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Staking with nominator pools

Overview​

With TON smart contracts, you can implement any staking and deposit mechanisms you want.

However, there is native staking in the TON blockchain—you can lend Toncoin to validators for staking and share rewards for validation.

The one who lends to a validator is called a nominator.

A smart contract, called a nominator pool, enables one or more nominators to lend Toncoin to a validator’s stake and ensures that the validator can use that Toncoin only for validation; this smart contract guarantees the distribution of rewards.

If you are familiar with cryptocurrencies, you have likely heard of validators and nominators—two key participants in staking.

Validator​

A validator is a network node that helps keep the blockchain running by verifying (or validating) suggested blocks and recording them on the blockchain.

To become a validator, you must meet two requirements: have a high-performance server and obtain at least 300,000 Toncoins, in order to make a stake. The number of active validators per round is determined by the network configuration parameters. See blockchain configuration parameters for current validator limits.

Nominator​

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A newer version of the nominator pool is available; read more on the Single nominator pool and Vesting contract pages.

It's evident that not everyone can afford to have hundreds of thousands of Toncoin (TON) in their balance – here's where nominators come into play. Simply put, the nominator is a user who lends their TON to validators. Every time the validator earns a reward by validating blocks, the reward is distributed among the participants.

By contract design, nominator pools enforce the following limits:

  • Minimum stake per nominator: 10,000 TON
  • Maximum number of nominators per pool: 40

From TON Community post.

There should always be 10 TON on the pool balance - this is the minimum balance for the network storage fee.

Cost per month​

Since validation round lasts ~18 hours, takes about 5 TON per validation round and 1 nominator pool takes part in even and odd validation rounds it will take ~105 TON per month to operate the pool.

How to participate?​

Source code​

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The theory of nominators is described in TON Whitepaper, chapters 2.6.3, 2.6.25.

See also​

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