How to delegate, stake your ADA on Cardano Shelley?

Published in

Coinmonks

10 min readAug 1, 2020

You can now delegate your ADA. The official Daedalus wallet was released 29 July 2020.

Delegation is a process of delegating ADA to a staking pool. Staking pools actually make the Cardano network as they produce “transactions” (blocks). If someone that holds ADA does not have a technical skill or desire to run a staking pool, they can still get the rewards proportionally based on the amount of ADA delegated to a staking pool.

Note 1: Ledger Nano S/X/Trezor users can stake directly with the hardware device.
- See our AdaLite tutorial click here.
- See our Yoroi tutorial — click here.
This is the safest and recommended option if you have a Ledger Nano S/X/Trezor device.

Note 2: Daedalus hardware wallet support is live. We will write a tutorial shorty. Meantime you can still use Note 1 to delegate your funds with your hardware wallet. You will be able to use it also in Daedalus if using hardware wallet in other clients.

Warning: Use this tutorial at your own risk. It comes with no guarantees.

The most important thing is keep your Daedalus recovery phrase/words safe (no-one should see the phrase/words but you). Also make sure not to loose the phrase/words as you will loose access to your ADA if your computer breaks.

Go to Cardano Daedalus page. Scroll down and download the Daedalus wallet depending on you operation system.

Double click your downloaded file and install the program depending on your operating system.

If you have any problems or something is unclear with the installation see the whole installation process documentation here (https://iohk.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/900000694463-Daedalus-1-0-0-Installation).

On Windows you should get a desktop shortcut and a shortcut in the start menu. Open “Daedalus Mainnet”.

Your wallet should start syncing. If Daedalus syncing is stuck follow the instructions on the screen. Usually you have to sync/set the operating system clock.

If the wallet has other problems syncing first try to search for a solution online. If you still don’t find an answer or encounter a bug or an issue click “Help -> Support Request” in the Daedalus wallet. The support team is really helpful and responsive.

The delegation, staking process is pretty intuitive and simple. We still have a walk-through if you get lost or if something is unclear.

Also Read: Best Hardware Wallets

Restoring previous Daedalus, Paper or Yoroi wallet

This is under the wallet icon in the top/left menu. Click “Restore”.

2. You will get a “Restore a wallet” dialog.

Here you will be able to restore a legacy Daedalus or a paper wallet created with Daedalus. This guide goes through restoring a Daedalus wallet. For a paper wallet see official walk-through.

If you have your funds on Yoroi wallet you can wait a couple of days for the Yoroi wallet update. If you are in a hurry you can restore a Yoroi wallet directly in Daedalus.

You probably do not want to restore a Hardware wallet if you have a Ledger Nano S/X, as you can already delegate the funds directly from the device (with AdaLite). See the walk-through for delegating with Ledger.

3. Type your recovery phrase and click “Check recovery phrase”

4. You can write down any name you want in the “Wallet name” field.

Lastly enter a new password that will be used for this wallet.

Click “Continue”.

After some time syncing you should get a “Byron” era wallet.

Move ADA to a Mainnet Shelley wallet

As this is a old (Byron) type of wallet you can’t directly stake with it. Therefore we must move funds into a new (Shelley) wallet. Go back to the wallet screen and click “Create”.

2. Choose a name for your wallet. Here I selected “Shelley wallet”. Put in the spending password and click “Create Shelley wallet”.

3. Read instructions! Then click checkbox and click “Continue” after the countdown.

4. It is your job to write down the phrase and securely save it. Click “Yes, I have written down my wallet recovery phrase”.

Note: We censored our words (phrase)

5. After that you will came to a screen where you have to repeat the words that you have written down. Put in the words one at a time. You can press “enter” to select from the dropdown and speed up the process.

After that click “Confirm”

6. Click both checkboxes after you have read the instructions and click “Confirm”

7. Your wallet that you have just added will start to sync. It can take about half an hour.

Move old (Byron) wallet funds to the newly created (Shelley) wallet

After you have the two wallets click the Byron wallet and click “Move ada to an existing wallet”.

2. You should already have the correct wallets pre-selected if you were following the guide. Otherwise select your restored wallet and the newly created Shelley-compatible wallet. Click “Continue”.

3. Put in the wallet spending password that you selected when “Restoring” the old wallet. Click “Transfer funds”. This should take a few seconds.

4. You should now see all of your ADA in a newly created (Shelley) wallet.

CONGRATULATIONS you now have a Shelley wallet which supports delegations and a bunch of other cool features.

Delegate your ADA

After creating the wallet click middle icon in the left menu to go to “Delegation center” and then click “Stake pools”

2. You will get a list of currently active pools. Here you must choose which pool you will delegate/stake your ADA.

Few things to note first:

If you want to delegate to multiple staking pools you need to create multiple (Shelley wallets) and split the balance. Then do the delegation for each wallet.

There is no danger of loosing your funds, as your funds will never leave your wallet. You are just telling the network that you are delegating your stake to the selected pool and not sanding that pool any of your ADA.

The cost of delegating to a pool is about ~2 ADA.

There are some parameters to consider:

Cost per epoch: This is a fixed amount of ADA that the pool operator will get and will be substracted from all the rewards the pool creates.

Profit margin: Is a variable reward for the pool, percentage of reward sum that will go to the pool operator.

To play around with this parameters you can check the official rewards calculator [https://testnets.cardano.org/en/cardano/tools/staking-calculator/].

You can also check the website of any pool.

If you want to consider us; our pool is ADA Point Pool, ticker APP [https://adapointpool.com]. APP fee is just 2%. We will try to help Cardano users. Any ADA that we will get and not use for server maintenance purposes will be used for developing Yoroi wallet and some others custom Cardano tools.

Note: Currently you can only delegate to one pool per wallet. (For advance users) Therefore if you want to delegate to multiple pools you have to create more wallets.

Next select the pool that you want to delegate to, click the box.

Click “Delegate to this pool”.

3. You should get a popup where you select the wallet. Click “Continue”.

4. Select the newly created wallet from the dropdown and click “Continue”.

5. Stake pool selection should be already set. Double check the ticker and click “Continue”.

6. Put in your spending password that you assigned when creating a new Shelley wallet. After that the you will have to wait about 10 seconds for the action to finish.

7. CONGRATULATIONS. Now you have delegated your ADA to a staking pool. You will now earn a steady ADA rewards for each EPOCH (5 days) if your staking pool is operational.

Note: Cardano decentralization will be gradually increased as the time passes. That means in the beginning there will be less rewards as the chain is still being decentralized.

See your staking accounts

Click middle icon in the left menu to go to “Delegation center”. You should see your delegated ADA. If you mouse hover over the “Shelley wallet” you will see a button saying “Redelegate”. Use this if you want to change the staking pool.

Check your rewards

Click middle icon in the left menu to go to “Delegation center”. Click “Rewards”. Of course this will only show rewards after some Epochs have passed and not right away.

FAQ

When will I get my first rewards?
It takes remainder of the current epoch + 3 epochs till you get your first rewards. So after this initial delay you will get the rewards every epoch. In short after initial delay of 15–20 days (1 epoch is 5 days).
Do I need to keep my Daedalus wallet open if I am staking?
No. You can close your wallet/shut down your computer and you are still staking and getting rewards.
Is there a list of known issues?
Yes. See the list here.
Which exchanges and third parties support Shelley?
You can check the full list here.
What do I do if I encounter a bug or an issue and you can’t find the solution online?
Click “Help -> Support Request”. This is the preferred way. The support team is really helpful and responsive.
If you do not have the wallet available or request relates to some other Cardano project, you can create an official support ticket here.