Pledge is the stake that you delegate to your own pool. Using a transaction, you must register on the blockchain the stake address associated with a payment address containing funds that you want to pledge.
For a general discussion on creating transactions, see the topic .
To register a stake address on the blockchain:
Create a certificate, stake.cert, using the stake.vkey
When calculating the fee for a transaction, the --witness-count option indicates the number of keys signing the transaction. You must sign a transaction submitting a stake address registration certificate to the blockchain using the secret—private—key for the payment address spending the input, as well as the secret key for the stake address to register.
When creating the transaction, ensure that the funds the input contains are greater than the total of the transaction fee and stake address deposit. If funds are insufficient, then the transaction fails.