Cardano (ADA) has become one of the most popular cryptocurrencies on the market. This post explains how to delegate your ADA to a Stake Pool and get rewards inside the Incentivized Testnet (ITN) of the Shelley era of Cardano.
We will focus, not on creating a Cardano Node, but on how to delegate our ADAs to a Stake Pool such as VanticaTrading.com (VTRA). You start delegating your ADA to a pool using a Wallet. Currently, both Daedalus ITN or Yoroi wallets can be used to delegate your stake to the desired Stake Pool. Daedalus is a standalone application and Yoroi works as a Browser extension.
Download the Daedalus ITN wallet
We'll use Daedalus ITN since it's the official Cardano wallet. You can download the software from here from the official site. You can validate the checksum for extra security.
Run the installer and accept the default settings. Review and accept the terms and conditions. Click "Continue" and you will see the welcome screen. Click "I understand" to proceed to the main window. You can also click "More information" if you want more information about the incentivized test net (ITN).
Create your wallets
After restoring your main-net wallet and create a new rewards wallet (just follow the app instructions), you'll see that the balance in your wallet has the same amount of test net ADA (tADA) that you had in the main net wallet at the time of the balance snapshot.
Verify that your computer is clean and free of malware. Be sure to keep all recovery phrases safe for all of your wallets. You'll need these recovery phrases to redeem incentivized test net rewards on the Cardano main network.
Delegate your ADA
Now is time to finally stake your ADA. The second menu option, on the left, will guide you to the Delegation tab:
The middle option "Stake Pools" shows the full list of online Stake Pools. They are represented as squares and colored according to an experimental scoring calculated by IOHK. In the search box type "VTRA", or the ticker of the pool of your choice, and click on it, a small review will pop up:
Back in the delegation center, under "wallets", click on "Delegate". Select the appropriate wallet, search for your preferred stake pool, and type your spending password. After the confirmation, you have delegated your stake!
When the ITN program ends, the rewards will be transferred to the main net and you will be able to redeem your rewards using the wallet recovery phrase from your rewards wallet. Welcome to Cardano Staking!