Choosing a Pool

Pool operators are responsible for managing staking pool nominations. If they make mistakes or mismanage the pool, then pool members may lose their staked funds or receive reduced CTC rewards. This is because staking penalties still apply, regardless of whether users stake through nomination pools or not.

Therefore, similar to how nominators must carefully select the validators they vote for, pool users should carefully decide which pools they want join.

While nomination pools control how members' bonded funds are staked, these funds still remain under the control of their original owners. Members can decide to withdraw and start the unbonding process at any time.

Useful information

The easiest and most trustful information about a pool can be obtained on-chain. When picking a pool, make sure to check its settings and current state:

• Pool commission: Pools may charge a commission that is applied before distributing its rewards to members.

• Current nominations: Look into the validators that the pool is currently nominating. You can use the Selecting Validators guide to help you evaluate their current selection.

• Total stake: Pools act as a single nominator. This means they must meet a minimum CTC staking amount to actually earn rewards. It’s a good idea to check if the pool meets this minimum amount before joining. You can check the minimum required amount in the Nominate page of the staking dashboard.

• Pool administrators: It a good idea to do some research on a pool’s administrator accounts. You can look into the Depositor, Nominator, Bouncer and Root roles in the pool and look up their accounts using a block explorer. While this type of research can extend indefinitely, good questions to investigate include:

  • Are these different accounts or is a single one used for every role? While using a single one may be convenient, it creates a single point of failure.

  • Are they identified accounts with published contact information? This can increase the public accountability of the pool administrators. Plus, you may be able to ask them questions about the pool directly.