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 Mary era. This era has delivered native tokens and metadata on the blockchain. Cardano looks forward to the Alonzo era in the second half of 2021, which will bring smart contracts to the platform

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 or rewareds are 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.

To stake with banderini in Daedalus, open your wallet and select Stake Pools, using the Staking badge on the left. Search for BANDA and select "Delegate to this pool". To stake with banderini in Yoroi, select the Delegation List tab and search BANDA, then hit "Delegate". Funds never leave your wallet and you can switch to another stake pool at any time

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

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. "a0" is constantly under review. In reality though, at banderini's current size you should expect 3% - 4% 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.

When your first delegate to a staking pool, it could take up to 20 days to receive your first rewards, with a minimum 15 days. This is due to the epoch snapshotting process whereby the protocol tracks your stake allocation to a pool and processes your rewards. An epoch lasts 5 days. As an example, if you first delegated to a pool on the 1st of January and the current epoch was ending on the 2nd: - a snapshot of your stake is taken at epoch change on the 2nd - your stake becomes active (i.e., begins to earn you rewards) at the next epoch change on the 7th - your rewards are processed during the next epoch, starting on the 12th - your first rewards are paid out to your staking address at the next epoch change on the 17th Since this is then a rolling process, you will receive rewards at every epoch change (5 days) after that.