Rewards have to be withdrawn manually. If you do not claim your rewards, they will be lost after 84 days. To claim your rewards, click “Payouts” in the “Staking” section of Polkadot JS. There you find a list of all the validators you nominated in past 84 (~ 21 days) eras as well as the option to trigger payouts of all unclaimed rewards. Please note that this action will incur transaction fees. Triggering a payout transaction automatically pays out every nominators’ rewards for the same validator, so other nominators that nominated the same validator, as well as the validator itself, can claim rewards for you.

The validator you delegate your tokens to is not able to access your funds at any point in time since you are only delegating your staking rights. Your KMS always stay in your wallet and you may change your nominations at any point in time.

Validators are elected each era (6h) to perform block production and validation. The more nominations a candidate has, the more likely it will be elected to the active validator set. Nominators can submit a list of up to 16 candidates that they want to back with their KSMs. The list is without an order of preference.

In the Polkadot UI under “Staking” / “Account actions”, click the gearwheel next to “Stop Nominating”. Click “Change reward destination” in order to change the destination of your rewards. Make sure you have Kusama selected as your Network (upper left corner).

In case you want to stop your nominations, you can do so in the Polkadot UI under “Staking” / “Account actions” by clicking “Stop Nominating”.

In case you want to nominate more validators, click the gearwheel next to “Stop Nominating” and then select “Set nominees”.

Make sure you have Kusama selected as your Network (upper left corner).

The annual staking return depends on the overall amount of KSM staked in the network. The inflation rate will adjust accordingly to (dis)incentivize participation. The maximum inflation rate is set to be 10% if 50% or more of KSMs are staked. Every validator is paid the same amount of rewards. E4Y’s commission fee is then deducted from these rewards. Afterward, the remainder is divided between validators and nominators proportional to their stake. Please refer to this calculator here the estimated rewards.

After you stopped your nomination and sent the un-bonding transaction, your funds will remain locked and illiquid for 7 days. This is a security measure stipulated by the protocol.

Every era, the validator set gets shuffled. Your bonded stake gets distributed among the validators you nominated and that got elected to the active set for that era. It is therefore advisable to nominate more than one validator, because if you e.g. only nominated one validator and he/she did not make it into the set, you will miss out on rewards for that era. You are best advised to nominate popular validators with a good reputation and track record (check the information provided in their on-chain ID). In order for you to increase your returns, you can also nominate a couple of smaller, less-popular validators with less stake backing them.

here are two different accounts to manage your funds, namely the Stash Account and the Controller Account.

Stash Account: This account holds the funds which are bonded for staking. This is sort of your “safety box”. Most functions relevant for your staking operations are done via your “Controller Account”.

Controller Account: Through this account you nominate the validators of your choice. The Controller account only needs funds to cover transaction fees, so make sure to allocate some funds for that.

Validators as well as their delegators face the risk of getting slashed proportional to their staked KSM. In Kusama, slashing occurs in the form of four levels:

Level 1 (malpractice that occurs in good faith):
Isolated case of unresponsiveness. Up to 0.1% of the stake is slashed in such an event.

Level 2 (malpractice that occurs in good faith, but demonstrates bad practice):
A block producer producing more than one relay chain block in the same time slot (Babe equivocation); concurrent cases of unresponsiveness. Up to 1% of the stake is slashed in such an event.

Level 3 (malpractice that does not happen in good faith or on accident, but does not pose a severe security risk)
Concerning level of coordination between validators; modification of the validator software; hacking of validator account; isolated cases of unjustified voting in Grandpa. Up to 10% of the stake is slashed.

Level 4 (malpractice that poses a severe security risk)
large level of collusion among validators; any practice that needs a lot of resources from the system to overcome them. Up to 100% of the stake is slashed.

We set up a highly secure and reliable infrastructure to maximize the security of your funds. In addition, we always put our own funds on the line to best align our interests with yours.

In Substrate-based chains such as Polkadot and Kusama, you are advised to nominate more than one validator (up to 16). Each era, validators are elected to the active validator set and stake is divided among the elected validators according to the ‘Phragmen’ algorithm to optimize for equal distribution. Therefore, your nominations can have different statuses:

Waiting: the validators were< not elected to the validator set for this era.

Active: the validator was elected to the set and your whole stake is backing this validator for the current era.

Inactive: these validators have also been elected to the set, but your stake is currently not backing them.

Usually, you only have one nomination shown as ‘active’.

KSM holders can economically back up to 16 validators through their nomination. This increases the security of the overall network and enables token holders to earn rewards on their staked funds. You will receive rewards in the form of newly minted KSMs. Conversely, if you do not participate in staking, your assets will get diluted over time.