Become a Nominator on Kusama
The following information applies to the Kusama network. If you want to nominate on Polkadot, check out the Polkadot guide instead.
Nominators are one type of participant in the staking subsystem of Kusama. 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 slightly more passive role. 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 bear of being slashed if the validator gets slashed.
If you prefer a video format for the tutorials, the following videos related to staking on Kusama are available:
Setting up Stash and Staking Proxy Keys
Nominators are recommended to set up two separate stash and staking proxy accounts. Explanation and reasoning for generating distinct accounts for this purpose is elaborated in the keys section.
You can generate your stash and staking proxy account via any of the recommended methods that are detailed on the account generation page.
Starting with runtime version v2023 natively included in client version 0.8.23, payouts can go to any custom address. If you'd like to redirect payments to an account that is neither the staking proxy nor the stash account, set one up. Note that it is extremely unsafe to set an exchange address as the recipient of the staking rewards.
Using Polkadot-JS UI
Step 1: Bond your tokens
On the Polkadot-JS UI navigate to the "Staking" tab (within the "Network" menu).
The "Staking Overview" subsection will show you all the active validators and their information - their identities, the amount of KSM that are staking for them, 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 (link) allows you to stake and nominate.
The "Payouts" subsection (link) allows you to claim rewards from staking.
The "Targets" subsection (link) will help you estimate your earnings and this is where it's good to start picking favorites.
The "Waiting" subsection (link) 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 KSM backing them (as allocated through the Phragmén election mechanism). It is possible validator can remain in the queue for a very long time if they never get enough backing.
The "Validator Stats" subsection (link) allows you to query a validator's stash address and see historical charts on era points, elected stake, rewards, and slashes.
Pick "Account actions" underneath "Network" > "Staking", then click the "+ Nominator" button.
You will see a modal window that looks like the below:
Select a "value bonded" that is less than the total amount of KSM you have, so you have some left over to pay transaction fees. Transaction fees are currently at least 0.01 KSM, but they 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 0.01 in Kusama, so it's recommended to keep at least 0.1 KSM in your account to be on the safe side.
Choose whatever payment destination that makes sense to you. 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.
These concepts have been further explained in Polkadot's UI Walkthrough Video
Step 2: Nominate a validator
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 validators. Be careful about the validators you choose since you will be slashed if your validator commits an offence.
Click on "Nominate" on an account you've bonded and you will be presented with another popup asking you to select some validators.
Select them, confirm the transaction, and you're done - you are now nominating. Your nominations will become active in the next era. Eras last six hours on Kusama - depending on when you do this, your nominations may become active almost immediately, or you may have to wait almost the entire six hours before your nominations are active. You can check how far along Kusama 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. To initiate a claim, you can do it yourself or have the validator that you staked for initiate a claim. This is to help optimize the effectiveness and storage of payouts on Kusama. See the Claiming Rewards section of the Staking wiki page for more details.
Step 3: Stop nominating
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. Detailed instructions are available here.
Using Command-Line Interface (CLI)
Apart from using the Polkadot-JS UI to participate in the staking, you can do all these things in CLI instead. The CLI approach allows you to interact with the Kusama network without going to the PolkadotJS dashboard.
Step 1: Install @polkadot/api-cli
We assume you have installed NodeJS with npm. Run the following command to
install the @polkadot/api-cli globally:
npm install -g @polkadot/api-cli
Step 2. Bond your KSM
Controller accounts are deprecated. For more information, see this discussion.
Executing the following command:
polkadot-js-api --seed "MNEMONIC_PHRASE" tx.staking.bond CONTROLLER_ADDRESS NUMBER_OF_TOKENS REWARD_DESTINATION --ws WEBSOCKET_ENDPOINT
CONTROLLER_ADDRESS: An address you would like to bond to the stash account. (Controller accounts
are now deprecated. Refer to
this discussion
for additional context)
NUMBER_OF_TOKENS: The number of KSM / DOT you would like to stake to the network. Note: KSM
has twelve decimal places and is always represented as an integer with zeroes at the end. So 1 KSM =
1_000_000_000_000 Plancks.
REWARD_DESTINATION:
Staked- Pay into the stash account, increasing the amount at stake accordingly.Stash- Pay into the stash account, not increasing the amount at stake.Account- Pay into a custom account, like so:Account DMTHrNcmA8QbqRS4rBq8LXn8ipyczFoNMb1X4cY2WD9tdBX.Controller- Pay into the controller account.
Example:
polkadot-js-api --seed "xxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx" tx.staking.bond DMTHrNcmA8QbqRS4rBq8LXn8ipyczFoNMb1X4cY2WD9tdBX 1000000000000 Staked --ws wss://kusama-rpc.polkadot.io/
Result:
...
...
"status": {
"InBlock": "0x0ed1ec0ba69564e8f98958d69f826adef895b5617366a32a3aa384290e98514e"
}
You can check the transaction status by using the value of the InBlock in
Polkascan. Also, you can verify the bonding state under the
Staking page on the Polkadot-JS Apps Dashboard.
Step 3. Nominate a validator
To nominate a validator, you can execute the following command:
polkadot-js-api --seed "MNEMONIC_PHRASE" tx.staking.nominate '["VALIDATOR_ADDRESS"]' --ws WS_ENDPOINT
polkadot-js-api --seed "xxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx" tx.staking.nominate '["CmD9vaMYoiKe7HiFnfkftwvhKbxN9bhyjcDrfFRGbifJEG8","E457XaKbj2yTB2URy8N4UuzmyuFRkcdxYs67UvSgVr7HyFb"]' --ws wss://kusama-rpc.polkadot.io/
After a few seconds, you should see the hash of the transaction and if you would like to verify the nomination status, you can check that on the Polkadot-JS UI as well.