Nomination Pools are Live on Kusama!

With the release of runtime v0.9.22, nomination pools have been added to the Kusama runtime. Adhering to the tradition of the Polkadot ecosystem, Kusama is acting as the canary network here and is receiving this update first before Polkadot. As usual, some degree of chaos is expected.

Nomination pools are a scaling solution for Polkadot’s NPoS system, specifically to assist accounts with fewer tokens to stake directly on the relay chain(s) rather than needing to go through a third-party service.

In short, pools are a collective nomination scheme. Any account can create a pool, with some initial deposit which is used as the pool’s stake. Members can join the pool and increase the stake of the pool. Each pool is a single nomination from the point of view of the staking system. The pool creator has control over managing the pool, including deciding which validator the pool (and consequently all of the members of the pool) select.

Pool Incentive Proposal

To incentivize the use of nomination pools on Kusama, there’s an ongoing governance discussion on Polkassembly initiated by @kianenigma to support the creation of tips to reward early participation in nomination pools. The tip, if approved, will transfer some funds to the pool reward account, which will then be claimable by all pool members at that point, pro-rata. This is to create an extra incentive for prospective pool operators to operate a pool, and for members to join them, helping to ensure that nomination pools are battle tested before being deployed on Polkadot.

Learn more

Learn more about nomination pools and how they work in the April and March editions of the Monthly Staking Update. You can also read about nomination pools in the wiki and track upcoming developments on the project github. For support with nomination pools or to join the discussion, visit the Nomination pools support/discussion room in Element.