Cardano Test Net Staking experience so far!

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Screenshot 20191218 16.06.34.png

So, after a few days (or was it a week?) of allowing the staking pool nodes to get started up and begin hammering away at the Cardano Testnet, the stake delegation feature was opened up with special versions of the Daedalus and Yoroi wallets. I managed to grab the testnet wallet for Daedalus (full node...) on the weekend when I was briefly home...

Of course, starting up the wallet means that it needs to sync... and as anyone who has tried to start up a full node for any blockchain knows... it's a bit of a slow process! So, I let just run overnight, hoping that in the morning it would be showing that lovely 100% sync message!

Unfortunately, when I woke in the morning and checked... it was showing a pitiful 44% sync... which was a bit weird seeing as it was around 78% when I went to sleep! Well, like most things... restarting and rebooting the wallet and computer fixed the problem. It was actually 100% synced, but for some reason decided not to realise it... So, I guess this is going to be a bit of a janky rollout then!

Screenshot 20191218 16.08.38.png

Wallet recovery was easy... the usual 12 word seed phrase common to many Bitcoin derived cryptocurrencies. However, there was a requirement to create a new 15 word wallet for the staking delegation. Again, an easy thing to do... just write them down and move forward. You do need to move the Cardano balance over to the new Rewards wallet though.. a simple transaction, which costs a tiny amount of Testnet ADA.

Screenshot 20191218 21.57.02.png

So, transaction sent with no hitches... and then it was off to look for staking pools to join. Interestingly, you can only join a single one per reward wallet. A touch inconvenient... but I guess if you really have a desire to join more, you just need to create as many wallets as you require and seed them with ADA.

However, at this stage... this is where the jankiness hit a new low. Opening the Stake Pools tab in the above Delegation page... showed NOTHING! There were no pools and no working search for pools. So, no delegation possible... that's not good. Well, I had to catch a plane... so I hastily scratched out the seed words for the reward wallet, as I had a plan B in store for when I landed in Spain!

Screenshot 20191220 10.46.36.png

So, this was plan B... the Yoroi Testnet wallet for Cardano which exists as a Chrome Extension. A bit on the bright and glaring white side of things... and it doesn't run a full node, which makes it much lighter on the disk space (and no need to sync!). More importantly, the delegation pool discovery was actually working! So, I quickly selected an interesting stake pool and sent the transaction.

Now, I was on mobile internet and hotspotting via my phone on a pretty patchy internet bus ride through Spain... My delegation to the staking pool did appear on the wallet dashboard when I logged out, so I think the transaction was accepted by the network.

However, tonight as I am writing... the Yoroi testnet wallet is having trouble connecting to the network, and so it is hard to tell if everything is okay or not. So, now that I'm home, I will fire up the Daedalus testnet wallet and see if I can check in on things from there. Hopefully, they have solved their issues in the few days since I last checked!

My experiences so far with the Cardano testnet have been a bit bumpy... I'm not sure if the problems lie with the network (congestion?) or with the implementations of the wallets that are checking in with the Shelley testnet. Either way, it's been a bit frustrating at best... I hope that things tidy up before Christmas, as I don't really see anything getting done during the Christmas time! I wouldn't expect them to be coding and troubleshooting over Christmas either....


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Oh Cardano. I open my Daedalus wallet from time to time to sync it up and man, I just can't wait. When I open my laptop it is to work or play so having that thing sync in the background is not an option ;)
Oh well, maybe tomorrow... hahaha


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The testnet (and associated rewards) requires the special testnet wallet. Google "Staking Cardano" and you should find the IOHK blog that has the details.

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OK, thanks for the tip @bengy! Now I get to start the sync over! :|
Hope you have a great Christmas, my friend.


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Merry Christmas... well, I guess it is good wishes for New Year now!

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Have fun with this new wallet @bengy on our slow connection this became a nightmare.

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Thanks... if you have problems with the connection, use the Yoroi wallet instead, it doesn't need to sync a full node!

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That wallet seems like it's not really ready for prime time! The fact that you had 78% completion of the sync and then woke up the next morning to 44% suggests after it got started it then likely got itself into a loop and kept doing calculations over and over and getting the wrong answers.

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I think the problem had more to do with the testnet congestion... well, some of the problems. I appreciate how Cardano has slowly slowly approach to these things, hammering the testnet before slowly migrating features to the mainnet!

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Never had a physical wallet on me which helped at lot when I was robbed at gunpoint my friend and also don't have any internet wallets, as I don't trust them.
Good luck with your efforts!
Blessings and may you guys have a great Christmas!

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Cardano has always been a cryptocurrency that interests me. It's a little like iota, being more for the future than the present and still requires a lot of development unlike some that are already mature and basically in late development stages. I don't like the fact that cardano cannot be put onto my Hardware wallet.

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I think Cardano is supported by Ledger via the Yoroi wallet extension... it isn't native, but the private keys aren't exposed as you are only signing transactions.

I love the slow and steady approach of the Cardano team... making sure that things work on the testnet before migrating to the mainnet... it does mean that their mainnet isn't quite as feature rich as other cryptos, but it does what it is supposed to be doing!

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Oh, that's interesting. I've only ever used 3rd party for Neo and Stellar.

Maybe Iota and Tron also have 3rd party out now. I actually rarely plug it in these days as I use it more for savings. I have a software wallet I use for buying stuff when I need to. I don't really want anyone knowing my savings addresses, so if I need those, I'll wash them through Binance.

The slow and steady approach for Cardano is really great. I focused on Steem way too much during 2019 and really didn't look into anything I haven't already invested in. I do plan to get back to the others I neglected last year, but are on my radar.

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The Bitcoin based blockchains (and wallets that implement Hierarchical Determinism, which all good ones do...) should generate new addresses with each transaction deposit... such that the addresses are more like invoice numbers rather than a single deposit point.

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I have one of those. I think it is called segwit and starts with 3 instead of 1. You can still see it in the wallet and check if it leaves. It's a good idea, but so is spamming new addresses when transfers are fast and cheap. Ledger makes it easy to keep track of everything.

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Segwit is slightly different, it was to strip additional metadata that would need to be written to the block from memory... HD is the ability to derive many public/private key pairs from an initial seed across multiple Bitcoin-derived chains. It is what makes Ledger able to handle many Bitcoin based chains easily without 3rd party applications or support. The onboard address manager handles all the intra and extra transfers seamlessly to make it appears like you only have a single wallet instead of many millions/trillions of linked one-use addresses!

PS: Apologies if you already knew this!

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I remember people calling the wallets segwit wallets, there were 2 or 3 BIP involved with the HD wallets. I don't think those even required hard forks. The main segwit update was huge and unrelated as you mention. It is all confusing. I really need to get back into studying other blockchains, especially before I invest in new ones.

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I had some cardano before but dumped for xrp. Since you are holding on to yours makes me think of holding again.

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I think it is a decent long shot bet... but it is impossible to know. I just really like their methodical and steady approach to development!

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I'm sure you'll get it worked out @bengy 🤞

!trdo

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In the end, I think it was network congestion... the dashboard and connection worked fine this morning!

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Oh, I am always frustrated with crypto. I think it is because I don't know enough about all of it, although I do try.

Good luck with it!!!

!tip

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It is quite interesting... although, I find myself more interested in the technology and theory rather than the application and financial. The mathematics of cryptography and game theory behind how to come to a decentralised consensus is really interesting!

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Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 8 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.

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Is this written in English? Because I do not understand a single thing. lol.

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Haha... I used lots of big words to make people think I knew what I was talking about!

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It really sounds like you are developing some great expertise, @bengy!

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It's fun to learn these things... although, for most of this stuff I stay clear of the CLI stuff, I don't have the time to go that deep!

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As with anything, I’m sure there are many levels of proficiency between novice and true expert. I would be on the far side of novice — e.g. outsider — so cant distinguish between them! 😁

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