The Cardano foundation is a Swiss-based non-profit that oversees and supervises the advancement of Cardano. They are the legal custodians of the Cardano brand and they work with the IOHK and EMURGO to ensure that Cardano is being developed and promoted as a secure, transparent and accountable solution for positive global change. The Cardano Foundation sets the direction for decentralized economic empowerment, working with regulators in different jurisdictions to shape blockchain legislation and commercial standards, and empowering the Cardano community to leverage the Cardano protocol to solve real-life problems.

source: cardanofoundation.org

The foundation and its community are an enormous decentralized family which strives for a better, decentralized world. As a Cardano staking pool, we are proud to be part of a community with high ethics and standards which are upheld at every touchpoint. 

The major difference between Cardano and other cryptocurrencies is its reliance on peer-reviewed research and evidence-based methods in its development. While most of the crypto market moves fast, Cardano stands for a slower but more methodical approach. The benefit is that this makes it more likely that developers catch potential threats and that when a certain update gets rolled out, the chances of failures get minimized.

Cardano has always used the proof-of-stake protocol to validate their transactions. Recently, Ethereum also changed their consensus mechanism from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Many cryptoprojects still use proof-of-work, which is the original consensus mechanism introduced by Bitcoin.

Due to the fact that Cardano implemented the proof-of-stake mechanism from the beginning, it developed the well-deserved reputation of being a green cryptocurrency.

Next to that, Cardano has more than 3000 staking pools, which became the bedrock of Cardano. Almost 74 percent of all Cardano is staked, which is a tremendous achievement. This is not only a sign of good ‘Return on Ada’ people can get, but also shows a lot of trust in the project itself.

Cardano and the Cardano Foundation also established interesting partnerships during its existence. Here are a couple of recent established partnerships

-  The Ethiopian schools give their students blockchain-based IDs so that it allows their academic performances to be recorded   and tracked on the Cardano blockchain.
-  DISH provides digital identity services for its customers by integrating it into the Cardano Blockchain. 
-  The Cardano Foundation recently announced its partnership with Home of Blockchain.

Cardano distinguishes itself by using mathematical principles in its consensus mechanism and a unique multilayer architecture, which makes it stand out from other competing blockchain.

Next to that, it wants to become a blockchain for the many, as well as the few. Cardano strives to give everyone a chance at a better future.

You can find out more about their use cases at cardano.org/enterprise

Pledging refers to stake pool owner’s ability to delegate personal stake to their pool. The amount of pledge can be chosen and what you pledge is intended to remain staked to the pool for as long as it operates. The higher the amount of ADA that is pledged, the higher the pool’s reward rate.

Locking up some of our own stake helps to secure the protocol and works to prevent Sybil attacks on the Cardano network.

The amount of pledge in a certain pool is shown as part of its statistics in the Daedalus and Yoroi wallet. It can also be found on stake pool trackers such as adapool.org or pooltools.io

Our founding team chose to pledge most of their Cardano into the staking pool. This is because we truly believe Cardano has a world-changing ecosystem. We pledged about 150K ADA in total.

A slot leader is a node or stake pool which is selected to compile, verify and record a block of transactions on the Cardano shared ledger.

The more stake (and pledge) the stake pool controls, the greater the chance it has of being elected as a slot leader to produce a new block that is accepted into the blockchain. This is the concept of proof-of-stake (PoS).

Before an epoch begins, the slot leaders are picked and assigned to certain slots. We know when certain blocks, assigned to us, occur within a certain epoch. The staking pools are expected to be online when their particular slot is reached.

When validating a transaction, a slot leader needs to make sure that the sender has included enough funds to pay for that transaction. The lot leader also needs to make sure that the transaction’s parameters are met. If the transaction meets every single requirement, it will be recorded as a part of a new block, which will then be connected to the other blocks in the blockchain.

For all of the above it is important to have all of your servers online and to be connected to what we call ‘the front of the blockchain’. 

The Cardaspians staking pool has a 100% online relay reputation, which basically means that our servers have never been down during its existence. This makes our Cardano Staking Pool as reliable as it possibly can be.

Blocks are data structures within the blockchain database, where transaction data are permanently recorded. A block records some or all most recent transactions not yet validated by the network. Once all the data is validated, the block is closed.

A staking pool gets rewards by carrying the responsibilities on a number of blocks within that epoch. By successfully minting a block, the pool gets rewarded. 

This process repeats itself after each epoch. Meanwhile, the slot leaders are incentivized through a reward in newly released ADA and the transaction fees.

An epoch is a unit of time, decided by the Cardano protocol. Each epoch lasts for five days. Every epoch is then divided into 432 000 units, known as slots, and each slot is exactly 1 second.

After every epoch, the pool gets rewarded for the blocks they created, verified and recorded on the Cardano blockchain. Every epoch and slot can be followed on following websites: adapool.org or pooltools.io

Saturation is a term to indicate that a particular stake pool has more stake delegated to it than is ideal for the network. Once a pool reaches the point of saturation, it will offer diminishing rewards.

You can check out our pool current saturation on the Pool Stats page.

Stake delegation is the process by which ADA holders delegate the stake associated with their ADA to a certain stake pool.
It allows the holders that do not have the skill or desire to run a staking pool, to passively participate in the network and therefore be rewarded in proportion to the amount of stake delegated. 
This proportion is also called ROA (Return on ADA) or ROS (Return on Staking) and is noted in a certain percentage.

The most popular wallets you can use to stake ADA are Yoroi, Daedalus, Adalite and Nami. These wallets are specifically designed for Cardano, including the ADA delegation feature. All of them are open source and compatible with Ledger and Trezor hardware wallets.

The minimum requirement for staking is 10 ADA. Please note that an additional 2 ADA deposit are required when delegating for the first time.

No, you don’t miss anything. The transition is fluent. When you switch or re-delegate from another staking pool to our staking pool, you will continue getting rewards from the old pool until our pool takes over.

The overall annual return on ADA depends on a lot of different parameters. It is not fixed and changes constantly. You can check this on pooltool.io or adapool.org.

The parameters are:
-  Amount of ADA staked
-  Performance of the staking pool
-  Percentage of fee the staking pool charges.

Cardaspians doesn’t have any variable fees.

You can use our rewards calculator to get an idea of how much rewards you will earn. It’s important to note that the calculator produces only reward estimates and shouldn’t be considered definitive or a guarantee of reward amounts.

You are free to withdraw your rewards whenever you want. However, it’s not required to do so unless you wish to send your full balance to another wallet or exchange.
All your rewards will be automatically distributed to your walled and staked to the pool as part of your delegation, no further action is needed

This is not necessary. After you have delegated your stake to our staking pool, the rewards you earn are automatically staked to the pool as part of your delegation. This goes true for any new funds received from the wallet as well.

Any balance change in the wallet will be automatically captured as a part of the snapshot and incur updated rewards after 15-20 days.

For any change in delegation, the rewards are reflected after 4 epoch transitions. This means between 15 to 20 days.

For example: if you staked in epoch X, your first rewards will show up at the start of epoch X+4.

After the initial wait time, you can expect to receive rewards at the end of every epoch (5 days).