Staking AKT (Akash Network) with Ledger wallet

That's a coin I heard from an article on Leofinance community first.
The objective of this post is not to deep dive in the coin use cases and tokenomics but to focus on how to stake it with your Ledger through Cosmostation.
Don't you worry, nothing very difficult. The part I've struggled the most with was the choice of the validator to delegate my stake to.

Some context

Akash Network is a marketplace for cloud computing resources.
To make a real easy comparison, it proposes similar cloud computing services to what Amazon Web Services is offering.
The BIG difference lies in the decentralisation indeed.
Where AWS computing power is owned and controlled by a single entity, Akash Network will provide it without owning a single server.
On this marketplace entities in need of computing resources ("tenants") will be connected to providers in a cost-effective way.
It's a win-win situation where tenants enjoy a flexible process to host their applications and providers are generating profit for putting at disposal computing power.
In case you are interested and want more details you can have a look at Akash whitepaper - Akash Network & Mining Economics

On today's coingecko, AKT is at the 220th position with a price of 3.25$.
Just as a reminder the price was around 0.75$ when I heard about it first.
But why didn't I buy it before then ?

How to buy AKT ?

The main reason (and I used it as an excuse till recently) is AKT not being listed on Binance, which is my main buying platform.
I'm using Binance because of the capability to convert my FIAT currency to USDT without any fee thanks to the P2P buying/selling services !

One option to buy AKT and then transfer it out with minimal fee (0.1 AKT) is BitMax.
We'll skip the account creation and KYC stuff for the sake of "you don't care at all".
But first I had to fund my account with some USDT and the obvious solution to that was transferring some from Binance.
That's where my golden excuse comes into place.
As most of you people, I hate fees and look at what I had before my eyes to realise this transfer.

Surreal ! I had to pay 12 USD using ERC20 or 24 USD via OMNI !
Absolutely no way to accept that except if I was a whale - or if I was a little sharper :)
There's the TRC20 option at the very bottom, with a grand total fees of 0 USD, yes none, zero.
Some questions in my mind though, is it going to work ? Can I buy AKT on BitMax with my TRC20 USDT ?
Not very confident in the result I had to do a test first, let's transfer 1 USDT and see how/if it goes through.

Yeah baby ! It's all working, just need to deposit more and that's what I did.
I was now a proud owner of 167 AKT ! And ready to stake it for rewards.

How to stake AKT ?

Ledger wallet

There are few options to do that but I will discuss the Ledger staking capability through Cosmostation.
You can have a look at the following guide to clear the first steps of Ledger app installation on Ledger Live.
Once you're done with the setup, you'll be able to connect your Ledger and have access to Cosmostation interface.

You have to select the correct option (akashnet-1) in the dropdown at the top right - I learnt that cosmos, kava and band are also available for staking through this interface.
In a glance you can read the amount of AKT you own in this wallet, your delegations and amounts associated and the pending rewards to be collected.

The reward tab design is pretty similar but will allow you to change the reward address to be used and to claim your rewards obviously.

An interesting feature is to check all the transactions you made. Very handy to calculate all the fees you suffered from transferring your AKT in and delegating it.
Good news fees are minimal for those actions:
- 0.00001 AKT to transfer in (don't forget the 0.1 AKT fee from BitMax to transfer out)
- 0.005 AKT to start a delegation

So far I didn't undelegate so I can't tell you how much are the fees for that.

That brings us to the real question, which validator should I chose from the list ?

Validators

Finally the crux of this article.
You could notice the validators list displayed by Cosmostation lacks of information to say the least.
How to make an informed decision with only 2 pieces of information, voting power and commissions ?
That's where mintscan website comes handy.
It will give you a full list of validators available for staking your AKT.

Pretty similar to the one provided earlier but this time you can find details for each of them.

I've opted for Kava validator for the following reasons:
- low commissions (2%)
- Uptime (100%)
- Self bonded rate (9%) - this is how much tokens the validator put himself into staking

On mintscan you can also find an overview of any akash address, including the amount of AKT, rewards and delegations.

Conclusion

I've been stupid/lazy not to push my investigation further and earlier on how to buy AKT through BitMax.
Happy it's done and can be repeated with almost no fee - and it's valid for any coin which is on BitMax and not on Binance.
Regarding AKT, sure I'm bullish on the use case and definitely looking forward to the mainnet launch planned on early March 2021.

See you on the moon ;)