We are very excited to announce today the launch of our first operational validator node for Kusama Network!
We have now been working for weeks in order to install, secure and monitor this infrastructure. This precious time allowed us to make sure that we are providing you with the most reliable, trustful and secure validator.
It is with full confidence that we are now opening to staking our validator node on the Kusama blockchain.
Validator address : Hf8C626KBAjitMV7w8AhQWDCiPgUU47htEwbomq5mDMKeyL
Commission : 2% actually — 5% target
To kickstart our node, we decided to put a 2% commission, meaning you will get 98% of the reward from your stake! This will change in the future, our target is 5% commission.
All news or any change will be published on Twitter.
Check our detailed tutorial for staking DOT/KSM!
Who are we
We are a small group of blockchain enthusiasts, experienced system administrators and developers focusing around Ethereum since 2015, we jumped into Polkadot ecosystem since 2020. After years in the blockchain space, it felt natural for us to actively participating in the maintenance of the network. We see the Polkadot project as one of the most revolutionary projects of the coming years.
We are dedicated to provide the best possible validator service with no downtime, a constant monitoring and a reactive update.
We also love to share what we build with the technical community of the Polkadot validators, you can for example have a look at our monitoring dashboard or the Plasm binaries for Raspberry we built.
What is Kusama
If you made it here, you certainly know the Polkadot protocol, developed by the Web3 Fondation, designed to enable a global scalable network of blockchains communicating together to build a decentralized web. In case you don’t, you should watch this video first.
Kusama is the so called “Canary Network” of Polkadot, designed to be an experimental and flexible version of its grand cousin. They are both entirely part of the same project, Polkadot being the stable branch and Kusama the experimental one. You should keep in mind that Kusama is not a testnet but a production blockchain environment.
The Polkadot’s native token is DOT, Kusama’s one is KSM.
They both use the Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS) consensus protocol to secure the network: in this system, the Stakers (called Nominators) nominate a list of trusted Validators who will validate the blocks mined.
This process is much more efficient and less energy consuming than the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus actually used by most popular blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
At the time of writing, no parachain is yet connected to Kusama neither Polkadot. The first ones will deploy on Kusama first (most probably around March/April 2021), before eventually deploying on Polkadot (no date estimate yet).
Why Kusama over Polkadot
Kusama is where things will happen first: parachains and parathreads deployment, implementation of new innovations and developments. We believe being directly in the heart of the project development is the best way to keep up-to-date.
But moreover, Polkadot has gained so many staking users and validators in the last months that the minimum amount required to enter staking has become incredibly high for both parts. The numbers are constantly evolving, you can follow it here.
In mid February 2021, you need at least 170 DOT to get rewarded for your staking on Polkadot, while there is still no minimum on Kusama. This automatically excludes many ones to stake and we wanted to make our first validator accessible to anyone.
How to stake with us
1st thing, do not stake your funds ONLY with us.
You, as a nominator, want to get the maximum reward possible from your staked funds right? So you have to know that a single validator is never always actively validating, the validator list changes every era (6 hours on Kusama).
In Kusama, you can nominate up to 16 validators that you should select with care in order to maximize your reward. Your stake will be automatically affected to one single active validator at every era, you don’t get to choose which one.
We decided to start with one of the smallest commission that can be: 2% to reward at best our early nominators. Depending on the evolution, we may one day increase it a little but it will never be up to 10%. Of course, we will inform all our followers of any change.
The actions to nominate in Kusama are pretty simple, you should refer to the official guide:
- Create your accounts on the Polkadot JS app: it is recommended to create 2 separated accounts for security. We recommend you to use a Ledger hardware wallet for your stash account.
- Bond your KSM tokens: this is the amount you will dedicate to staking. Be careful to do not use 100% of your account balance, you need to keep a small amount (something like 0.1 KSM) for future transactions as your bonded funds will be locked.
- Nominate validators: from here, your nominations will start to be active on the next era.
Our address : Hf8C626KBAjitMV7w8AhQWDCiPgUU47htEwbomq5mDMKeyL
And that’s it!
Please check our detailed tutorial for staking, including a list of recommended independent validators like us.
- Twitter : @bLdNodes
- Mail : bldnodes@gmail.com
- Matrix : @bld759:matrix.org
Nominating other validators
As explained above, you should nominate a few other validators to make sure your stake will always be working and generate maximum reward for you.
We recommend to select your validators with care as there is a risk of slashing in case one misbehaves (turns offline, attacks, runs malicious software). The main points you should care about:
- Commission: the higher it is, the less reward you will get. A 5%-10% range is usually fair.
- Identity: verified identity allows you to know and read about your validator (Twitter, website…).
- Total stake: the reward is shared equally between stakers, so it is more interesting for you as a nominator to choose a validator with a smaller stake.
You can read this article giving tips on how to select validators.
For more advanced reading, try this article.
