How to stake on Curio Parachain as Nominator
Nominators are one type of participant in the staking subsystem of Curio Parachain. They are responsible for appointing their stake to the validators who are the second type of participant. By appointing their stake, they are able to elect the active set of validators and share in the rewards that are paid out.
While the validators are active participants in the network that engage in the block production and finality mechanisms, nominators take a more passive role with a "set-it-and-forget-it" approach. Being a nominator does not require running a node of your own or worrying about online uptime. However, a good nominator performs due diligence on the validators that they elect. When looking for validators to nominate, a nominator should pay attention to their own reward percentage for nominating a specific validator - as well as the risk that they bare of being slashed if the validator gets slashed.
Nominators are recommended to set up separate stash and controller accounts. You can generate your stash and controller account via Polkadot JS Extension - we recommend this option for ease of use.
Payouts can go to any custom address. If you'd like to redirect payments to an account that is neither the controller nor the stash account, set one. Note that it is extremely unsafe to set an exchange address as the recipient of the staking rewards.
This step-by-step guide explains how to stake (also known as the Nomination) on Curio Parachain using Polkadot JS and Polkadot JS Extension.
Go to the staking page https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Fparachain.curioinvest.com#/staking (on the top menu, go to
Network > Staking) and click on the "Account actions" tab. Then click on the "+ Nominator" button.
The "Staking Overview" subsection will show you all the active validators and their information - their identities, the amount of CGT that is staking for them, the amount that is their own provided stake, how much they charge in commission, the era points they've earned in the current era, and the last block number that they produced. If you click on the chart button it will take you to the "Validator Stats" page for that validator that shows you more detailed and historical information about the validator's stake, rewards, and slashes.
The "Account actions" subsection allows you to stake and nominate.
The "Payouts" subsection allows you to claim rewards from staking.
The "Targets" subsection will help you estimate your earnings and this is where it's good to start picking favorites.
The "Waiting" subsection lists all pending validators that are awaiting more nominations to enter the active validator set. Validators will stay in the waiting queue until they have enough CGT backing them. It is possible validator can remain in the queue for a very long time if they never get enough backing.
The "Validator Stats" subsection allows you to query a validator's stash address and see historical charts on era points, elected stake, rewards, and slashes.
In the window that appears select your imported account as Stash and Controller.
Enter the amount of CGT you want to bond (stake size). Select a value that is less than the total amount of CGT you have, so you have some left over to pay transaction fees. Transaction fees are dynamic based on a variety of factors including the load of recent blocks. Also, be mindful of the reaping threshold - the amount that must remain in an account lest it be burned. That amount is 1 CGT, so it's recommended to keep at least 1.5 CGT in your account to be on the safe side.
You can also specify the “Payment destination” where you want the received CGT rewards to be transferred. If you're unsure, you can choose "Stash account (increase amount at stake)" to simply accrue the rewards into the amount you're staking and earn compound interest.
You are now bonded. Being bonded means your tokens are locked and could be slashed if the validators you nominate misbehave. All bonded funds can now be distributed to up to 8 validators. Be careful about the validators you choose since you will be slashed if your validator commits an offense. Although you may choose up to 8 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.
You can estimate the profitability of validators on the page
Staking > Targets (https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Fparachain.curioinvest.com#/staking/targets). Choose the best Return, Commission parameters, and also see how the validator worked in the past, as well as what Total stake it has. Trust validators also take place here. The screenshot below shows the official Curio validators, as Curio Parachain develops, the number of validators will increase along with the addition of third-party validators to Curio Parachain. Anyone who decides to support the Curio network and is ready to deploy validator nodes can become a validator.
Returning to the nomination procedure select validator accounts from the list on the left to which you want to trust your stake funds, and click the “Bond & Nominate” button.
Then confirm the transaction and sign it using Polkadot JS Extension.
You are now nominating. Wait for your nomination to be active. Your nominations will become active in the next era (1 hour on Curio Parachain - view on Staking page), so please be patient!. You can check how far along Curio Parachain is in the current era on the Staking page.
Assuming at least one of your nominations ends up in the active validator set, you will start to get rewards allocated to you. In order to claim them (i.e., add them to your account), you must manually claim them.
Rewards are recorded per session (10 min on Curio Parachain) and calculated per era (1 hour on Curio Parachain). Thus, rewards will be calculated 24 times per day on Curio Parachain. Rewards are calculated based on era points, which have a probabilistic component. In other words, there may be slight differences in your rewards from era to era, and even amongst validators in the active set at the same time. In order to be paid your staking rewards, someone must claim them for each validator that you nominate. Staking rewards are kept available for 84 eras, which is approximately 84 hours on Curio Parachain. If nobody claims your staking rewards by this time, then you will not be able to claim them and some of your staking rewards will be lost.
If you go to the Staking payouts page, you will see a list of all validators that you have nominated in the past 84 eras (84 hours) and for which you have not yet received a payout. Each one has the option to trigger the payout for all unclaimed eras. Note that this will pay everyone who was nominating that validator during those eras, and anyone can call it. Therefore, you may not see anything in this tab, yet still received a payout if somebody (generally, but not necessarily, another nominator or the validator operator) has triggered the payout for that validator for that era.
Each user does not need to claim individually and the suggestion is that validators should claim rewards for everybody as soon as an era ends. But in exceptional cases (if your validator which you nominated did not do it for some reason for the payout), you can do it manually. The awards will be received by the validator and all its nominators.
At some point, you might decide to stop nominating one or more validators. You can always change who you're nominating, but you cannot withdraw your tokens unless you unbond them.
Navigate to the
Staking > Account actions tab (https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Fparachain.curioinvest.com#/staking) at the top of the screen. Here, click "Stop".
After you confirm this transaction, your tokens will remain bonded. This means they stay ready to be distributed among nominees or used as validator self-stake again. To actually withdraw them, you need to unbond.
To unbond the amount, click the “details” icon next to the account you want to unbond tokens for, and select "Unbond funds".
Select the amount you wish to unbond and click Unbond, then confirm the transaction.
If successful, your balance will show as "unbonding" with an indicator of how many more blocks remain until the amount is fully unlocked. The unbonding period on Curio Parachain is 28 days.
Once this process is complete, you will have to issue another, final transaction: Withdraw Unbonded.
You can also check how long you have to wait in order to withdraw your stake in the Accounts page (https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Fparachain.curioinvest.com#/accounts) by expanding your account balance. There is a tiny icon beside the word "unbonding" that will eventually become an unlock icon once the remaning blocks get passed.
Then, you can click that icon directly to submit the withdraw transaction. Finally, your transferrable balance will increase by the amount of tokens you've just fully unbonded.
Navigate to the
Staking > Account actions tab (https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Fparachain.curioinvest.com#/staking) at the top of the screen. Select "Bond more funds" for yours account.
Specify the number of tokens you want to add and click “Bond more”. Then sign the transaction.
If you want to rebond your tokens before the unbonding period is over you can do this by issuing a rebond extrinsic. This allows you to bond your tokens that are still locked without waiting until the end of the unbonding period.
Go to the "Extrinsics" option that's located in the "Developer" dropdown in the top menu (or go to direct link https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Fparachain.curioinvest.com#/extrinsics).
Select the "staking" and the "rebond". Enter the amount of tokens that are currently locked in unbonding that you want to rebond. Then click "Submit Transaction".
Confirm the transaction in the next pop-up. Once the transaction is included in the next block your tokens will be rebonded again and you can start staking with them.