge.
With ~1 mio you get a block on average per epoch. With less, it needs accordingly more epochs to get a block assigned. Be aware that the average can differ from reality quite a lot as slot assignment involves luck.
Steps I took afterwards:
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Security. Read through lots of different forums. There are lots of great posts and ideas. Google is your friend.
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Optimization. Ditto, above. For me, this meant running my nodes as relays on main net for a few weeks and more than a few revisions to my setup and settings.
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Additional testing. Ditto, above. For me, this included standing up a remote relay on a major Cloud provider and experimenting with using their backbone to decrease latency across long distances. Also played around and became familiar with available pool reporting tools and sites.
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Practice backups and recovery. I am from the Windoze world where online server backup imaging solutions are plentiful. I have been surprised to (so far) not been able to find similar solutions for Linux. It seems one must take servers offline to get a restorable image. Snapshots can cause a fork. Still searching, though.
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Create/Improve website.
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Launch stake pool.
Iām almost at that last step and not in any hurry.
Cheers!