Why 340 Ada Fixed Fee? Why can’t we have truly 0% pools that give the staker no more inherent advantage over delegators?
Will the 340 Ada fixed fee minimum ever be lowered?
Why 340 Ada Fixed Fee? Why can’t we have truly 0% pools that give the staker no more inherent advantage over delegators?
Will the 340 Ada fixed fee minimum ever be lowered?
Never say never however it stops exactly what you’re wondering .
Delegating and running a stake pool are completely different things.
One takes a considerable amount of time and has real cost to run servers and compensate work hours = stake pool.
It’s running a business.
The other takes no time at all beyond picking a pool and delegating. Majority put zero thought into this, which is why there are so many over saturated pools where delegates get less rewards.
To want 0% is similar to asking why shops sell goods, why not give their stock away? Because Cardano wouldn’t exist without stake pools.
Businesses would go bust if they gave their products away for free.
Not necessarily, there are models that you can give a product and or service for free and still make a profit, you just need knowledge of the metrics.
Ah nice, well maybe there will be some stake pool operators that can use this model to give a free service and others that need take a fee.
SPO’s have a list of wallets delegated to them. If somebody wanted they could distribute the 340 ADA to the delegators. Some SPOs are claiming to donate rewards to charities.
Would you please share which ones?
I am not sure if the others were able to satisfactorily answer your question. As mentioned by @Lgbeano, there is a real cost involved in running a stake pool. It might be possible to find other ways of financing the pool. But it can easily be less transparent. Is the pool financed through donations? Does the pool offer the service for free due to nefarious reasons? As a delegator, you are using a service. Paying for the service is the most direct way of financing it.
By requiring a minimum amount of fees, stake pool operators can invest in more complex and more secure setups and still be competitive with someone who runs a raspberry pi in his flat with a faulty network connection. The aim is to enable multiple, solid stake pool operators to join the network and be competitive.
As to whether this fee will be lowered someday: I believe it can be lowered but requires the majority of the network to agree with those changes. When the monetary value of Cardano goes up, this will most likely be lowered.