Your Favorite Stake Pool?

With Shelley around the corner, I wanted to ask the community if you have picked your favorite stake pool.

There are a LOT of them! I have come across some notable ones like Adatainment, which combines entertainment and staking.

It appears that staking in Cardano could be combined with a side service/added benefit to stakeholders and I wanted to what else is out there.

Please list your favorite pools here with one line describing why you like them.

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I’m pretty sure it’s called adatainment. :thinking: :smiley:

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Lol. I love it. Cardano stake pools are going to be very fun. Lots of love I forsee.

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Corrected it now :slight_smile:

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Here’s a list of many stake pools in case anyone is interested…

I plan to stake with a few pools and compare them over time.

Sorry but that’s extremely unlikely to be a complete list… as is this https://cardanowiki.info/wiki/List_of_staking_pools :smile:

Yes, this is old and not up to date.

This website seems to have started listing stake pools recently.

https://cardano.eco/

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I have my eyes on three which im going to test out with the same ammount of ADA.

whichever returns the most will be the winner.

  1. @adatainment == https://www.adatainment.com/#
  2. @Hephaestus == https://heph.io/
  3. @CryptoGrill == http://cryptogrill.io/

why do people use .io over .com?

does it sound more legit? if they use .io?

Francisco

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Any stake pool which looks professional & transparent enough is a candidate for me.

I will look for the following in terms of transparency:

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Seriously? There is no way I would expose that much information on the internet. I hope to run a Stakepool as an individual, not a full blown corporation.

I would not be opposed to some KYC but that would require some form of centralization …

Anyway here is a start. Let me know what you think.

rADArstakepool.com

One thing I look for is to see that the entire stake pool operations is run in a legally compliant way meaning there is a registered company behind it or / and a known individual who will pay taxes and have accountability for the service being provideded.

Sharing your identity would potentially allow to review is you have additional staking pool interests and bring a sort of proof of reputation quality to your staking pool operations. You would put your reputation at stake and your social & professional network being aware of that. It would also possibly emphasize that you might have the right background & expertise to operate such an infrastructure & business.

Also I would want to know if the pool will be run in the Cloud (and which one) or on premises and in which geographical location / zone. This would allow me to choose diversity for the benefits of the Cardano Blockchain.

If you would share quality statistical data about the pool operation it would be a proof of the serious & professional operational qualities behind it. You would need this data itself to optimize on your pool operation infrastructure anyway. It’s not like unnecessary data requested.

Contact number & claim / complaint management process would show you are seriously Customer Focused and ready to respond to whatever reasonable requests / questions your Customers would have. This becomes more relevant & interesting if your pool provides and added value / service next to the staking operation.

Following certain period of operations publishing any reliable 3rd Party audits of your infrastructure would show that your pool is operated in high security & scalability context and is a strong contributor to the Cardano Blockchain Network. It might present all the secondary security measures taken for the pool operations.

Finally the design & branding of your website would be one potential indication of the initial invest you are willing to make in regards to the staking pool business and indicate you have the liquidity it requires to manage & scale the infrastructure and also act as a sort of minimal guarantee.

Would you have any value added services for the customers who delegate to your pool would show long term strategical thinking, entrepreneurship and willingness to differentiate. Of course this should be something lightweight and fully optional as it would cut your and / or our profit margins, which is not necessarily expected. But some might decide to support non-profit staking pools and donate their staking rewards for a good cause.

Finally financial transparency would be another possible way to ensure your are taking healthy profits, but not at the cost of lowering security & scalability standards of the infrastructure you are running. This would be more interesting in comparison with other pool operators to let us avoid the extreme ends of the spectrum.

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I am sure that some % of 1000 pools will be able to operate like that. They will most likely be at capacity leaving room for the rest of us.

I expect that operating a pool at 10% margin with 20m ADA will generate something like 80k ADA annually. (Pool fee 10% 74,087.24792 ADA yearly from https://antipalos.github.io/cardano-calculator/) Spending a significant portion of that in compliance would seriously decrease the incentive to operate. Perhaps if one were planning to operate more than 1 pool it might make sense. I am just trying to pad my Social Security check. (no really!)

I expect to be able to operate my pool on a VPS. I have used both Linode and Vultr for Masternodes. They offer some security features built in and I am sure to learn more about what they offer.

How great of a concern should the Staker have? Nothing leaves their wallet. The worst case being some loss of rewards if a pool missed slots.

I believe that IOHK will make generating reports with statistical data readily available. Something that I would think every pool operator would have published/linked on their website.

Being easy to contact through a website is a one click kind of thing. Maybe even a link to my presence on this forum. Small presence but I am here :wink:

I am working hard and learning much designing my website. I haven’t spent a lot of $ but I have secured a domain. I am a hack with the photo editor but I think I have found some help. I expect to continually improve what I have.

I have a couple of ideas as to “value added” type of things. Such as offering some % of rewards to a Cardano related charity. I am open to suggestions as to who that might be. Or even the National Kidney Foundation. As a transplant recipient they mean a lot to me. (Please donate!)

Respectfully
JGriff

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