In my first article on this blog, I said that I had staked a few hours before I published it some Tezos coins (named XTZ but pronounced tez), through LEDGER Live.
I really did, but made a mistake while staking, so this is good opportunity to share with you advices and pitfalls!
If you want a coupon for a 20% rebate, send me a message :)
I made a video explaining everything but if you need the links or prefer to read an article, you'll find below everything you need.
TOC:
1/ Staking Differences with other blockchains
2/ Tezos Staking
3/ How to choose your Baker
Staking Differences with other blockchains
- Your funds are never frozen. You can do whatever you want with them.
Once you've chosen whom to delegate your tez (Tezos coins) to, all the tez you receive are automatically staked.
- You can only delegate to ONE baker (compared to MULTIPLE Super Representatives with Tron for example).
Tezos Staking
There is a really nice introduction about Tezos staking on the Baking Bad website.
Everyone who holds some amount of Tezos coins has the right to produce, sign and validate blocks and get rewards in proportion to their stake.
[...]
Delegation is when you delegate your staking/baking rights to another person (we call it “baker”).
Tezos does not delegate the Tezos coins (tez) but the rights to stake, hence the reason why your tez are never frozen.
You delegate to only ONE baker.
Delegation in Tezos is absolutely safe! Your funds are not locked or frozen and do not move anywhere. You can spend them at any time and without any delay. Just keep in mind, you only delegate your rights, that’s it.
Delegation Staking Status
- You start at cycle C0 when you start staking with the baker you chose
- Pending: C0 + 2 cycles (~6 days)
- Confirmed: C0 + 5 cycles (~14 days)
- Active: you start earning rewards but you have to wait a bit longer for them to be available
So how long do you have to wait from C0?
- if your baker pays after rewards are unfrozen, it’s
20 days (confirmation) + 3 days (cycle ends) + 14 days (frozen) = ~37 days;- if your baker pays in advance, it’s
20 days (confirmation) + 3 days (cycle ends) = ~23 days.
Most of the time, your baker won't pay in advance, so you will have to wait for 37 days!
How to choose your Baker
The Baking Bad website displays a list of available bakers to choose from. It's tempting to pick the one with the biggest ROI, but don't do that!
If you have a look at the first baker in the list (Baking Team), you will see a negative Free Space.
Somehow this means that this baker is oversubscribed and that only the biggest delegators will be given the rewards!
ALWAYS STAY AWAY FROM BAKERS WITH NEGATIVE OR SMALL FREE SPACE :)
Bakery-IL, with a green background, has some insurance provided by Baking Bad. What this means is that some of your rewards are insured from Baking Bad even if Bakery-IL did something bad.
One more thing you should have a look at is Efficiency and Reliability of your baker as those values may negatively impact your rewards if not good.
In my case I picked Tezmania, with pretty good metrics:
Next, nothing in the Tezos protocol enforces bakers to distribute the rewards to their delegators (you).
So you need check the baker history (Tezmania is a good one), and Baking Bad is dedicated to tracking this for you!
So, everything seems fine with Tezmania, right?
Well, yes, but I made a mistake (making me loose a bit more than 2 weeks of staking rewards), because I did not know the Baking Bad website when I started staking and discovered the problem when having a look at my wallet (simply type your public Tezos address on the Backing Bad website):
What??
Delegator balance is less than required. Reward will remain with the baker.
If you go to the Tezmania website, you'll see that there is a minimum of 100 XTZ required for staking!
Unfortunately, I only add a bit more than 83 XTZ when I started staking, so when I discovered this issue, I simply sent more tez to make sure I had more than 100 XTZ on this wallet.
This is the reason why I'm having plenty of red crosses for cycles 291 to 295 included. I will only start earning rewards on cycle 296 as this is the delay before my 100 XTZ stake is applied.
Lastly, there is a Baking Bad Telegram Bot notifying you of your rewards or the missed rewards, available at tg://resolve?domain=baking_bad_bot
(sorry PUBLISH0X does not seem to allow to insert such links)
I hope this proved to be a useful guide for you, let me know in the comments!
Useful Resources
- Zilliqa (ZIL) Staking with a Ledger Nano
- Tron (TRX) Staking with a Ledger Nano
