Just picked up my first couple of BTCD's. Would like to start a local wallet and open it up for staking. Noob question here, once I've followed the instructions to start staking do I need to leave the wallet online for it to occur or can it be taken completely offline?
You don't have to have the wallet open in order to stake as your coins accrue "coin age" regardless of whether it is open or not, as long as you do not send or receive any other BTCD to your address. When you do next open your wallet (and unlock it for staking) your next stake amount will include everything for your coin age. In other words, you could just open it once a week for a few hours (or until you receive a mined block) and you would receive the same stake amount as you would have done if the wallet was open the entire time. All up you get around 5% pa from staking, and of course there is the as-yet-unknown income that BTCD holders will get from teleport, anon credit card, SuperNET, etc etc.
Good to know.
So if I decide to pick up a few more coins on Cryptsy or something I should hold them in a separate wallet for staking purposes? Does adding new coins to a wallet that is currently staking somehow mess with the coin age?yep it will reset the coinage and you will have to wait 8 hours to stake. but you could also make a new wallet and send it there
edit
staking 24/7 will give you more, because of compound interest and additional txfees
Coin-age - Coin age refers to the age of txn inputs. Coin age is equal to the number of coins sent times the average age on these coins. Age is measured in blocks.
Age is reset to 1 block
whenever a coin is sent AND whenever a coin provides a signature (both mandatory and voluntary signatures count). Coin-age is used to calculate mandatory fees. src:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_StakeHmm compounding, but how often...?
Spread your balances across several different addresses. So if you have 1000 coins put 100 coins into ten different addresses and leave the wallet open and you won't be disappointed. You'll get stake for each address about once per day. If you close your wallet for a few days when you open it you will get more for the days you missed. It trickles in but it adds up pretty quick if you don't move the coins especially if you leave your wallet open. If you have 1000 coins you can get one coin every 7 days or so which is better than a sharp stick in the eye, 1500 coins you can get 1 btcd every four days or so and with 2000 you will get a coin every couple of days. That rate may change in the future. I don't know.
I do not understand the point of spreading.
1000 coins at 5% is 0.137 per day.
100 coins in 10 addresses at 5% is (0.0137 * 10) is 0.137 which is exactly the same thing.
I have heard you get a little more if you spread and it trickles in more often. I think it was James who recommended that so that's what I do and it seems to work pretty well, beyond that maybe someone more technical can address that. I don't know.
This will clear "spreading and compounding":
How to maximize your staking income
The staking is a bit tricky. After you wait for the coins to start staking, you will notice that when you do get a "mining" tx coming in, then your power is reduced temporarily. I havent dug into all the details, but the following is a practical way to minimize the downtime.
You need to make N addresses, make sure to backup the wallet after you do this as this generates new private keys, so an old backup wont have them all.
Make sure you enable the "display coin control" option in preferences
Now comes the tricky part. Most of you probably have all your precious in a single address. This means that whenever you get a new block, you have to wait. So, we need to spread the balance evenly to the N addresses. To do this, you need to control the inputs, so do a send to your first new address and to do this you need to click the inputs button on the send dialog.
Select your big account as the input. Now when you send you will have to wait a block or two until your big address gets the change.
Keep doing this until all your addresses have approx the same number of coins.
You will have to wait a while before they kick into gear, but when they do, what happens is that only a fraction of your power goes offline when you get a block!
So if you split into 10 addresses, you lose 10% power for a bit. Not sure the full recovery time, but it seems to take a few hours, so the optimum number of addresses is based on how long on average you will get a block. Of course, if you have the time and patience to do this, you could just split it up into 100 accts and then only 1% goes into recovery phase at a time, but that is only worth it if you are a BTCD whale
James