Kusama Staking Guide Via Polkadot Browser Extension

Every single invention in the history of mankind was achieved through enormous effort to accomplish something difficult, and this principle also applies to many companies all across the globe that deliver great products and services nowadays. But sometimes product complexity doesn’t allow ordinary people to get deeply involved, leaving many of them with unanswered questions. Kusama network is no exception here, thereby our team decided to roll out a step-by-step tutorial which will help you to understand completely the staking process on the Kusama network. 

Account Generation

Considering the fact that the network is still in its infancy stage, not many solutions are currently available on the market that both allow staking and holding your digital assets securely. At the moment of writing this material, Kusama network offers a pretty simple but robust tool that helps to store and manage your KSM tokens, and it’s called Polkadot.{js} browser extension that can be downloaded both on the Google Chrome or FireFox browsers. 

Please note, that we recommend to double check what you download and install via official resources, since many malicious actors take advantage of inexperienced people that may download non-proprietary software.

Once you downloaded and installed the plugin, continue to account creation simply by clicking on the extension button in your browser.

Click on the ‘Create New Account’ button.

On the next page the extension will generate a mnemonic seed phrase that you have to save in a safe place. Note, that if you lose your seed, then unfortunately you won’t be able to recover your private keys and your funds.

Choose your desired password that will be tied to your account and used to confirm all network operations that you conduct.

Open up the official Polkadot web-application and follow the next instructions.

In case you use FireFox you may stumble upon a notification window that requests the confirmation to allow the polkadot.{js} wallet application to interact with polkadot.js.org service, please, grant access and continue further.

Actual Staking Process

Once you enter into the account dashboard, navigate to the ‘Staking’ section of the web-application. 

In the staking section please click on the ‘Account Actions’ tab.

It’s important to emphasize that network participants that stake KSM on the Kusama network are called nominators, who basically nominate their KSM tokens to a particular validator. 

Click on the ‘+Stash’  button in the top right corner of the application.

KSM stashing allows the application to add an additional level of security to your wallet by limiting its functionality simply to a cold wallet where a significant number of your digital assets are stored. Where for frequent funds usage the system generates the controller that works as a hot wallet for non-funding actions.

In the pop-up menu choose the specific amount of KSM that you want to bond, or simply initiate the first staking step.

Confirm your action by clicking on the ‘Bond’ button.

Then sign and submit your operation.

After your operation is completed successfully, click the ‘Nominate’ button in the ‘Staking section’ right on your account toolbar.

In order to vote for ‘Everstake’ switch off the slider called ‘Use an automatic selection of the currently most profitable validators’, so that the list with the search functionality could appear. 

In the search bar enter the Everstake address, and choose our validator:

ESRBbWstgpPV1pVBsqjMo717rA8HLrtQvEUVwAGeFZyKcia

Confirm your action by clicking on the ‘Sign and Submit’ button.

Congratulations, now you have successfully staked your KSM tokens.