Saltpool.net is a hosting provider of cryptocurrency servers. We do not trade any cryptocurrencies, we offer no financial advice, we do not provide any managed financial services, and we do not charge any sort of commission on any services. We do charge for the purchase of credits that can be used to pay for your cryptocurrency hosting.
A shared masternode is a masternode where a group of people pool their funds together so that a masternode can be stood up and the hosting cost shared amoungst the participants. This allows a masternode to be built and activated when each person normally couldn't raise enough coins on their own for a dedicated masternode. Any rewards that are obtained from the masternode are split up amongst the contributors according to the proportion of coins of theirs in the masternode.
A shared masternode will automatically activate once the full collateral has been deposited.
Note: We also offer private masternode hosting. These are available if you have the full collateral yourself and do not want to share with anyone else.
Instant shared masternodes work the same way as a shared masternode (from the previous question), however, the difference is that an instant masternode has already been activated is is earning rewards. You are able to replace coins in an instant masternode and earn rewards straight away. There is no requirement to wait until the collateral has been met since it is already running with the full collateral of coins.
A private masternode is our term for a full masternode. It is a masternode that is not shared with anyone else, and you get all the rewards yourself. You will need to own the complete collateral yourself before you can rent private masternode hosting, but you can keep the coins in your own private wallet (i.e., on your own computer).
A staking pool as a hosted wallet that you can deposit coins into that is set to stake coins using the POS (proof-of-stake) consensus. Note that this is only appropriate for coins that support POS, so is not available for all coins.
Shared masternodes: Because a single transfer of the complete collateral needs to be initiated to allow the activation of a masternode, you are required to send your coins to a wallet that will control the masternode. This wallet is located independently of this web server or any masternode servers.
Private masternodes: No, you keep all the coins in your own personal wallet. You will be given the ability to remotely initiate a resync of the masternode, but no coins need to leave your wallet.
Staking pool: The whole purpose of a staking pool is to pool your coins with others to increase the chance of returning POS rewards. This means that you will need to send your coins to the staking wallet.
This is a very good question and one that everyone should ask and be comfortable with before sending any coins to the platform so that you can participate in a masternode or staking pool. There is no way that we can persuade you to trust us - this is something you have to work out yourself. What we can tell you is that security is very important to us, and will always be very important to us. You have to weigh up the risk of deposting your coins into a platform like this vs what impact this would have on you if you lost them. Like anything cryptocurrency, there is risk. You may obtain some good gains, but you do have to own some risk to achieve this. We will do the best we can to keep your cryptocurrency safe, but in the end we are not responsible for your decision to participate and you do so at your own risk.
Yes, each open masternode or staking pool will have listed against it the minimum number of coins that you will need to submit to participate in the masternode to share the hosting costs. Note that we do not work on 'shares' (a strict division of the collateral), but you are free to submit whatever number of coins you wish to have between the stated minimum and maximum amounts. Also note that different masternodes will have differing minimum requirements depending on the size of the required collateral needed to start the masternode.
The cost to participate in a shared masternode is proportional to how much of the masternode collateral you fill up. Payments are made in the form of credits, and credits can be purchased through the payments page. Generally 1 credit costs $1US or equivalent in selected cryptocurrencies (but the more you buy, the cheaper it gets*), and if you were to deposit enough coins to fill a complete masternode, it would cost you usually between 1 to 2 credits. You would then be considered paying for the complete masternode hosting cost yourself.
If a masternode was costed at 2 credits, then you would need to provide 2 credits if you had all the collateral yourself, 1 credit if you had 50% of the collateral, 0.5 credits if you had 25%, etc. Note that the number of credits are based around the percentage of filling a masternode, not the number of coins that are required, since you are paying for the hosting of the server, not for how many coins you need to fill the masternode. An estimation of the cost is provided before you commit to participating in sharing the masternode hosting cost.
A staking pool is charged based on the proportion of coins that can be mined on the network in a certain number of days. For example, if one coin has a block reward of 2x of that of another coin (with the same block time), then you can submit double the number of coins for the same fee. This is because you can earn or mine twice the quantity of coins in the same period. If it is harder to earn a coin, then the cost of staking coins will be less.
Staking pools and masternodes (and proportions of masternodes) are paid for by credits, which are funded by USD or certain cryptocurrencies. If a masternode takes 2 credits to fill and you deposit 10% of the masternode collateral, then you would pay 10% of the 2 credits per month, that is, 0.2 credits per month.
Shared Masternodes:
- You are only charged credits once the masternode has been activated. While it is filling up, you are not charged anything, but the appropriate number
credits are placed in the "pending" state. This means that this amount will be charged on masternode activation.
- If you withdraw from a masternode a proportion of the way through the month, the charge will be pro-rated and you will receive the unused credit back again.
- If you replace someone elses coins (when they have requested to leave), you will be charged a pro-rated amount of credits to align your charges with the
billing cycle of that particular masternode.
- You must keep your credit balance above the committed monthly amount so that payments do not fail. Should they fail, your masternode(s) deposits will be placed in
a "frozen" state and you will no longer received rewards. Rewards will be kept in a dev wallet and you will be notified by email. Should you not purchase
credits to cover the deficit within one week, your deposited coins will be flagged for withdrawal for one extra week, meaning that anyone else can replace your position in the
masternode should they want. If after this period no-one has replaced you, your deposit coins will be sent back to you and the reward coins earnt while
not paid will be sold to cover our hosting costs (note, they will not be sent to you but will be owned by Saltpool).
- If you are a participant in a masternode that has a defaulter payer (i.e., they have failed to pay their part of the masternode), when the coins are sent
back to the defaulter, the masternode will be deactivated, and you will be pro-rate refunded for the remainder of the month when not activated. As soon
as another person replaces the coins, your account will be charged again, starting from the new activation date.
Private Masternodes:
- Since you are controlling the masternode, you are charged the appropriate credits the moment you rent the masternode.
- If you do not keep your credit balance with sufficient credits in it, the moment a failed credit charge occurs your masternode is stopped. This is
because we never see your rewards, so are not able to hold any back until payment is made.
Staking pools:
- Since you are entering an existing staking pool and the wallet is not waiting for other funds before it can stake, you are charged the moment you rent space in the staking pool
- If you do not keep your credit balance with sufficient credits in it, the moment a failed credit charge occurs your coin rewards are frozen and forfeighted.
You will be notified via email when we attempt to charge you at the billing cycle of the staking pool. You may return at any time to either pay up your account (notify cly at the Saltpool discord for manual re-activation) or you can withdraw your deposited coins and also any coins rewarded to you while
you were paying for your pool hosting.
No, not at all. We take no commission from your reward coins. You receive 100% of your proportional amount of the masternode or staking rewards. We are a cryptocurrency hosting provider, just providing the servers, so have no interest in any commission of your rewards.
No, we won't take any credits from your balance until the masternode activates. We will foot the bill for this period of time, since you are not earning any rewards while it is not active. We will mark the appropriate amount of credits as "pending", but they are not taken as hosting fees from your balance until the masternode starts the activation process.
Yes! We accept the purchase of credits in Dogecoin, Litecoin, IQCash and NodeStats, as well as credit card payments.
We never even see your credit card details, so we definitely do not store them anywhere. All transactions are handled by stripe.com, our credit card transactions provider.
If you cause a charge back to us due to a stolen credit card, your details will be provided to the relevant authorities, all coins in all of your masternodes will be forfeited and not returned to you, and your account will be closed without notice.
We believe in helping out the various blockchains so we only use real/full nodes. We do not believe that phantom nodes help the network at all and defeat the purpose of what you are getting rewarded for. We would rather pay more in our infrastructure and help the coin network stay strong.
Absolutely. You can do this anytime you wish. You are managing your own coins, without any intervention or advice from us.
If the masternode has not yet received enough coins to meet the collateral requirements, you can make an instant withdrawal of your coins. Note though, that if you withdraw from a masternode you will not be able to submit coins to it again. However, you are able to submit coins to a different masternode of the same coin.
If the masternode has received the full collateral of coins, all funds are automatically locked (both in the pending activation state and the activated state). Should you wish to retrieve your funds from a masternode that is locked, your withdrawal request will be noted and the masternode will be advertised on front page for people to replace your funds. This will continue for up to 7 days, or until someone replaces your coins with theirs. This is intentional so that your withdrawel of funds does not disturb the active masternode. Should we not be able to find anyone else to replace your funds, the masternode will be stopped (after the 7 days) and your coins will be returned to you. All other coins in the masternode will remain in the wallet, pending replacement coins to bring the balance up to the required collateral, and then automatically reactivated again.
Note: If you withdraw your coins from an active shared masternode, you will forfeit any rewards since the last payment cycle (at the time someone replaces your coins). Payments are generally made at a point-at-time at 5pm AEST.
Yes, as long as your coins are not currently staking. The nature of POS/staking is that your coins are locked away while they are staked, and then are released back to the wallet when they have be granted a reward. As long as you catch the wallet during a period where the coins are available, you can take your coins back immediately. Note that you are able to withdraw a partial amount of coins - this is totally up to you.
Shared masternodes: No, if you want to withdraw your coins from a masternode, you must withdraw them all at once.
Staking pools: Yes, you can withdraw as many of your coins as you wish. Please note that staked rewards usually require 100 confirmations, so a small number of your coins may be kept back until they are mature (from 101 confirmations).
A single coin is kept back from your withdrawal to cover the transaction costs associated with your withdrawal. The change from this transaction fee (1 coin minus transaction fee) is placed back in the pool and is split over the remaining participants at the next payment cycle.
If you withdraw your coins from an active masternode, or a staking pool, your hosting credits will be prorate refunded for the portion that has been unused for the current period. If you are required to wait 7 days (since there is a delay of up to 7 days in withdrawing from an active masternode while we find a replacement), your prorated amount will start from the date when your coins are sent back, not when you requested the withdrawal. This is because you will continue to receive reward payments until your coins are removed from the masternode. Note also that if the masternode has not yet been activated, you will not have been charged any hosting fee so there is nothing to refund. However, the "pending" credits will be removed.
Of course, at any time. You will find a "cancel masternode" button against your private masternode from your status page. The cancellation is instant and you will received a prorated refund for the remainder of the month that you have already paid a hosting fee for.
Shared masternodes: Payments are proportionally divided amongst all participants of that masternode hosting. Rewards will be sent to the payment address that you supplied when you first sent in your coins.
Private masternodes: You will be paid directly to your private wallet/address, without our intervention. We never see and handle your rewards. It is your responsibility to ensure that you check that your masternode is functioning correclty.
Staking pool: Generally once per day the staked rewards will be divided up proportionally depending on percentage of coins in the wallet belong to you. These coins are not sent to your personal wallet but are kept in the staking wallet and are restaked on the next cycle, once the 101 confirmations are completed to confirm maturity.
Shared masternodes: We aim to pay daily at 5pm AEST (Midnight UTC-7 / 3am UTC-4 / 7am GMT / 10am UTC+3)
Private masternodes: You will be paid as and whenever rewards are given to your masternode, which could be many times per day. We have no visibility of this.
Staking pools: Your balance will be credited a proportion of the staked rewards once per day. The time of payment may vary depending on when the coins are returned to the staking wallet.
This will be totally up to how the masternode, staking pool and blockchain performs, i.e., the number of masternodes on the network, the number of blocks confirmed, the number of coins being staked globally, etc. Please note that there will always be a delay of at least 24hrs before you are paid when a masternode first starts up. There is a time delay from when a masternode is activated until when the network accepts it into the round for payments. Rewards are paid every 24hrs. You can see how much is pending from your user status page.
Please contact us and we can update your payment address, once we have confirmed that you are who you say you are. Any coins sent to an incorrectly entered payment address are gone and are not retrievable.
Under normal circumstances, no. This is a security measure so that it will only ever pay out to the address that was originally entered when the contributions were submitted. Contact us if you've lost your wallet, etc.
At this stage, no, but we may look into that option in the future. You can, however, send them straight back yourself once received, should you want to do that and a masternode with appropriate space is available.
Any rewards that the shared masternode or staking pool receives will be shared amongst the participants of the masternode or staking pool. You will be paid as long as the network sends rewards to the masternode or staking pool. For private masternodes, you will receive whatever the network sends automatically without our intervention.
Like anything technology, sometimes things do go wrong. If they do, we will make every endeavour to fix the issue, but you do participate in shared masternode and staking pool hosting at your own risk.
You will always own the responsibility of any financial decisions that you decide on yourself. We do NOT manage your funds or make any decisions for you. If a coin that you mine, or purchase from an exchange, turns out to be a scam and worthless, that is a risk that you (and many others) decided to take when you decided to participate in the masternode(s) or staking pool(s), based on your own decision making. There will be no refunds for masternode or staking pool hosting (however there will be a prorated refund if a masternode is deactivated) as you are the one that has decided to join a speculative market. We give no financial or otherwise advice. You need to perform your own research before participating.
On every payment cycle a single coin is kept back as a float to pay for transaction fees. The change from this is paid out next payment cycle and another single coin kept as a float for the latest payment cycle.
No, we perform no trading or monetary exchanges. Should you not have coins of a masternode or staking pool that you wish to participate in, you can normally buy them from an exchange (if listed), or mine from pools. Refer to the Information box on most available masternodes and staking pools.
As long as the masternode/staking pool contains a new coin with potential, or is already profitable, we will try to always keep your masternode/staking pool running, however there is no guarantee of this. If we decide that the masternode or staking pool is not profitable, we can cancel it without prior notice. If this is the case, you will be returned your coins. Some other reasons for cancelling an active masternode or staking pool are if the coin is shown to be a scam or a hard fork is going happen that requires a swap (it is your responsibility to swap your own coins). There may be other reasons and the decision is totally up to us if we continue to run the masternode or staking pool or not since we are paying for the infrastructure. Remember that you can withdraw your own coins from your masternode or staking pool if that is what you want to do.
We do not provide any guarantees of uptime for our masternode and staking pool hosting, but we will make every endeavour to keep them up as much as possible. We rely on other service providers for our infrastructure and we are at their mercy. Sometimes they will have maintenance periods and we have to accept this, sometimes we will have maintenance periods that you will need to accept. We all need to accept that sometimes technology provides challenges.
Yes**, you can, however this will need to be peformed manually by us for security reasons. Any stripe.com fees that we have had to pay on your credit purchase will be removed from your balance prior to your refund. Please contact cly [saltpool.net] in our discord. Note, if you have been gifted credits as a promotion, these are non-transferable\non-refundable.
* with credit card purchases only.
** from credit card purchases only. No refunds of credits from cryptocurrency purchases.