Polkadot-JS Guides for Pool Creators

Polkadot-JS is for developers and power users only. If you need help using the Polkadot-JS UI, you can contact the Polkadot Support Team. For more user-friendly tools see the wallets, apps and dashboard pages.

See this page to learn about nomination pools.

Pool Creation with Polkadot-JS

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You easily create a pool using the Polkadot Staking Dashboard. See this support article for more information.

The depositor calls the create extrinsic, setting the administrative roles and transferring some funds to the pool to add themselves as the first member. As stated above, the depositor must always be a member as long as the pool exists; they will be the last member to leave, ensuring they always have some skin in the game. A significant stake from the depositor is always a good indicator of the pool's credibility.

The current minimum bond to create a pool can be found here.

The pool’s ‘nominator role’ selects validators with the nominate extrinsic. On Polkadot JS Apps UI, navigate to Network > Staking > Pools and click on Add Pool button.

The UI automatically assigns an ID to the pool and allows for entering the name of the pools and the deposit to be bonded.

When creating a pool using Polkadot JS Apps UI, all the roles are mapped to the Depositor account by default. If any of these roles need to be assigned to a different account, create the pool using create extrinsic available in Developer > Extrinsics > nominationPools on Polkadot JS Apps UI.

Pool Upkeep with Polkadot-JS

The nominator can update the pool’s validator selection. On Polkadot JS Apps UI, navigate to Network > Staking > Accounts page and click on Pooled button. If you have any pooled accounts with the role of nominator, you will notice the option to set nominees. Select the validators to nominate like you would normally using a nominator account.

The root and bouncer can update the pool’s state to blocked through setState extrinsic and kick members by calling unbond and withdrawUnbonded. (The state can also be toggled back to open).

Pool Destruction with Polkadot-JS

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As a pool admin, you can easily destroy a pool and permissionlessly remove all members using the Polkadot Staking Dashboard. See this support article for more information.

A pool can be pushed into the “destroying” state via one of:

• The root and bouncer set the pool to “destroying”. This can be done by submitting the nominationPools.setState(poolId, state) extrinsic using the Polkadot-JS UI extrinsic tab. Where poolId is the specific ID of the pool and state is the pool's state that must be set to "destroying". Other possible states are "open" and "blocked".
• Any account can set the pool to destroying if over 90% of the pool's active bonded balance has been slashed.

When a pool is in ‘destroying’ state, unbond and withdrawUnbonded become permissionless, so anyone can help all the members exit.

The pool is destroyed once the depositor withdraws, no members belong to the pool, and all the pool’s resources are wiped from the state.

Claim Rewards for Other Pool Members with Polkadot-JS

As a pool member you can claim rewards for any other members who set their claim permissions to one of the permissionless options.

Let's take the example of ALICE setting the claim permissions to PermissionlessAll. Another account STASH can now claim ALICE's rewards (as a free balance or compound them to the existing bonded balance). To do so, STASH can go to the Polkadot-JS UI Extrinsic Tab and issue the following extrisics:

• nominationPools.claimPayoutOthers extrinsic specifying ALICE's account. This will claim the rewards as a free balance on ALICE's account.

• nominationPools.bondExtraOthers extrinsic specifying ALICE's account and the option to bond:
  • the free balance currently available in ALICE's account (FreeBalance) or
  • the pool rewards (Rewards) unclaimed by ALICE.