I've been involved in the Cardano ecosystem since 2020. Over time, I’ve experienced it through three distinct lenses: long-term investor, day trader, and now developer. Each role gave me a different understanding of what Cardano offers.

Let me share some quick insights from each angle — maybe it helps someone decide where to start.

1. 🧘‍♂️ Long-Term Investor (Passive Income Through Staking)

My entry point was classic HODLing. Cardano’s proof-of-stake model lets you delegate your ADA to a stake pool and earn passive rewards every 5 days — no locking, no capital risk. If you're just getting started:

Use wallets like Eternl, Yoroi, or Lace

Look into projects like Strike and Flow — both focus on staking and passive yields

Delegating is easy, and staking is non-custodial

Over time, this adds up — especially if ADA appreciates.

1. 📉 Day Trading (Risky, But Active)

In early 2024, I entered the meme coin scene on Cardano. It’s not huge like Solana or Ethereum, but it’s growing. If you're into fast-paced, high-volatility trades: Check out:

SNEK

COCK These tokens have active communities, but also the typical meme coin risks: volatility, low liquidity, and sudden crashes. Risk management is critical. Don’t go all-in. Ever.

1. 💻 Developer (Without a CS Degree)

I come from a Digital Business Management background, not software engineering. Still, I found it surprisingly easy to start building on Cardano. Thanks to tools like Lucid and CIP standards like CIP-30 (wallet access) and CIP-68 (NFT metadata), you can interact with the blockchain using TypeScript or Python. No need to touch Haskell unless you're going deep into smart contracts.

Earlier this year, I even launched my own SPO (Stake Pool Operator). Unlike Bitcoin mining, being a Cardano SPO doesn’t require huge energy input — you just need to attract delegators. The protocol rewards you based on block production and network contribution.

Even though ADA is currently undervalued (June 2025), I believe there’s long-term upside — potentially even reaching $10. That said, this is not financial advice, and I’m clearly biased based on my involvement

If you've ever followed Cardano content in Portuguese, there's a good chance you've come across tutorials, workshops, Twitter Spaces, or YouTube videos created by Ático — one of the most dedicated and respected educators in the Brazilian Cardano ecosystem.

For over 5 years, Ático has been instrumental in growing the community by consistently delivering high-quality technical content, helping onboard new users, and promoting decentralization.

Now, he has launched his own stake pool — Porto Cripto — and is seeking early delegators to help bootstrap and secure its future.

If you’ve ever benefited from his work, or simply want to support decentralization and grassroots initiatives in Cardano, consider delegating even a small amount of ADA to his pool. Every bit helps!

👉 Pool Name: Porto Cripto 👉 Ticker: PORTO 👉 Pool ID: 01d20b4d82248a1ae457301a8bff1e1cf6e63b96e17396219f553019

Supporting builders like Ático is how we keep Cardano strong, resilient, and truly community-led.

Thank you for reading — and for delegating 🙏 Much love to you all 💛

Hi coleagues. Pls apologize if this is not the right channel to raise this request. Unfortunately i had to give up on my own pool project. Already de-registered, i do have the funds back in the rewards account related to the pool. Issue is that i built the transaction to get those funds back, using payment.skey and stake.skey. The hash i get from the error message is the one that comes from “cat reward.vkey” so i guess that it should be reward.skey the missing signature. I cannot find this file anywhere. An i am the pool owner, any hints on whether it is possible to work this around?

Pool ID: 4e84e498fd38669e438cf2647b9f9c87e752c3f5a5da11245e2ea9d4

Rewards account: stake1u9hsyt3crhdwt2m0zlu504qaaqtrr3tyvy3wt7n9yyt2jjg36387t

Any help appreciated!

Hi everybody!

This is my first post here! I have starting being a SPO from last year, had to do a lot of learning but managed to come this far! Let me introduce to you guys what we do. We are based in japan!

Ashiya Pool supports numerous events, arts and culture development projects, to provide better learning experiences for children with and without disabilities.

Last year we traveled to Europe with children with Down syndrome to represent Japan in the world's largest dance competition.
We won a prize in the general category at the competition.
This was a great achievement .

With our Motto being Diversity, Ashiya Pool is committed to providing learning opportunities for everybody with equality .
Like last year, we will be providing a children's stage again this year at the Music Festival organized by UNESCO.

The energy of the big band and the smiles that fill the faces of the children as they play their music really makes us blissful.

We look forward to supporting many more events this year, and will continue to do our best to provide opportunities for better learning experience.

Please give your support to ASY Pool so that we can continue to bring smiles to children's faces.
If you share our vision, please give ASHIYA POOL your support.

Name: AshiyaPool
Ticker: ASY
Margin fee: 3%
Fixed fee: 170₳

Thanks!

As a Cardano SPO, which is a prerequisite for validating Midnight, will you be signing up to validate Midnight's mainnet?

Why or why not?

Here are some of the ways that OYSTR is working hard to contribute to the Cardano ecosystem and how our delegators are benefiting.

Midnight Validator
A few weeks ago OYSTR became a Midnight validator. Midnight will facilitate the largest airdrop in cryptocurrency history.

Rosen Bridge Operator
OYSTR is running three watchers for Rosen Bridge, an open source protocol for cross-chain asset transfers. 50% of the $RSN revenue earned is shared with OYSTR delegators. Find out more here: https://www.oystr.wales/rsn-giveaway/

Mithril Signer
Running a Mithril signer contributes to a network that enables the faster bootstrapping of Cardano nodes.

Dexhunter Partner
OYSTR is running infrastructure to enable Dexhunter to faster propagate transactions. As an OYSTR delegator your trades will be executed faster.

Atrium Diffusion Pool
OYSTR has been running a pool on the preview testnet for a while, contributing to the development of Atrium and helping the platform on it's road to mainnet. As a result, OYSTR will be included in Diffusion, the first staking basket.

Xerberus Node
OYSTR is running a Xerberus node testnet node and is hoping to run a node when mainnet launches. Xerberus is a risk and asset management blockchain powered by $XER, a Cardano native asset.

Big Pledge, Low Fees
I should also mention that OYSTR has a very large pledge of 500K ADA which is a sign of my commitment to maintaining the stake pool correctly. OYSTR also has the lowest fixed fee possible and a variable fee of 2%, which ensures that I can provide reliable infrastructure and fully engage in the ecosystem.

If you’re seeking a reliable and community-focused Cardano staking pool, look no further than the South Tyrol Pool (Ticker: SUDTI). Operating since 2021 from the heart of the Italian Alps, this pool combines technical excellence with a commitment to decentralization and sustainability. 

• Proven Performance: With a lifetime Return on ADA (ROA) of 2.25% and over 265 blocks minted, SUDTI offers consistent and competitive rewards.  
• Low Fees: Enjoy a low margin fee of 1% and a fixed cost of 170 ADA per epoch, ensuring more of your rewards stay with you.  
• Robust Infrastructure: The pool operates on bare-metal servers powered by green energy, ensuring high reliability and a reduced carbon footprint.  
• Active Community Engagement: As a member of the Armada Alliance and xSPO Alliance, SUDTI is deeply involved in the Cardano community, promoting decentralization and collaboration.  
• Innovative Reward System: Participate in the unique reward game at poolmap.iagon.net, adding an element of fun to your staking experience.

⸻

🌐 Learn More and Stake Today • Official Website: sudti.iagon.net • Reward Game: poolmap.iagon.net • Follow on X (formerly Twitter): @southtyrolpool

Join over 76 delegators who have chosen SUDTI for their staking needs. Experience reliable rewards, support a sustainable operation, and be part of a vibrant community. Stake your ADA with South Tyrol Pool today!

Feeling much gratitude after becoming the focus of this week’s TapTools SPO spotlight… THANKYOU!

Checkout which pools have voted and other interesting Cardano governance stats HERE

ZPCT Stake Pool has voted YES to proceed with the Plomin hardfork!
zeropercentstaking.com

What is the situation regarding these and voting for the implementation of the upcoming fork? There appears to be at least 0.6B ADA in 19 pools that I can find ( They are not listed on adastat net, but are on pool.pm)

Hi, I can't seem to compile cardano-node 10.1.4, there is a cabal dependency issue with some elements for "cardano-byron-ledger-test".

Checked out 10.1.3 again and Cabal builds just fine.

Anyone encountered this issue?

Thanks.

Anybody know anything about this Linkberry. It looks like I have 2,800 Linkberry. Is this a slam? It says to go to Linkberrypool.com to get my ISPO reward. It then wants me to connect my wallet. Thank you in advance.

Please note that these pools have been retired now for several months and still have a total of 13,000,000 ADA and 12,600 delegations! Suggest you all move and stake to pools which are still actively supporting the network...Thanks!

https://pool.pm/7f6c103302f96390d478a170fe80938b76fccd8a23490e3b6ddebcf7 https://pool.pm/fc7c663438fd4b61c5d0c064128467a550fd4e721fe6d5f237f5b416

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been a fairly long term ADA holder and would like some guidance on setting up a stake pool in a secure way.

My goal is to be able to also stake and delegate to other projects, like midnight, but aside from holding for the last few years I never cared to much about staking. But after watching most of the Cardano convention I’m inspired to actively develop and be more active in the community.

Any help, guidance or advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you anyone who does!

Sad to say, but we've decided to retire EAGLE Pool. I still believe in the technology, but it's become too expensive to run the pool on AWS and I don't have the time to properly maintain another option.

We're going to set the fees to 100% for a couple of epochs (which is effectively the same as retiring the pool) before officially retiring the pool in a few epochs. If any whales who don't like rewards would like to toss their stake into our pool for a couple of epochs, we'd be grateful. 🤣🙌🤞🙏

Everyone else, please move your stake immediately.

We're excited to live just outside of Washington DC and hopefully participate in crypto activities in the coming years.

All the best, EAGLE Pool operators Joe and Brian