You do not ‘send’ your ADA anywhere to stake. Staking involves creating a delegation certificate using a cryptocurrency wallet and applying that certificate through a smart contract.
By delegating your stake to a pool you are increasing the chances for that pool to generate a block in the Ouroboros protocol of Cardano. When we generate a block we get a reward and those rewards are shared among the stakeholders.
Cardano is a third generation blockchain network built on a proof of stake consensus mechanism. It is basically a futuristic smart contract, digital identity and decentralized computing system.
To HODL is to keep and build your stake. The longer you stake the more rewards you make. Simple law of compounding.
In Cardano, time is broken up into Epochs (~5 days), which are broken up into 432,000 slots (~20 seconds), which are composed of blocks of transactions.
Currently each address can only stake to one pool at a time. However one person can have multiple addresses.
You are free to switch pools at anytime, however it is worth noting that the migration process takes the span of 4 Epochs to fully complete.
When you choose to ‘stake your funds’ what happens under the hood is that you issue a delegation certificate to the network. Your funds never move from your account. Your balances stay the same. You merely add a certificate to your address stating that you choose to delegate your funds to a particular pool.
At anytime you choose, you can remove that delegation certificate and leave the pool. Since your funds never moved anywhere you can always be 100% secure that your funds are safe and in your control at all times.
Worst case scenario is you choose an unreliable stake pool and they didn’t generate any rewards for your account.
Yes, we donate 100 ADA for each block we produce to a registered non-profit organization (Field Haven Feline Center) that handles the care and adoption of those precious kittens.
There is no minimum amount to stake, however it does cost 2 ADA to register your staking address at first.
Our Public Stake Pool takes 340 ₳ + 3% from the block rewards for each block we produce as a pool. We expect a Return On Stake (ROS) of ~4-5%* for our stakers as we ramp up block production and grow our community.
100 ₳ per bock is given directly to Field Haven cat rescue to sponsor a precious kitty in need. See CatTEGRITY for more details.
Depending on where you live in the world can greatly influence your answer. Many in the United States rely on Binance.US or Kraken to custodian their USD and allow them to exchange. We do recommend if you acquire your ADA from an exchange that you move it to your own private address as soon as possible.
Your funds are not ‘locked’ while staking. However you only receive rewards for the ADA in your account at the moment each new snapshot is taken at the beginning of a new epoch.