Question 1

What is Cardano?

Accepted Answer

Cardano is a decentralized public blockchain and cryptocurrency project and is fully open source.  It is powered by the token ADA.  The development of Cardano is planned out in "eras", and we are currently in the Shelley era.  This era has delivered full decentralisation of the blockchain by allowing stake pools like banderini to validate and produce blocks

Question 2

What is Cardano staking?

Accepted Answer

Cardano uses a Proof of Stake consensus method, based on the Ouroboros protocol.  This essentially means that in order to ensure the integrity of the blockchain, to forge blocks you stake ada, Cardano's native token.  The premise is that if a node acts maliciously, by way of modifying transactions for example, its stake is forfeited.  This is an alternative method of consensus incentive to Proof of Work, used by bitcon and other cryptocurrencies, by which the node must do some intensive computational work, at a comparatively high cost, in order to forge a block, i.e. there is a significantly large cost to trying to commit fake transactions to the blockchain.  Proof of Work, although stable and secure, is immensely energy intensive and is not good for the environment.

Question 3

How do I stake with banderini?

Accepted Answer

To stake with banderini, open your Daedalus or Yoroi wallet and select stake pools.  Search for BAND and select either pool A or B to stake to.  Funds never leave your wallet and you can switch to another stake pool at any time

Question 4

How much can I earn by staking with banderini?

Accepted Answer

That depends on a number of factors, including the "a0" parameter of the protocol, which determines how much influence the operator's pledge has on rewards and the "d" parameter of the protocol, which determines what percentage of non-IOHK nodes are allowed to forge blocks.  "d" will be slowly increased to 100% over the next year or so and "a0" is constantly under review.  In reality though, at banderini's current size you could expect 5% - 10% returns in the medium term.   As a delegator, it's also important to be aware of saturation, or the "k" parameter.  Saturation is where a stake pool accumulates so much stake that returns diminish dramatically.  It is not in a delegator's best interests to stay with a saturated pool - if you are delegated to a saturated pool, you should consider moving your stake to a smaller pool which might forge less blocks, but will have higher rewards over the medium term.

Question 5

What charities does banderini work with?

Accepted Answer

banderini is still currently getting off the ground, but plans are being made to allow the community and delegators to the pool to choose which charities will be donated to for a particular donation round.  banderini will calculate 10% of the pool operator rewards rougly every 18 epochs (90 days), withdraw if from the pool, convert the ada to USD at the current market rate and distribute to the charities chosen.  The plan is to have a regular stream of donations to global charities.

Question 6

How does delegation work?

Accepted Answer

Delegation in Cardano is a 3 step process.  First, you select which pool you want to delegate to in the Daedalus or Yoroi wallet.  You'll then need to wait until the end of the epoch for the current state of stake allocation on the blockchain to be snapshotted.  Since an epoch lasts 5 days, you could wait up to 5 days for this to happen.  Finally, the stake will become active in the second epoch after snapshotting.  Depending on your timing, you could wait a maximum of 10 days for your stake to actively start earning you rewards.  If you would like to optimize your timing, you could refer to a number of tools which display the time left in the current epoch, like adapools.org or pooltool.io