Delegating to a Stake Pool

✅ Prerequisites

• Both a payment and a stake key pair. Payment key should contain some ADA.

👩‍💻 Registering Your Stake Address

Create a certificate, stake.cert, using the stake.vkey

cardano-cli stake-address registration-certificate \
    --stake-verification-key-file stake.vkey \
    --out-file stake.cert

You need to find the slot tip of the blockchain.

currentSlot=$(cardano-cli query tip --mainnet | jq -r '.slot')
echo Current Slot: $currentSlot

Find your balance and UTXOs.

cardano-cli query utxo \
    --address $(cat payment.addr) \
    --mainnet > fullUtxo.out

tail -n +3 fullUtxo.out | sort -k3 -nr > balance.out

cat balance.out

tx_in=""
total_balance=0
while read -r utxo; do
    type=$(awk '{ print $6 }' <<< "${utxo}")
    if [[ ${type} == 'TxOutDatumNone' ]]
    then
        in_addr=$(awk '{ print $1 }' <<< "${utxo}")
        idx=$(awk '{ print $2 }' <<< "${utxo}")
        utxo_balance=$(awk '{ print $3 }' <<< "${utxo}")
        total_balance=$((${total_balance}+${utxo_balance}))
        echo TxHash: ${in_addr}#${idx}
        echo ADA: ${utxo_balance}
        tx_in="${tx_in} --tx-in ${in_addr}#${idx}"
    fi
done < balance.out
txcnt=$(cat balance.out | wc -l)
echo Total available ADA balance: ${total_balance}
echo Number of UTXOs: ${txcnt}

Find the stakeAddressDeposit value.

stakeAddressDeposit=$(cat $NODE_HOME/params.json | jq -r '.stakeAddressDeposit')
echo stakeAddressDeposit : $stakeAddressDeposit

Registration of a stake address certificate (stakeAddressDeposit) costs 2000000 lovelace.

Run the build-raw transaction command

The invalid-hereafter value must be greater than the current tip. In this example, we use current slot + 10000.

cardano-cli transaction build-raw \
    ${tx_in} \
    --tx-out $(cat payment.addr)+0 \
    --invalid-hereafter $(( ${currentSlot} + 10000)) \
    --fee 0 \
    --out-file tx.tmp \
    --certificate stake.cert

Calculate the current minimum fee:

fee=$(cardano-cli transaction calculate-min-fee \
    --tx-body-file tx.tmp \
    --tx-in-count ${txcnt} \
    --tx-out-count 1 \
    --mainnet \
    --witness-count 2 \
    --byron-witness-count 0 \
    --protocol-params-file params.json | awk '{ print $1 }')
echo fee: $fee

Ensure your balance is greater than cost of fee + stakeAddressDeposit or this will not work.

Calculate your change output.

txOut=$((${total_balance}-${stakeAddressDeposit}-${fee}))
echo Change Output: ${txOut}

Build your transaction which will register your stake address.

cardano-cli transaction build-raw \
    ${tx_in} \
    --tx-out $(cat payment.addr)+${txOut} \
    --invalid-hereafter $(( ${currentSlot} + 10000)) \
    --fee ${fee} \
    --certificate-file stake.cert \
    --out-file tx.raw

Sign the transaction with both the payment and stake secret keys.

cardano-cli transaction sign \
    --tx-body-file tx.raw \
    --signing-key-file payment.skey \
    --signing-key-file stake.skey \
    --mainnet \
    --out-file tx.signed

Send the signed transaction.

cardano-cli transaction submit \
    --tx-file tx.signed \
    --mainnet

📄 Creating a Delegation Certificate

Given its stake pool verification key file node.vkey , from your stakepool should have generated (and published) a stake pool ID:

cardano-cli stake-pool id \
    --cold-verification-key-file node.vkey \
    --output-format 'hex'

Given the stake pool ID from your stakepool, run the following:

cardano-cli stake-address delegation-certificate \
    --stake-verification-key-file stake.vkey \
    --stake-pool-id <stake pool ID> \
    --out-file deleg.cert

You need to find the tip of the blockchain to set the ttl parameter properly.

currentSlot=$(cardano-cli query tip --mainnet | jq -r '.slot')
echo Current Slot: $currentSlot

Find your balance and UTXOs.

cardano-cli query utxo \
    --address $(cat payment.addr) \
    --mainnet > fullUtxo.out

tail -n +3 fullUtxo.out | sort -k3 -nr > balance.out

cat balance.out

tx_in=""
total_balance=0
while read -r utxo; do
    type=$(awk '{ print $6 }' <<< "${utxo}")
    if [[ ${type} == 'TxOutDatumNone' ]]
    then
        in_addr=$(awk '{ print $1 }' <<< "${utxo}")
        idx=$(awk '{ print $2 }' <<< "${utxo}")
        utxo_balance=$(awk '{ print $3 }' <<< "${utxo}")
        total_balance=$((${total_balance}+${utxo_balance}))
        echo TxHash: ${in_addr}#${idx}
        echo ADA: ${utxo_balance}
        tx_in="${tx_in} --tx-in ${in_addr}#${idx}"
    fi
done < balance.out
txcnt=$(cat balance.out | wc -l)
echo Total available ADA balance: ${total_balance}
echo Number of UTXOs: ${txcnt}

Run the build-raw transaction command.

cardano-cli transaction build-raw \
    ${tx_in} \
    --tx-out $(cat payment.addr)+${total_balance} \
    --invalid-hereafter $(( ${currentSlot} + 10000)) \
    --fee 0 \
    --certificate-file deleg.cert \
    --out-file tx.tmp

Calculate the minimum fee:

fee=$(cardano-cli transaction calculate-min-fee \
    --tx-body-file tx.tmp \
    --tx-in-count ${txcnt} \
    --tx-out-count 1 \
    --mainnet \
    --witness-count 2 \
    --byron-witness-count 0 \
    --protocol-params-file params.json | awk '{ print $1 }')
echo fee: $fee

Calculate your change output.

txOut=$((${total_balance}-${fee}))
echo txOut: ${txOut}

Build the transaction.

cardano-cli transaction build-raw \
    ${tx_in} \
    --tx-out $(cat payment.addr)+${txOut} \
    --invalid-hereafter $(( ${currentSlot} + 10000)) \
    --fee ${fee} \
    --certificate-file deleg.cert \
    --out-file tx.raw

Sign the transaction.

cardano-cli transaction sign \
    --tx-body-file tx.raw \
    --signing-key-file payment.skey \
    --signing-key-file stake.skey \
    --mainnet \
    --out-file tx.signed

Send the transaction.

cardano-cli transaction submit \
    --tx-file tx.signed \
    --mainnet

Congratulations! Your ADA is now successfully delegated to your chosen stakepool.