Today marks a huge milestone for us, we’re live on Ropsten! You can now stake Ropsten LINK on our dApp and earn real rewards as-if we’re live on main-net.
dApp URL
- https://staking.linkpool.io (Staking dApp, including owners dashboard)
How to Stake
We hope that the app is simple enough to understand easily, but we understand that a lot of people aren’t familiar with using the Ropsten network.
Metamask Plugin
To use our dApp, you first need to have Metamask installed in your browser.
Once Metamask is installed, you can then switch to the Ropsten network by clicking the dropdown at the top:
Hardware Wallet Support
As of Metamask version 4.10.0, both Ledger and Trezor wallets are supported. This allows you to import your hardware wallets into Metamask without ever revealing your private key. Once you import your hardware wallet, you can stake directly on our nodes from your Ledger/Trezor!
There’s an article here that details the steps on how to add a hardware wallet into Metamask.
Note: If you are a ledger user please ensure you have Contract Data enabled on the device’s Ethereum application.
Ropsten ETH
To acquire Ethereum on Ropsten, you can just use a faucet:
Ropsten LINK Tokens
You can now acquire Ropsten LINK by entering your Ethereum wallet address on Chainlink’s Faucet, found here:
Once these steps have been completed and you’ve acquired Ropsten LINK, you’re ready to stake!
Using our dApp
Now you can stake those tokens:
- Simply open our dApp
- Ensure you have a LINK balance, as shown in the wallet panel to the right of the app.
- Click “Stake / Withdrawal”
- Click “Select Node” and choose the node you’d like to stake on
- Enter the amount you’d like to stake. On our Ropsten version, this is limited to 100 LINK per staker and has a minimum stake of 100 LINK.
- Then click “Stake” and confirm the transaction in Metamask.
- Wait until the transaction is confirmed.
That’s it! You’ve successfully staked LINK on one of our two Ropsten nodes that are handling Chainlink requests.
When you view your “History” in the dApp, you should see one staking transaction, for example:
Rewards
With staking on Ropsten, you will only earn Ropsten LINK rewards. The LINK that you’ll earn are tokens that we are paying our own nodes to facilitate requests on the Ropsten network (We are doing this to imitate real jobs on main-net). If anyone has been following us closely, you’ll know that we’re currently on average creating around 400 requests daily, resulting in 400 LINK per day roughly between both our nodes on Ropsten.
To claim your rewards, you don’t have to do anything. We’ll be automatically starting token distribution to all stakers weekly. Every week you’ll be able to open the dApp and see each reward in your history, rewards that you can also withdraw for yourself.
Owners Dashboard
Our owners dashboard is also completed and live both on Ropsten and main-net! If your address taken part in our crowdsale, the “Ownership” link on the side-bar should be unlocked and ready for you to browse. The Send Shares feature is fully functional so you can use the dApp to transfer shares to another address from today!
As part of testing on Ropsten we’ve already sent 15,000 LINK to be distributed to everyone, so on loading your contract balance should show an amount ready for you to withdraw. To withdraw that amount, simply just click the “Withdraw” button, and once that’s confirmed, you’re LINK balance on Ropsten will increase.
As part of staking on Ropsten, we’re also including the 25% makers fees. Once rewards are starting to be distributed on the nodes, 25% of those rewards will be sent to the owners contract and a distribution cycle will start, allowing you to claim those tokens.
The owners in the Ropsten contract is a complete mimic of what’s on main-net. Although, since there’s been share transfers since the deployment of the contract on main-net, they will not be reflected on Ropsten.
When we start distributions on the owners dashboard on Ropsten, we will tweet about it, hopefully allowing everyone to claim their tokens to test out the experience. That’s if no-one claims all tokens on behalf of everyone before you get your chance!
Considerations
Since the dApp is currently an early version on the test network Ropsten, there’s a couple of caveats.
Collateral Lock-up
The main feature that we need to cater for but isn’t developed yet is the lock-up of LINK for collateral. Since there isn’t a concept of collateral yet in the on-chain contracts, you are free to withdraw your full amount at any time.
This will change over-time, and when penalties are developed into the Chainlink contracts, we will only allow you to withdraw your amount that isn’t currently locked up in collateral on the Chainlink node.
Contract Re-Deployments
As part of the still on-going contract work, we may need to fully re-deploy all the contracts on Ropsten if there’s any changes in our non-upgradable contracts. This will result in you not being able to withdraw LINK directly in the dApp, rather it’d have to be done by directly interacting with the contract.
If this situation is going to occur, we will let the community know in advance to give opportunity for you to easily withdraw your LINK tokens if you need them.
Active Development
Even though we are live, the dApp is still under active development. Expect to see changes over time. We are very open to feedback from the community, and if you have any, please get in-touch.
Node Staking Variables
The minimum stake is set to 100 LINK, and each individual Ethereum address has a maximum staking limit of 100 LINK while the node capacity is set to 100,000 LINK. This allows for 1,000 unique stakers on each node. This is not a reflection of what staking limits will look like on main-net, it’s simply been set this way to allow for everyone to get a chance to use the dApp.
That’s it! We all hope you’re happy with our Beta staking dApp, find it easy to use and are excited as we are that it’s live!
Happy staking to all, and if you’d like to get in-touch with us because you’re stuck or find it difficult, you can follow & tweet us at @linkpoolio.
We will be opening other social communication channels soon.
Thanks for Reading!
LinkPool Team
