There just seems to be too much going on with Cardano to be bothered by a flaky bitcoin price! Probably for the first time since the crypto markets were ever "invented", Cardano along with a few other projects is showing first signs of decoupling from bitcoin's price momvements.

Could it be that Elon Musk's comments about the environmental aspects of bitcoin mining may have been a curse for many but a blessing for us ADA-holders? Time will tell!

We have updated one of our most popular blog posts which explains how to use IOHK's official staking calculator. It is much easier to use than you might think at first sight and provides lots of insight on how different pool parameters such as size, fee and pledge, are influencing rewards.

What you will generally find, is that parameters such as fee, pledge and size only have a minor influence on rewards, as shown by a comparison between different pools towards the end of the blog post.

Cardano is paving the way for a better future, and so are we! To help ensure the long term stability of our platform, we have deployed UNST (Unstoppable ADA). With UNST we are hoping to attract a broader delegator base, which would make us more resilient against fluctuations in total delegated stake. But we are also aiming to position ourselves in anticipation of potential protocol parameter changes, related to pool size and pledge, which are expected later this year.

The new pool will replace GIVE, which was too small to have a fair chance at producing blocks, but has served its purpose more than well, by generating our most recent 1,000ADA donation to the Oceana foundation.

With the launch of UNST we also took the opportunity to redistribute our total pledge. As IOHK's staking calculator proves, the amount of pledge currently has no influence on staking rewards whatsoever, but we will of course take appropriate action should this change in the future!

QUESTION
Will my rewards improve if I would re-delegate from 4ADA or F4ADA?

ANSWER
No. Reason 1: as long as it's small, UNST will produce unpredictable rewards. There likely are going to be some reward-less epochs!

Reason 2: confirmed by IOHK's staking calculator, its 0%-fee does not weigh-up against the smaller delegation base which has to absorb the 340 minimum fixed cost every epoch, currently giving UNST an expected yearly Return On Stake of 3.64%.

In case you missed it, make sure to watch Charles Hoskinson's latest video in which he reminds us to not get too much distracted by price movements in the general cryptocurrency markets, but to stay focused on where it's really at; participate in a new decentralized ecosystem that provides financial freedom and true identity ownership to all!

From now on you will find block performance statistics for all 3 pools (produced vs. assigned blocks and assignment luck) during the epoch on our homepage.

Past epoch summary's and next epoch expectations are as always posted in our Telegram group (see link below) around every epoch change. This is also the place to look for answers on any questions you may have about our pools.

Happy staking!🌞

Jos.