About Staking Cardano
DELEGATING STAKE IN CARDANO
Cardano is a proof of stake system, so holding stake, i.e. owning Ada, means more than holding Bitcoin means for the Bitcoin protocol.
You may choose to delegate your stake to a "staking pool". By being part of a larger pool all participants share in the cost of keeping a node up and running all the time and also share chances of being the slot leader. Rewards and running costs are shared with all participants in the pool.
CONTROL OVER FUNDS
When users delegate their stake, they pass their right to protocol participation on to a stake pool operator, and a delegation certificate is created on-chain to record that they have delegated their ADA. It’s important to note, that whilst users are delegating their right to protocol participation on to a pool operator, they are still granted full monetary rights over their ADA holdings — as ADA is a functional means of exchange in it’s capacity as a functioning cryptocurrency.
PROOF OF STAKE MINING
Cardano uses a new proof of stake algorithm called Ouroboros, Ouroboros eliminates the need for an energy-hungry proof of work protocol, which stands as a barrier to blockchain scaling up for much wider use. Ouroboros is the first proof of stake protocol that has been mathematically shown to be provably secure. The level of security demonstrated by Ouroboros compares to that of Bitcoin’s blockchain, which has never been compromised.