Darwinia Apps Guide Part III: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

This tutorial will walk you through the process of staking your tokens (RING/KTON) on Darwinia Apps built by the Darwinia Dev team. The Apps work on Substrate-based Pangolin/Pangoro Test Network, Darwinia Chain, and Crab Chain. Make sure you select the Darwinia Chain in order to stake RING/KTON tokens. If you want to stake CRAB/CKTON tokens on Crab Chain, this tutorial also works, just need to switch to Crab Chain.

NOTE: You need to have polkadot{.js} extension installed.

Get Started with the Darwinia Apps

To get started with the Darwinia Apps, navigate to https://apps.darwinia.network/#/account. Polkadot{.js} extension will pop up and ask you to sign in. Before participating in staking, please make sure you have at least 1 Darwinia address. If you hold more tokens or have higher security requirements, it is recommended to prepare 2 Darwinia addresses. If there is no address, please refer: Create an Account.

Upon changing the network to Darwinia, you can choose the Staking dashboard on the left sidebar where you’ll find details about your accounts balance, and staking data.

In the top left corner, you will be able to toggle back and forth between all of the networks. For testing purposes, you can switch to the Pangolin/Pangoro Test Network and try staking with DEV tokens (they have no monetary value). However, to stake your RING/KTON tokens and earn staking rewards, you need to be switched to Darwinia.

How to Stake?

Before starting staking, there are some glossary need to be explained:

Nominator

Nominators are the token holders who want to get rewards through staking. They are one type of participant in the staking subsystem of Darwinia. They are responsible for appointing their stake to the validators. By appointing their stake, they are able to elect the active set of validators and share in the rewards that are paid out.

NOTE: A nominator is an account that provides a guarantee for one or multiple validators in Darwinia. Any account with RING/KTON tokens can potentially become a nominator while in turn obtaining staking incomes. Additionally, the nominator can maintain the security of the network by choosing validators with quality performance.

Learn more about the nominator: Polkadot Wiki

Validator

Validators are active participants in the network that engages in block production and finality mechanisms. Running a validator on a live network is a lot of responsibility! Validators will be accountable for not only their own stake but also the stake of their current nominators. If validators make a mistake and get slashed, their money and reputation will be at risk.

Learn more about the validator: Polkadot Wiki

Bond Your Tokens and Get Power

You need to bond/stake some KTON or RING to get power. The higher the power, the greater the share of the reward. To get power, please click the Staking column on the left, and click Staking now on the Power Manager dashboard if you are a new user. If you've got the power through staking but want to get more, please click the gear button to choose to bond more funds.

• Stash account — Account for stashing tokens. Tokens participating in staking will come from this account. The operations of this account are mostly related to changes in the stash.
• Controller account — The controller is the account that will be used to control any nominating or validating actions. Should not match another stash or controller. This account will also need a small amount of RING in order to start and stop validating. The Stash account and Controller account can be set to the same account. If you hold more tokens or have higher security requirements, it is recommended to set up different accounts here.
• Bonded Amount — How much RING/KTON from the Stash account you want to bond/stake. Note that you do not need to bond all of the RING in that account. Also, note that you can always bond more RING/KTON later. However, withdrawing any bonded amount requires the duration of the unbonding period. On Darwinia, the unbonding period is 14 days. You can choose to bond RING or KTON.
• Payment destination — The account where the rewards from validating are sent. If you’d like to redirect payments to an account that is neither the controller nor the stash account, set one up.
• Lock limit — The funds status will become locked after the freezing period set. After setting a lock limit, you will receive an additional KTON bonus; if you unlock it in advance within the lock limit, you will be charged a penalty of 3 times the KTON reward. (In the absence of sufficient CKTON, the CRAB can not be used for payment of fines).

Once everything is filled in properly, click OK and sign the transaction with your Stash account. After a few seconds, you should see an "ExtrinsicSuccess" message. You should now see a new card with all your accounts (note: you may need to refresh the screen).

Nominate a Validator

You are now bonded. Being bonded means your tokens could be slashed if the validators you nominate misbehave. All bonded funds can now be distributed to up to 16 validators. Be careful about the validators you choose since you will be slashed if your validator commits an offence.

Go to Targets, select validators(select up to 16 validators) and click on Nominate Selected. Although you may choose up to 16 validators, due to the Phragmén election algorithm your stake may be dispersed in different proportions to any subset or all of the validators your choose.

Please note when nominating the validator

• Commission — One thing to keep in mind as a nominator is the validator’s commission. The commission is the percentage of the validator reward which is taken by the validator before the rewards are split among the nominators. As a nominator, you may think that the lowest commission is best. However, this is not always true. Validators must be able to run at break-even in order to sustainably continue operation. Independent validators that rely on the commission to cover their server costs help to keep the network decentralized. Commission is just one piece of the puzzle that you should consider when picking validators to nominate.
• Points — As a nominator, if you want to know the block amount each validator packaged for each era, you can go to the Staking Overview section under the staking page to check the points (about 20 points will be awarded for each block was packaged). Then, nominate those who have higher points. However, that does not guarantee the right way to evaluate the validators' overall performance.
• Own Stake — It is worth taking into consideration the “own stake” of a validator. This refers to the power of RING/KTON the validator has put up at stake themselves. A higher “own stake” amount can be considered as having more “skin in the game”. This can imply increased trustworthiness. However, a validator not having a large amount of “own stake” is not automatically untrustworthy, as the validator could be nominating from a different address.
• Total Stake — Your rewards are equal to the validator node produced rewards*(1- commission)*Your Stake/Total Stake. The rewards generated by each validator node in an era are basically the same. As a nominator, you may think that the higher stake rate is best. However, this is not always true. Sometimes, Validator sets the 100% commission, in this situation, whether how higher your stake rate is, it doesn’t make any sense.

Claim your rewards

As long as you have nominated more than one validator candidate, at least one of them got elected, your bonded stake power will be fully distributed to one or more validators. That being said, you may not receive rewards if you nominated very few validator candidates and no one got elected, or the validator you are nominating has 100% commission.

You can go to the Power Manager section under the staking page and click the Claim Rewards button to get the staking rewards.

Manage Your Staking Operations

You can manage your staking operations with Darwinia Apps in the Staking menu, click Power Manager and then click the gear button on the right to perform the following operations:

• Bond more funds — Add bonded tokens(RING/KTON) for staking to obtain more power.
• Unbond funds — Unbond tokens for staking, and at the same time the power will be reduced proportionally. The 14-day bond period is required to unbond. Tokens that are in the bond period cannot be operated. Please be careful.
• Lock extra — Add lock limit for bonded tokens to obtain KTON rewards.
• Rebond funds — Rebond the unbonding funds to earn power.
• Withdraw unbonded funds — Add the funds that have completed the 14-day unbonding period to the available status.
• Change controller account — Change the account that will be used to control any nominating or validating actions. Should not match another stash or controller.
• Change reward destination — Change the destination account for any payment as either a nominator or validator.
• Change session key — If you want to upgrade to become a validator, you need to fill in this item.

Resource

Developer Telegram Group

Darwinia Discuss

Darwinia Apps Github Repo

Contact Us

If you have any problems while using Apps, please send an email to hello@darwinia.network, or create an issue(anything, even a typo that you can also create an issue to remind us to resolve) on Darwinia Apps Github Repo.

About Darwinia & Crab

Github | Website | Medium | Twitter | Telegram

Darwinia is a cross-chain messaging infrastructure, which will provide a reliable and programmable cross-chain platform for decentralized applications. Darwinia will provide developers with an SDK, and developers can easily integrate cross-chain capabilities into their DApps. Crab Network is the canary network of Darwinia, it is substrate based, EVM compatible, and connected to Kusama.

Darwinia Network has gained a high reputation and recognition along the way to building the universal cross-chain messaging infrastructure. Darwinia was written in Polkadot light paper as one of the friends of Polkadot and Substrate. And Darwinia was selected to join Substrate Builder Program and Web3.0 Bootcamp, and for the outstanding work in Substrate Builder Program, Darwinia Network was officially awarded the Level 2 badge by Parity. The products and tools developed by Darwinia have been rewarded with three W3F Grants.