Staking KSM on Kusama
This article will show you what rewards are possible when staking KSM on Kusama.
What is Kusama?
Kusama is Polkadot’s ‘canary chain’. It’s a fully-fledged blockchain that takes all the new features first. Once considered stable, features are promoted to Polkadot. Kusama tokens have a stable value, and are available on most exchanges.
Direct staking
You can stake KSM on Kusama by nominating Validators directly.
This process is somewhat cumbersome and requires the staker to be vigilant. You need to check the target validators regularly to make sure they are performing well. An underperforming/malicious validator could be slashed for bad behaviour (Slashing, not common but could happen, involves a penalty on the validator’s stash — and also affects related nominators/stakers).
metaspan operates a Kusama Validator. You can find us on Staking > Targets
Do read the Kusama staking guide here:
What is a staking pool?
A staking pool manages the nomination of validators. This allows the staker to join a pool and not worry about the constant underlying admin.
metaspan operates a Kusama Staking pool. There are other stake pools, and you could get similar or better results with another pool. Please do your own research — this is not financial advice.
View all staking pools on Kusama Staking > Pools
What are the typical returns when staking on Kusama?
The Stake Pool has 2 accounts, stash and reward
- Capital is secured in the stash account
- Rewards are accumulated in the reward account
Again: this is not financial advice. However, you can see the historic pool returns for 44 days is 24% (annualised).
What are the risks of staking on Kusama?
There are 3 main risks when staking:
- token value — as with all digital currencies, the value of KSM may go up or down
- pool risk — the pool operator could select underperforming validators
- personal management — you need to manage your own wallets and keys
I hope this gives you an overview of what you could expect when staking KSM on Kusama, either directly on via a pool.
