Yesterday there was an Epoch Day event on the Astarter Discord. I asked several questions which delegators had enquired about. There was also some information regarding the schedule of the IDO TGE and ISPO that came out of the discussion or can be inferred by comments made by Jon (Astarter Marketing and Community).
The session started with talk about staking in the Cardano ecosystem and some comparisons were made with Avalanche Polkadot and Ethereum. It was agreed that non-custodial staking, the lack of stake slashing, and 73% of supply across almost 3000 pools securing the network, made Cardano the safest option for staking. We then went on to discuss Merged Staking with Astarter
Merge Staking
Merged Staking is an idea first proposed by Astarter earlier this year (yes, before similar plans from other players in the Cardano space). The idea is pretty simple but has not been well explained by Astarter so here is how it works. A participant needs to hold ADA and $AA token. The $ADA is delegated to a Partner or Associate Stakepool (OLEUM is a PARTNER pool). The $AA is locked into a smart contract on the Astarter platform.
After each Epoch delegators receive the full rewards that they would normally receive with their stakepool (OLEUM has a low 1% fee and uses the minimum fixed fee). $AA stakers receive $AA tokens as a return on their staked $AA. A “virtual stake” is calculated based on several factors. This rewards Merge Staking participants with additional $AA tokens
Merged Staking Bonuses
- Partner or Associate pool
- Early-Bird Delegation
- NFT holders (To Be Confirmed)
- Amount of ADA delegated
- Time of delegation (TBC)
- Other factors have been discussed outside this session but were not detailed today.
The merged staking bonuses are essentially all ways to enhance the $AA earned by staking $AA on the Astarter platform. In addition to this participants will earn a “basket of tokens” from the early projects launching using the Astarter platform. Which tokens and how many remains to be seen but Jon explained that these would all be from ‘vetted and high-quality projects”.
How do I get $AA tokens?
The timetine for these stages was not revealed but there will be:
- ISPO on 99% fee Astarter pool
- Launchpad -Public token sale
- TGE – Distribution and Listing (possibly at time of Launchpad or just before)
- $AA can be staked on Astarter platform
- Merge Staking begins
It’s possible several of these take place in close sucession , but it was strongly suggested that the ISPO would take place in September.
What action should I take?
This will depend on individuals and what their goals are. But some factors to take into account are:
- Eary-Bird snapshot
This will carry a bonus multiplier for merged staking and there will be a snapshot taken at some future point. It’s very likely that this will be at an epoch boundary after the 360/361 boundary. It isn’t known whether amount of ADA in wallets will be taken into account for this. It is also unknown whether there will be ongoing snapshots to confirm that this amount of ADA remains in the wallets and the wallets remain delegated to the same pool. - Amount of ADA delegated
It was said that the amount of ADA delegated would be used to calculate a “virtual stake” which is used to determine the amount of $AA rewards. (It’s always good for the protocol and all pool members to delegate the maximum ADA they can as it shares around the min pool fee and increases overall ADA rewards)
The conclusion is that to maximise future merged staking rewards delegate as much ADA to OLEUM as soon as possible! Obviously this isn’t an entirely unbiased conclusion and if you want to find out more about OLEUM pool before you do this, you are welcome to join the pool telegram group. https://t.me/oleum_net