Staking Baskets
A brand new innovation for Cardano.
Introducing Staking Baskets
Staking Baskets is a groundbreaking new innovation and schematic for furthering decentralization on the Cardano blockchain. Developed by MLabs, a renowned specialist in Haskell and Rust, Staking Baskets are a smart contract system that allows users to delegate their ADA to a large number of Stake pools in a user-friendly way. Users can also create their own Staking Baskets with their own list of stakepools.
Why use a Staking basket
Strengthening the network
Before Staking Baskets, wallets could only stake to one pool at a time. This has seen smaller pool operators left struggling with a lack of delegation and often having to close down operations due to a lack of profitability.
With Staking Baskets, we hope to see delegation reach the far reaches of the ecosystem, providing smaller pools with the support they need to continue producing blocks and strengthening the network.
Diversification
Delegating to one pool comes with the risk that your delegation may not necessarily produce blocks each epoch, especially if you choose a smaller pool. Delegating to a larger pool mitigates this risk but can lead to smaller groups of pool operators running multiple pools, centralizing the network. By spreading your delegation across multiple pools, you can diversify your staking portfolio and encourage network decentralization.
More rewards
Âtrium’s Staking Baskets will distribute additional tokens to users for staking on Cardano. Our first Staking Basket, Diffusion, will distribute ADA + Âtrium tokens for supporting Cardano’s decentralization. Community members can create their own Staking Baskets and incentivize them with their own rewards. We’re also working on baskets that distribute more ADA than the network average, and we will release more details on those baskets in the next few months.
How do Staking Baskets work?
Staking Baskets are smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain that take the user’s ADA and delegate it across multiple pools in the ecosystem. For depositing the ADA, users will receive basket tokens that can be used to withdraw their initial ADA deposit + their rewards. These basket tokens are liquid and can be sent to other wallets. They can also be swapped on a DEX, given that there’s a liquidity pool.
Diffusion
Diffusion is our first Staking Basket. A community vote forms its composition. We will write an additional Medium article to show you how you can vote for your SPO. Diffusion has been built and is now in the later stages of testing and integrating within our front end. It is about to end the auditing phase while our legal teams scrutinize our offering before presenting it to the market.
General questions
What is rebalancing?
Diffusion needs to rebalance the ADA in the smart contract every epoch to ensure that no pool is saturated and the ADA is evenly distributed across the single pool operators in the basket. In this rebalance period, users cannot withdraw or deposit. This period will be short and at the end of every epoch.
How do I withdraw?
Withdrawing is as simple as depositing. Simply click the withdraw button and choose whether you would like to withdraw your initial deposit or just your accumulated staking rewards.
Are funds secure?
Âtrium</Lab> does not have access to any funds in any of our smart contracts. The only way you can withdraw your ADA is with your basket tokens, and only the smart contract can mint those tokens. Each epoch, your basket token’s value will increase from staking rewards. The smart contract is designed never to let the exchange rate be lowered. Our first Staking Basket Diffusion will not lock the user’s funds. Users can deposit and withdraw their ADA at any time.
A third party will audit the Staking Basket contracts before users are able to deposit. They are continuing to undergo extensive testing on the Cardano preview network. The admin of Staking Baskets does not have the ability to withdraw; at worst malicious Staking Basket creators can only take an epoch of ADA rewards from their users.
Fees + Rewards
What are the fees?
In each epoch, the Staking Basket contract takes a small portion of the staking rewards collected. These fees are then redistributed to holders of the Âtrium token.
How are rewards distributed?
Users will be able to opt-in to earn Âtrium token rewards. This will be seamless in the UI. Once you opt-in for rewards, you must stake for at least three epochs before receiving Âtrium tokens.
Legal
Can I use Staking Baskets in x country?
Cryptocurrency is still fairly new to the World; it’s important that you ask a lawyer in your jurisdiction before you use any financial products on the blockchain. Before releasing Staking Baskets, we will release statements from our lawyers that give more details about certain jurisdictions.
Pools
How do pools get rewarded?
Pools in Staking Baskets will be given the fee they charge when users normally stake to their pool.
How will you choose the pools?
Diffusion will be composed of a selection of pools voted for by the wider Cardano Community. A revote will occur every 36 epochs to allow for the composition to reflect the desires of the community. Follow our Twitter and join our Discord to stay up to date on our voting process. This revote period can be lowered or increased based on community requests, and, eventually an Âtrium token vote.
Are you releasing more Staking Baskets?
Yes. ‘Diffusion’ is our first Staking Basket, pioneering the way and demonstrating how this staking method affects the network and its participants. Our next Staking Basket ‘Karma’ will be a composition of Charitable pools, smaller pools, and pools with a provable track record of benefiting Cardano and broader society. Once we have refined the offering and demonstrated its success, we will be open-sourcing Staking Baskets and allowing users to create their own Staking Basket compositions.
Can my pool join a Staking basket?
Any pool on the Cardano network can join a Staking Basket. However, for Diffusion, the selection will come down to a community vote. So make sure to notify your network and encourage them to participate in the voting process.
Join our community:
Discord: https://discord.gg/atriumlab
Twitter: https://twitter.com/atrium_lab
