July 28th 2021 - A day which will go down in history, when the Radix Olympia Mainnet was finally unleashed into the wild! For Radstakes this marks 4 years of 'flying the flag' for Radix, where we've seen it evolve with the ever-changing cryptoscape, and adapt to a plethora of new challenges and set backs along the way.
As the clock struck 18:00 UTC - Like many of the community, we didn't hold back in diving straight in, downloading the Olympia desktop wallet, receiving our very first XRD from the team, and of course - spinning up 2 fresh dedicated server instances, destined to become our Radix mainnet nodes!
We're pleased to announce that amidst all the excitement of the evening, we now have 2 nodes fully synchronised with the Radix ledger. One of which will serve as a backup node, and a primary validator fully registered and ready for staking. Here's a brief guide to help you be Radstakes ready:
The Radix Desktop Wallet
All staking begins with the Radix Desktop Wallet, which is available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux by following the link here: Radix Wallet
When creating your Radix wallet, always choose a strong password and ensure your 12 word seed phrase is safely written down and hidden in a secure location. In order to secure your wallet even further, we recommend a hardware wallet. The Ledger Nano S is compatible with Radix and gives an added layer of protection. Please see the following guide for further details: Using Ledger Nano S with Radix
For those who have already acquired the Ethereum form of Radix (eXRD), the next step to staking will be to swap your eXRD for native XRD.
Instapass and Instabridge
In order to swap eXRD for XRD, the simplest method is to signup for Instapass.io which enables token holders to complete KYC/AML checks prior to swapping their tokens. Radix designed Instapass as a means of 'single sign on' KYC to allow the community to use any future service or dApp in the Radix ecosystem, and share their KYC information quickly and easily. The team at Radix have put together a comprehensive guide on Instapass, which you can find here: Instapass is Live
Note: it will also be possible to swap eXRD for XRD using Bitfinex, although a timescale has not yet been given.
Instabridge.io will be the very first application to use the Instapass KYC. Instabridge goes live on August 5th and will allow all token holders to link their Ethereum wallet and newly created Radix wallet to initiate the swap to native XRD! A further guide is available to explain this in more detail: XRD and Instabridge
Staking
Once you have your Radix wallet set up and your native XRD at the ready, then begins the important task of deciding on who to delegate your stake to. It's worth a reminder here, that for the first 2 weeks from mainnet launch there are no rewards for staking, so the best advice is to use this time to review the various validators, visit their websites and ask them questions. The team at Radix have put together a handy guide in the knowledge base to help: How Should I Choose Validators to Stake to?
All registered validators are listed in the Radix explorer which provides details on the validator's fee, their website address, uptime, node address and the owners delegated stake. Here's a link to the Radstakes validator in the Radix explorer as an example: Radstakes Validator Info (note: the uptime and owners delegation will only be populated after the initial 2 week period)
We strongly advise that stakers select at least 5 good validators to delegate to and avoid delegating to those with the largest stake. For the health of the network and to promote decentralisation, ideally the stake should be evenly distributed among all validators from a range of geographies with different server setups. Here's a brief overview of Radstakes:
Competitive 2% fee
We only use dedicated cloud servers, with DDoS protection as standard
Our primary validator is based in London, UK
We run a backup node in a completely separate data centre. If anything should happen to our primary validator, we can immediately start validating with our backup, minimising downtime
Radstakes were selected as Betanet validators and also ran multiple nodes on the Radix test net 'Stokenet', maintaining 100% uptime. This testing period has enabled us to develop and improve our security and monitoring provision
We've been Radvocates and ambassadors for Radix since 2017
We will be pledging a significant amount of our own XRD to the Radstakes validator
Once you've made your choices of validators (hopefully Radstakes included!) you can stake from directly within the Radix desktop wallet by clicking the 'Stake & Unstake' option and entering the validators address and your staking amount. As stated previously, take your time over this initial 2 week period to consider which validators to choose. Once staked, it takes approximately 2 weeks to unstake your XRD, which could result in a loss of rewards if your chosen validator suffers downtime. And finally, please find our validator address for reference below. We hope you'll choose to delegate some XRD with Radstakes and as always, are available to answer any questions - feel free to contact us on Twitter, Telegram, Discord, e-mail or through Chat on Radstakes.com
Radstakes Validator Address
rv1qdzgjh98d4mexymc492eq82zwmspmh9mlz4wqgswta4jcaw0nnwuj53mj5w