The best level security for your crypto is when your coins are off the exchanges. Exchanges get hacked, exchanges impose conditions that you don’t choose, exchanges limit your ownership, exchanges are not what Satoshi Nakamoto had in mind when is started the crypto revolution. As a consequence, you might want to stake your crypto outside of exchanges, and I will give you a demo tour with Cardano off-exchange staking. How to stake Cardano from your cold storage wallet?
1. Maximum security: Daedalus + Trezor/Ledger
Daedalus is the first historical Cardano wallet. It’s running a Cardano node on your local machine (!), so it’s fully synchronized to the blockchain when you’re starting it:
You can download Daedalus, buy a cold storage wallet like Trezor or Ledger, and plug them together:
Then, start staking from your cold storage wallet by delegating to a staking pool:
Finally, you will see you staking rewards flow to your cold wallet.
2. Medium security: Yoroi + Trezor/Ledger
Yoroi is another Cardano wallet, lighter because it is not synchronized as often as Daedalus to the blockchain. As a consequence, it’s also way faster.
You can also connect your cold wallet to Yoroi:
And start staking:
3. Lighter security: Exodus + Trezor/Ledger
Exodus is yet another wallet, not specifically designed for Cardano, that can stake your ADA off-exchanges:
You can connect your cold wallet to Exodus:
And then you can start staking. Exodus will handle automatically the stake pool with an optimal choice. It can be seen as a nice feature:
4. Conclusion
We’ve discussed 3 levels of security to stake your ADA, all very good depending on your need after you’ve decided to buy some crypto. Also remember that it’s our responsibility as crypto holders to make sure that we’re not centralizing all our assets in exchanges. This would go against the initial mindset of the space (decentralisation, control, not-your-keys-not-your-coins). Off-exchange staking must survive regulations.
Thanks for reading.
Disclaimer: this is not financial advice
