Nominating without Staking Pools
Account Setup
Solo Nominators are recommended to set up separate stash account, an account solely used for staking CTC. Users generate your stash account via any of the recommended methods, which are detailed in the wallets section.
If you'd like to redirect payments to a wallet that is not your stash, set up another account beforehand. We strongly recommend against using an exchange address as the recipient for any staking rewards.
Stash Security
Staking on Creditcoin requires active monitoring, as users must regularly sign transactions such as nominations. This involves exposing the private key, posing a security risk, especially for hot stashes. Even if using a hardware wallet, signing transactions creates a history revealing user habits and potentially location information.
As a best practice, accounts with high economic power should remain isolated. This can be achieved by the proper use of Proxy accounts.
Selecting validators
Nominating validators on Creditcoin is an active role. If users' nominated validators misbehave, users may lose some or all of their funds due to slashing. Even if offences do not trigger slashing, they might still cause the validator to be chilled, meaning that any nominators backing them will also stop earning rewards in that era.
For more information about how to select good validator refer to the Selecting Validators section.
Users who do not wish to actively participate in the nomination process, but who nevertheless want to earn staking rewards, can instead join a Nomination Pool. By doing so, users effectively delegate their votes to the Nomination Pool operator, who will assign them to validator candidates.
Nominating Best Practices
Choose multiple validators
Since stake is allocated after the validator election, nominators do not need to manage the allocation of their staking quantities themselves. As long as one or more of a nominator's chosen validators are elected to the active set, all of that nominators stake will be actively used to back those chosen validators.
Nominators who only choose to back a small number of validators risk getting no rewards if none of them are elected to be part of the active set. Inversely, the distribution of a nominator’s stake is more likely to result in higher rewards if they choose more validators to support. Therefore, it is always advisable for a nominator to choose as many trustworthy validators as possible.
For more information about the validator election and stake allocation process refer to the Validator Elections section.
Check validator identity
If a validator has set its identity, you'll see their details on the Community tab of the Staking Dashboard. Besides a displayed name, a validator can also indicate their email, website, X account, or something else. You can use this information to perform further due diligence and/or ask the validator questions directly.
Check the commission
A validator’s block rewards are shared with all of its backing nominators according to their relative total stake. However, validators can also set a pre-defined % commission commission they receive, after which any remaining rewards are then distributed between nominators and validators. This rate can vary greatly.
Validators that set up a 100% commission do not share any rewards with their nominators, while validators that choose a 0% commission will share all rewards with their nominators. You can use the Staking Dashboard to sort validators based on their commission fee.
Make sure the validator is not oversubscribed
Only the top 512 nominators (calculated by total stake) for a specific validator get paid. Validators over this limit are marked with a red warning sign on the Staking Dashboard. If you nominate these validators, and they are elected into the active set, your stake may still be used to support them even if you aren’t in the top 512 validators, and as a result, don’t earn any rewards for doing so. This means you will be taking on potential risk for potentially no reward.
Therefore, it’s a good idea to avoid over-subscribed validators, unless you’re confident you have enough CTC staked to be in the top 512 nominators every era.
It can also be a good idea to avoid validators with a high number of current nominators, because they may become oversubscribed soon.
Add good validators to your Favorites
When you have decided on your validators, add them to your Favorites: click on the heart icon on the Staking Dashboard. This will allow you to quickly select them as one of your nominations later.
Nominate using the Staking Dashboard
Connect your wallet to the Creditcoin Staking Dashboard by clicking the "Connect" button in the top-right corner. Select your account.
Navigate to the Nominate section and click on "Start Nominating".
Please note that the current settings of minimum required amount to solo nominate are
Mainnet: 1000 CTC
Testnet: 0
Select the payout destination.
Select your nominations using one of the provided filters or manually.
Enter the amount of CTC to bond.
Review your preferences and click on Start Nominating to sign the transaction.
Once your transaction has been confirmed and the next era begins, you’ll officially be participating as an active nominator on the Creditcoin network. Once your chosen validators are elected, you’ll start earning CTC rewards too!
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