Simple tutorial: nominating your DOTs and staking within a few clicks

This simple tutorial will guide you through the few steps of nominating the DOT Validator Alliance pool on Polkadot. It is taken from the Polkadotters full article on nomination pools.

Connecting your Polkadot account, choosing a pool, and then signing a transaction to contribute your DOT to the nomination pool is a very easy procedure using the Staking Dashboard.

1. Go to the Staking dashboard via this link
2. In the right top corner, click on Connect and pick your wallet be it Talisman, Polkadot JS, or any other

3. Click on the Join button and pick from the list of All Pools, wherever the Join button is available

Selecting DOT Validator Alliance community nodes as a pool

4. Click on the Join button for your favorable nomination pool and then choose the amount of DOT to bond and press Submit. Then you just sign the transaction in your extension wallet and that's it!

Selecting DOT Validator Alliance community nodes as a pool

You need to wait for the 28-day unbonding period on Polkadot before unstaking or switching from one pool to another. But the next network upgrade should allow nominators with less than 190 DOT to exit current staking system and join nomination pools without the 28-day unbonding period to allow them for receiving rewards as soon as possible.

A few other notes to the nomination pools behavior

• Whenever a total amount of pooled tokens changes, all claimable rewards are paid to everyone — so it should come no surprise that rewards can be issued to you in a more “random” manner
• When you stake with the pool, your funds get actually moved to the pool’s account — don’t be scared if you don’t see your funds anymore as free balance
• You currently cannot use pooled DOTs for governance voting

Get to know more about nomination pools with a lot of ressources in the Polkadotters article and Polkadot blog post.