ITN Rewards are ending soon
Calculations indicate that the ITN Testnet will completely run out of funds to pay for the rewards around epoch 190, which happens june 21st. Depending on actual daily rewards payout, this could perhaps occur a day sooner or later.
The end of ITN rewards will conclude 6 months of huge progress for the entire Cardano community, with the introduction of hundreds of stake pools and thousands of devoted delegators, all happy to finally having been able to put their precious ADA to work!
Snapshot & Balance Check
The payout of ITN rewards will be followed up by a snapshot to capture all rewards, in order for IOHK to copy them over to mainnet later on.
Don’t worry, no action is required for you as a delegator. For the snapshot it is irrelevant if and where your funds on the ITN are. Your staking rewards will automatically be associated with the wallet(s) from which you delegated your initial funds. Just make sure you have all relevant recovery phrases, so you can restore your wallet(s) later on.
The ITN rewards snapshot will then be followed by a balance check (probably end of june), which involves a special wallet version which lets you verify if your rewards have been correctly identified and captured.
The ITN rewards will become available as ‘real ADA’ as soon as Shelley Mainnet launches, which is scheduled to happen early August.
Goodbye ITN, Welcome Shelley Mainnet
Once ITN rewards have completely stopped, here at staking4ADA a lot of work will have to be done to build the new pool infrastructure around the Haskell node software, and to prepare for our staking4ADA.org website to connect to the new pool(s), in order to bring you the live pool data and statistics from mainnet in the same way as you have gotten used to from us on the ITN.
Full transparency is an absolute priority for us, so we definitely want to keep letting you know how many blocks we’re expecting to mint in each epoch and how we’re getting on with those slot battles, also on mainnet!
We will continue to keep you updated, via this blog, as well as via our Twitter and Telegram channels, so keep an eye out for us!
Happy staking! 🙂
P.S. After setting up our first test pool on the Cardano Friends % Family Testnet, today we successfully produced our first block using the advanced and completely new Haskell node software:
Thank you for the work over the last 6 months. I’ve been very comfortable staking with you, and the transparency on status, and rewards. Keep up the good news and I’ll be back to see you on Mainnet!
Hi Mike,
Thanks, that means a lot to hear you’ll be back on Mainnet.
Especially the first couple of weeks are crucial to gain some momentum. If we’re still small after that it will become very hard to attract enough stake to survive in the long run I’m afraid. But we’re going to try as hard as we can!
Hi Jos, same here, while I do not fully understand all the details of how operating a staking pool involves, you have kept us up to date and informed on a regular basis + earned us great rewards, what more could we ask!
Well, Stuart, to getting the current stakepool running smooth and stable, with the live data feed on the website, took long hours and -especially the first two months- many sleepless nights.
And now with the preparations for mainnet, there’s again lots of work ahead, but we all want to see Cardano reach at least the top 5 on CMC, and if we do it will certainly have been worth the effort.
But I’m glad you’ve been happy with us, so I’ll be looking forward to see you back on mainnet in Aug!
Great work Jos-
I too will be back with a bigger bag of ADA to stake. You’ve done a fine job and I look forward to supporting you on the mainnet.
Much appreciated Eric, don’t sell all of it before we’re live 😉
I was “Johnny come lately” getting in the ITN but plan to be on time with main net. Must admit your reply to Mike got me a bit concerned about attracting enough stake to survive. Have not read enough about it to know why. Don’t like the idea of nodes that hold greater stake can dominate block release rewards. Even worse if they gain such an edge that smaller pools can’t operate profitable. Had hope that competing for blocks would be more fairly distributed among the nodes no matter whom had the largest stakes. Oh well, way of the world won’t be quickly changed.
IOHK are working towards creating an environment in which most likely a few hundred pools can “thrive”, but in which it will become increasingly difficult for many more pools to survive. Reason is that having very many pools (800~1000 or more) right from the start is risky in that it could negatively impact network performance.
It is expected that many if not most delegators will compare pool performances only during the first few weeks. After that, stake will get moved around less and less frequently, so if we have not attracted enough stake to produce blocks on a regular basis and prove our performance during the first few weeks, there is a risk that our total stake and corresponding pool rewards end up being too low to cover our operating costs.
I will soon follow up with a blog post to explain how two variables are going to strongly influence the expected number of pools we’ll end up with (k-factor and a0 factor).
Thanks for the reply info. Look forward to the follow up. My mainnet stake will increase but still small time compared to many I would figure. Will push any ADA holders I meet to stake your way. Sounds like you got some continued long hours of work next few months and maybe longer.
Thank you for 6 months. I was very relieved because of your devoted work. I also want to be on the main net 😉
I am looking very much forward to meet you there Naomi! 🙂