Not necessarily. Before every epoch, block slot leaders are randomly assigned by the protocol to stake pools using a sort of lottery mechanism. The number of blocks assigned to each pool is directly proportional to the stake of the pool, but it may vary considerably. Staking rewards need to be considered as average over time. A smaller pool will divide bigger shares of the reward amongst its delegators (since there are fewer of them) but will get chosen to mint fewer blocks. A large pool will mint a lot of blocks, but the rewards are smaller. Most pools not missing any blocks assigned to them will average the same return of stake regardless of the size of the pool.

What really matters is making sure that you delegate to a responsible pool operator who won’t miss blocks due to negligence. We strive for close to 100% uptime and 100% performance.

First, there are many mission-driven stake pools donating to worthwhile charities and we applaud them.

The reason this stake pool was created was to diversify our portfolio for long-term appreciation in the crypto market. Most mission-driven stake pools will donate to a charity using part or all of the variable fee which they deduct from your staking rewards. We don’t charge you a variable fee, so you keep all your staking rewards. So, maybe we are mission-driven…our mission is for you to keep all your staking rewards.

There are two fees that stake pools have, the fixed fee and the variable fee. The fixed fee is mandatory, and Cardano set the minimum at 170 ADA. Stake pool operators can increase this amount if they choose to do so (we keep ours at the minimum 170 ADA). The fixed fee is only taken from the first minted block during each epoch. The variable fee is optional and can be set from 0% to 100%. If you see a pool’s variable fee set to 100%, it is considered to be a private pool. DO NOT delegate to a private pool because you will not receive any staking rewards.