How to nominate on Kusama Network

Inchain.Works
Nov 1 · 6 min read

Kusama is an experimental community focused research and development network of Polkadot. Kusama is willing to be aligned with the existing DOT holders and community. For this reason anyone who has participated in the DOT sale and has received DOT indicator token is entitled to an equivalent amount of KSM on the Kusama network. You can refer to the following guide in order to claim your KSM tokens.

Kusama validators’ role is to secure the network by running validators nodes. There are actually 50 validators running to secure the network. They will be extended to 100 validators as soon as the stability of the networking and consensus allows it. Anyone can intend to become a validator on Kusama network. However, If it is not your case and you hold KSM you can still stake your funds to a reputable validator and earn a reward for it.

In this guide we will walk you through the bonding and nomination process. You can either use the same account for both your controller and stash accounts, or use two seperate accounts (recommended). If you choose the latter, you should make sure you have a tiny amount of KSM in your controller account and the KSM tokens you are willing to stake on your stash account.

The stash account is the one holding your funds while the controller account will be responsible to act on behalf of the stash account for nomination and validation purposes.

More information about Kusama accounts can be found here.


Now let’s see how you can nominate a validator

Task 1 — Bond your tokens

First of all, head to polkadot UI and make sure you are connected to the right network.

From the staking tab on lower left click on account action on upper right and click on the new stake button.

Select your stash and controller account from the drop down as well as the amount you would like to bond. Pay attention to the unit you are using for the amount your are bonding. (1 KSM = 1000 mKSM). Also keep in mind that you will need some KSM to pay for transaction fees. Do not bond all KSM you have in your account. Keep at least 500 mKSM.

Finally choose a payment destination. By default it is set to stash account (increase the amount at stake).

Click on the Bond button, input your password and then click on sign and submit button.

Task 2 — Nominate a validator

Now that you bonded your tokens you can choose a validator to nominate. You can nominate up to 16 validators. Be careful while choosing who to nominate as you will get slashed if your chosen validator commits an offence. Besides that prior to choosing a validator to nominate, you should check the validator’s uptime/reputation as well as the validator’s commision.

You can also check more info about validators on Telemetry. (Don’t be surprised if you can’t find your chosen validator as most of them decide to hide their nodes for security reasons).

You can find the list of validators in polkadot UI on the staking overview tab.

You can click on the validator icon to copy their address.

Go to Account Actions tab where your bonded account is

You can bond / unbond funds, change your controller account, or your reward destination address by clicking on the gear button.

Click on the Nominate button (Set session key is only needed for validation, so you don’t need to pay attention to it if you only intend to nominate)

Copy the validators address you would like to nominate. Remember that you can add up to 16 validators

Input the following address if you’d like to nominate InchainWorks validator

DbAdiLJQDFzLyaLsoFCzrpBLuaBXXqQKdpewUSxqiWJadmp

Input your stash account password then Sign and submit the transaction. Once done you will see a green notification on the top left saying “staking.nominate finalized”.

You are now successfully nominating, and your nomination will be effective on the beginning of the next ERA.

If you decide for some reason to stop nominating a validator, you can do it simply by clicking on the stop nominating button, and your account will be set to chill which means that it won’t do anything.

Why stake with InchainWorks?

We understand that the value of any network relies on the security of each of the nodes that compose it. We do also understand that compromising one node means compromising the whole network. In fact, any component of the network should be able to protect itself from an ever-expanding list of intrusions and attacks. That is why our team constantly strives to achieve the highest possible security standards for the nodes we maintain and operate. Our experience have allowed us to set up a node’s security best practice which is constantly updated and upgraded and that is applied to any of the nodes we set up. We also have our own multichannel monitoring software that notifies us whenever there is a problem with any component of our platform. Besides that, we also make use of monitoring software provided by the trusted validators.

Monitoring Dashboard

We offer a hybrid approach to infrastructure which consists of having multiple public clouds from different service providers, while taking into account redundancy as well as uptime through setting up two backup nodes for each node we operate; that will take over in case the main one is malfunctioning. Moreover, we have structured our network topology in a two layered sentry node architecture. In this configuration, our validator nodes are isolated from other nodes in the network, and are only connected to their private sentry nodes. They are based on different public clouds which are privately connected to our validator node servers which are located in secured colocation data centers. Those private sentry nodes are in their turn connected to our public sentry nodes, which are connected to the internet. This allows us to mitigate the risk of compromised key through hardware security modules ,keep IP addresses of the validator node as well as those of our private sentry nodes private, and last but not least protect our validator node from DDoS attacks.

Network Topology

An uptime of 99,0182% have already been proven with previous and actual nodes we manage. Our current environment, network infrastructure and security practices are extremely reliable.

Validator Address : DbAdiLJQDFzLyaLsoFCzrpBLuaBXXqQKdpewUSxqiWJadmp

French version of the guide can be found here

Website: https://inchain.works

Email: contact@inchain.works

Twitter: https://twitter.com/inchain_works

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