How to stake Kusama (KSM)

The guide for staking DOT and KSM are almost identical to each other except for a few slight differences. If you’re already familiar with staking DOT, this will take you even faster to do.

In this guide, we’ll be walking you through how to set up your own Kusama wallet, move your KSM tokens off the exchange into your own KSM wallet, and set up staking to earn KSM tokens passively. The entire process should take about 10 minutes. It may take a few minutes longer if your exchange takes longer to process your token transfer request to your wallet. The good news is that this is a one time setup. Once you’re set up, your KSM wallet will start earning daily and you can check every so often to see how your stash grows. So if you have 10 minutes to spare and don’t mind earning some extra tokens while you sleep, let’s get to it.

This basic guide is structured in 3 main steps. This is all you need to stake KSM.

  1. Create a KSM stash account
  2. Create a KSM controller account
  3. Allocating KSM tokens and set up KSM staking

Step 1: Create a Kusama (KSM) stash account

  1. Go to https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Fkusama-rpc.polkadot.io#/. You can use any browser to get your account set up quickly.
  2. Alternatively, if you’re already on the main https://polkadot.js.org/apps website, you can just change the network at the top left of the page to Kusama and click Switch to change.

3. Click on Accounts tab > Accounts menu

4. On the Accounts page, click on “+ Add Account” button at the top

5. On the modal screen that comes up, make sure you write down and save your mnemonic seed phrase in a safe place. Do NOT lose this and do NOT share it with anyone. You’ll need it to access your account using other methods besides browser. Leave all other Advanced creation options as is.

5. Once you have saved your mnemonic seed, check the box “I have saved my mnemonic seed safely” to enable the Next button. Click Next to go to next step.

6. Enter a name for your stash account and create a strong password. Make sure you write down and save this password in a safe place. Do NOT share this password with anyone. Also save your account address as you may need it for other purposes, but you won’t need it for what we do here.

7. When you’ve saved your password, click Next.

8. On the next screen, verify your seed phrase. Make sure “derivation path” shows <none provided>. You don’t want to derive your account from any other account to be safe.

9. Once you’re done, click “+Save” button. Notice that a JSON file has been automatically created. Make sure you save this JSON file in a safe place. To re-setup your account on another computer / browser, you’ll need a combination of this backup file + your password above.

10. At this point, you’re done creating your Stash account. You’ll now repeat these same steps to create your 2nd account which you’ll use as a Controller account.

The concept of Stash / Controller account is used to enhance security by separating the bulk of your savings (your Stash) from an account where you will handle a lot of commands and activities (your Controller). Think of this set up like a Checking and Savings account. Your Stash account is like your Savings account, where you’ll put most of your KSM tokens for staking. Your Controller account is like your Checking account.

Step 2: Create a Kusama (KSM) controller account

  1. Follow the same steps as Step 1 above to create a 2nd account which you’ll use as a Controller account.
  2. Name this 2nd account as CONTROLLER instead of MY STASH as shown above when you create your Stash account.
  3. Make sure you save the mnemonic seed phrase, password, and JSON backup file for this Controller account in a safe place also and do NOT share these with anyone.
  4. Once you have your 2 accounts, Stash and Controller set up, you’re ready to start transferring funds and Staking.

Step 3: Allocating KSM tokens and setting up staking

  1. To start staking, you’ll need to transfer some KSM funds from your exchange account to your new KSM wallets. Different exchanges handle token transfers differently so we won’t cover it here. Make sure you follow your exchange steps to withdraw funds. Use the account address you set up above as your transfer destination.
  2. One thing to note for Kusama is that the Kusama address format is slightly different from Polkadot. Polkadot wallet usually starts with 1x but Kusama will start with a letter C-J. On https://polkadot.js.org/apps your KSM account will show it in the 1x DOT format. When you withdraw KSM from exchanges like Kraken, you’ll need to convert your KSM wallet account into the Kusama format address. See Kraken supported address format page for reference: Supported address formats for cryptocurrency withdrawal — Kraken
  3. Use the address conversion tool below to convert your DOT format KSM address into KSM format KSM address: https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/en/learn-accounts#address-conversion-tools. Once your KSM wallet address is converted, you can start the transfer from Kraken. Otherwise, your Kraken withdrawal may fail. You won’t lose KSM tokens if you accidentally withdraw with a Polkadot address for your KSM wallet. It will just fail after a couple hours and revert back to your Kraken account. So avoid the whole episode at the start by converting your address.

4. For staking KSM on your own wallet, there’s no minimum (technically, there is, but it’s a very small amount). At minimum, we normally recommend you have about 0.3 KSM in your Controller account to handle fees for running commands / requests + 0.3 KSM in your Stash account to pay for any transaction fees when issuing staking request. Transaction fees are usually very small, anywhere from 0.0015 KSM to 0.006 KSM, but it’s good to plan ahead. Do NOT stake your entire KSM amount since you won’t have any remaining KSM to handle any other requests (like unbonding and transfers).

5. To start the staking process, simply go to Network tab > Staking menu

6. Then click on Account actions

7. On the Account actions screen, click on “+ Nominator” button

8. On the next screen, you’ll see something like below.

9. Select your Stash account name in the Stash account selection box

10. Select your Controller account name in the Controller account selection box

11. You can select the payment destination type. We recommend using the default “Stash account (increase the amount at stake)” so that as you earn new KSM, those new KSM tokens are then also staked and you get the compound interest over time.

12. Once you have the accounts selected, click Next button to go to the last step.

13. On this screen, you’ll select your validators. You can select up to 16 validators. Anywhere between 10–16 is a good set of validators. Clicking on a validator on the left box will add them to your validator set on the right. You can also search for a specific validator by entering their validator name or address in the search box. For example, we can search for EARNSTASH and the matching validator shows up on the left candidate box. You can then click on EARNSTASH, EARNSTASH /02, EARNSTASH /03 and EARNSTASH /04 to select any or all of them to add to your validator set. This will move them into the right box, which is your set of 10–16 validators.

Our validator node names: EARNSTASH, EARNSTASH /02, EARNSTASH /03, and EARNSTASH /04

Validator addresses:
DB7TzV6pkybdCQPTTKYv2HZshTeYkVcjY8pckMXNGYYvnox

JBuHBvnqpyb1Qtm7173z4ET1BnmjTMcdDdo7WzbnSbGa4vZ

E2UjGFKxgZfcFmTAXN4s61Cwum1LUm58WHNVRUmGMGHe6EW

EaDzFVuQsiXQ9ADxRFKRa2K5sFZndPzkvJTMLVcEAi1zrMU

You can support us by adding our 4 validators EARNSTASH, EARNSTASH/02, EARNSTASH/03, and EARNSTASH/04 when you select your set of 16 validators above.

The validators in your nominated set will rotate around during each staking era which is a 6 hours period. You won’t be able to allocate a specific amount to a validator. In each era, the KSM algorithm will automatically select the best validator in your validator set to stake.

14. Once you’ve selected your validators, click “Bond & Nominate” to complete this step. The sample screen above only shows the “Nominate” button but the screen is very similar.

15. The next screen will ask you to confirm your staking selection by signing your account and submit the request. Enter the password you created for your Controller account at this step and click “Sign and Submit”.

16. Congratulations! You have now staked your KSM on the Kusama network. After you completed these steps, your validators will show as Inactive nominations or Waiting nominations. This is normal. It’ll take at least 6 hours (the time period for 1 era) for your selection to take effect.