Cardano [ADA] Reddit AMA session clears the air about reward sharing schemes as stake pools impend

The Cardano [ADA] team recently conducted an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session on Reddit regarding the reward schemes in their stake pools. The session was conducted by Aggelos Kiayias, Chief Scientist at IOHK, in conjunction with Lars Brünjes, Elias Koutsoupias and Aikaterini-Panagiota Stouka, the co-authors of the paper to implement the reward schemes.

The session was kick-off by user mchapman1989, who asked whether he would be able to stake ADA using a Ledger hardware wallet and Raspberry Pi computer. In response, Kiayias answered to the affirmative, clarifying that staking meant delegating the user’s stake to a pool and receiving rewards from it.

User Jonne33 pitched in as well, stating:

“Once delegated you can put your ada on Ledger or even on a paper wallet. You don’t need to be online after that (ie you don’t need raspberry pi or something). Raspberry Pi can be used initially for accessing your Ada and delegating it via Linux Daedalus client (still in development) or via different light wallets which are popping up currently.”

User Gr3cu enquired about an alternative to economic incentives being a part of the scheme for staking scheme. His alternatives included real-time information or advice by a system observing the pools. He also stated that he would be up for even a separate pool operated by a party such as IOHK that could be trusted with ADA.

Gr3cu then proceeded to ask whether the said entity could manage the ADA to increase the performance of the network at the expense of stake rewards.

In response, Kiayias stated:

“In general, it is hard to get reliable performance metrics / advice that are not attackable or involve a single point of failure. The wallet will provide some input to the stakeholders about what pools are performing as they should using information drawn from the blockchain . In any case IOHK will be like any other entity in the ecosystem without any special role or access.”

User nel0_angel0 had a question on the general functioning of Cardano, as it was a worldwide organization. He asked whether this does not hinder work, with the response from Kiayias being:

“It is challenging but we take full advantage of all kinds of online communication + regular teleconferencing. In academic research we are used to work like this anyway since many projects are cross institution / organisation and work involves traveling and international coordination on a daily basis.”