Introduction

The ROSE token is the native asset of the Oasis Proof-of-stake blockchain by Oasis Labs. It is one of the lesser-known projects that I believe has a lot of potential. I first started purchasing some about seven months ago and staked then via the Bitpie wallet. I purchased a few more a couple of months ago and found out that the exchane I purchased then on suspended withdraws on the ROSE network, so I could not transfer my new purchases to my Bitpie wallet–they were stuck on the exchange. Today I tried again and noticed that the withdrawals were working again. That’s the thing about crypto, it is very new and still being built out. Sometimes things may not work perfectly. Exchanges may do down occasionally. It is just something you have to live with. These are still early days.

Staking

The ROSE network is a Proof of Stake (PoS) network, which means that the miners are really just node validators in that they validate the blocks as opposed to solving difficult cryptograhic puzzles (mining) like Proof of Work (PoW) blockchains.

With PoW, the miners need specialized hardware calls ASIC, but don’t actually need any Bitcoin (or whatever PoW token is being mined–there are only a handful of PoW tokens still around). The miners are rewarded for solving the puzzles with the token (i.e. Bitcoin) they are mining.

With PoS, the node validators stake their tokens on their validator and they share a percentage of the block rewards. Other token holders who don’t want to be node validators can delegate their tokens to a node validator (the staking processs) and share in the block rewards, minus a small fee kept by the node validator in compensation for the hardware costs and time spent running the node.

Bitpie

Bitpie is a digital asset wall that allows ROSE staking from within the app, making it a very simple process.

One thing about Crypto is that you will end up with a lot of different wallets because no one wallet (yet) does everything you want it to do and supports all the digital assets you want. Setting up a wallet is pretty easy, you just have to remember to write down the 12 to 24 word seed phrase and keep is somewhere very safe and make sure you never loose it. If you are comfortable doing that, you are free to follow along.

From within the Bitpie app, there are really only three things you can do:

• Transfer
• Receive
• Delegate

Transfer would be used to send your tokens back to an exchange if you wanted to sell them and receive would be used to receive tokens from an exchange and store them in your wallet. Those are both pretty straightforward, so we will focus on the delegate option.

Delegate

As mentioned above, delegating is the processes of choose a validator that you want to stake your tokens with. If you click Delegate within the Bitpie app, it will take you to the Validators tab. It is really hard to know which validator to choose. The app doesn’t really tell you anything aobut the validator, but there is a link to each validator’s web page, so you can read a little about them. When I first delegated seven months ago I picked three that sounded good and went with it. One thing I paid attention to was the commission. The commission ranges between zero and 20 percent. There is no reason to pay a 20% commission as you can find plenty of good validators that only charge 10%. All the validator’s I choose had commissions of 10%.

Checking Rewards

While Bitpie makes it very easy to delegate ROSE tokens, the app does not show you what rewards you have earned, or even the current value of the stake, just the shares amount, which does not match 1 for 1 with the numbers of tokens.

To find out more information, you need to go to Oasis Scan and put in you Bitpie address so see your information on the blockchain.

As I mentioned above, when I first staked seven months ago I split tokens among three validators:

• P2P
• Bison Trails
• Blockdaemon 2

These validators are just three that I happened to choose, I am not recommending any or all of these three. In fact, I picked a bad one.

I noticed that the stake in the first two of them were very similar, but the stake in Blockdaemon 2 was noticably smaller. Checking Oasis Scan shows that Blockdaemon 2 is no long an active validator. I don’t know how to tell when it went offline, but it lost 25% of its stake on October 6th, so that may have been the time. It is worth pointing out that even when the validator goes offline, either of purpose or accidentally, as a staker you don’t lose of your stake, the only penalty is that you stop getting rewards as long as your validator is not signing transactions.

As a result of seeing this, I debonded from that validator and split my new token allocation between the two remaining validators. This shows that it is important to keep an eye on where you are staking and make sure that the node is operating as it should. This tought me to be more vigilant about checking the validators. Given my relatively small stake, I didn’t need to allocate to three validators, two is plenty.

Debonding

Once you delegate, you can see who you delegated to by clicking on My Escrow in the Bitpie app. You can then click on a validator and there you will have two options, you can delegate more, or you can reclaim, which is the same as debonding. You can reclaim all your shares, or just a portion. All you have to do is enter the number of shares to reclaim and then click Submit. Keep in mind that the debonding process takes 14 days, so you have to plan ahead if you need the tokens by a certain time. Once I get my tokens back from Blockdaemon 2 I will re-delegate them with my other two validators.

Disclaimer

These posts are for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any tokens. In this series I am just outlining what I am doing to learn more about the cyrpto space. Just because I am comfortable doing this, that does not necessarily mean these activities are suitable for you. I have not received any compensation from any of the products or services mentioned herein. Please do your own research and stay skeptical. These markets are not normal.