What is a Cardano stake pool?

If you hold ADA, you can earn rewards by staking it. To stake, you pick a stake pool. This guide explains what a pool is, what it does with your ADA, and what it does not do.

The short answer

A stake pool is a server, run by a person or a team, that helps keep the Cardano blockchain working. It makes new blocks of transactions. For that work, the network pays rewards. The pool keeps a small part and shares the rest with everyone who staked with it.

When you stake with a pool, you are saying: “I trust this pool. Count my ADA as support for it.” The more ADA supports a pool, the more blocks it is likely to make, and the more rewards everyone in it earns.

Your ADA stays in your wallet

This is the part that surprises most people. When you stake on Cardano:

• Your ADA does not move. It stays in your own wallet.
• It is not locked. You can spend or send it any time.
• The pool cannot touch it. The operator never gets your keys.
• You can switch pools whenever you want, with no penalty.

Staking is a setting on your wallet, not a payment. Cardano calls this delegation: you delegate your stake to a pool. The only cost is a normal transaction fee (well under ₳1) and a one-time deposit of ₳2, which you get back if you ever stop staking.

What the pool actually does

Cardano runs in epochs. One epoch lasts 5 days. In every epoch, the network picks which pools will make blocks. The pick is random, but pools with more stake get picked more often.

A pool operator has to:

• run a block producer, the server that makes blocks,
• run relays, servers that connect the pool to the rest of the network,
• keep everything online, updated and secure, all day, every day.

If a pool is offline when it is picked, that block is lost, and so are the rewards for it. That is why a well-run pool matters.

How rewards reach you

Rewards come from transaction fees and from Cardano’s reserve. At the end of each epoch, the network works out what every pool earned. It then pays out automatically:

1. The pool takes its fixed fee, the same amount every epoch.
2. The pool takes its margin, a percentage of what is left.
3. Everything else is shared among all delegators, in proportion to their stake.

Nobody sends you anything by hand. Rewards appear in your wallet by themselves. When you start staking for the first time, the first rewards take about 15 to 20 days, because your stake has to wait a few epochs before it counts. After that, rewards come every 5 days.

You can read what margin and fixed fee mean for your rewards in How to choose a Cardano stake pool.

Why there are thousands of pools

Cardano has almost 3,000 registered stake pools. Anyone with the skills and some ADA can start one. That is on purpose. A blockchain is only as strong as the number of independent people running it. If a few big companies ran every pool, they could agree to censor transactions or change the rules.

So the choice you make matters, not only for your rewards but for the network. Many people pick small, single pools: pools run by one independent operator, not by a company that runs dozens. You can read why in Why single pools keep Cardano strong.

Quick summary

• A stake pool makes blocks and earns rewards for its delegators.
• Your ADA never leaves your wallet and is never locked.
• Rewards are paid every 5 days, automatically.
• You can change pools any time.
• Picking a small independent pool helps keep Cardano decentralized.

Ready to look? The pool list shows every registered pool. It starts with single pools that keep no margin, and you can change the filters any way you like.