Smart ways to nominate validator and earn more.

So now you have an account with some DOT or KSM tokens and you want to get more with nominating validators. The quantity of validators is huge, from large companies to single nodes. Pick your validators carefully — if they do not behave properly, they will get slashed and you will lose DOT (KSM) as well. How to choose the best validator and what is the best way to nominate? Look through our tips.

Tip 1.

The most safe and profitable strategy is to nominate 16 validators.

The list of elected validators changes all the time. As long as you have nominated more than one validator candidate and at least one of them got elected, your bonded stake will be fully distributed to one or more validators. That being said, you still will have the chance to get 0 rewards if you nominated very few validator candidates and no one got elected, or your stake is small and you only selected oversubscribed validators. It is generally wise to choose as many trustworthy validators as you can (up to 16) to reduce the risk of none of your nominated validators being elected.

Tip 2.

Check your list of validators, all or at least most of them should be already elected and active (full list of elected validators look here https://polkadot.js.org/apps/#/staking )

Tip 3.

Avoid validators with oversubscribed signs (it means that this validator was elected by too many nominators and some of these nominators don’t receive rewards).

Validators can only pay out to 256 nominators per era. If more than 256 nominators nominate the same validator, it is “oversubscribed”, and only the top 256 staked nominators (ranked by amount of stake) are paid rewards. Other nominators will receive no rewards for that era, although their stake will still be used to calculate entry into the active validator set.

Tip 4.

Know your validator: website, Twitter, Telegram, Medium and other links can be found by clicking on validators name (only for validators with Identity).

On the “Targets” https://polkadot.js.org/apps/#/staking/targets page you can know the profit each validator made for each era. Input the quantity of tokens you would like to stake and check the profit you will gain

However, that does not guarantee the right way to evaluate the validators’ overall performance.

One example would be if a validator is regularly offline, their nominators most likely would get fewer rewards than others. More importantly, when many validators are unreachable, those nominators who staked with them will be slashed.

Tip 5.

Be aware of everything that happens with your assets during nominations — use smart tools. To make thing easier, Ryabina validator presented a number of Telegram bots, here the are:

Polkadot: http://t.me/Polkadot_Ryabina_bot

Kusama: http://t.me/Kusama_bot

StaFi: http://t.me/StaFi_bot

Edgeware: https://t.me/Edgeware_bot

Acala: https://t.me/Acala_Ryabina_bot

You’ve got a new reward? Your account received a transfer? Your validator changes its fee or was slashed? These bots track everything concerning your nominations and all other events in the network. Just try!

The guide for the bots: https://medium.com/@ryabina/track-anything-ultimate-guide-for-polkadot-and-kusama-telegram-bots-a47aa913f8b

Do not hesitate to contact the Ryabina team in case you have any concerns by Telegram or by e-mail.