Polkadot community, the time has finally come:
Nomination pools can go live any time now in Polkadot. This is a great milestone, removing any barrier for native relay chain staking for DOT-holders. The only topic to discuss is the configurations that will be used. Here are my opinions on this:
1 DOT to join a pool. I actually used to suggest 5 DOTs for a slightly higher sybil resistance, but I think the 5x factor here is not that big of a difference, and allowing staker holders to join pools with at little as 1 DOT is a nice milestone. Moreover, this sybil attack is not really viable as we can easily lift the limit on maximum members (mentioned below) and then it would have no effect.
200 DOTs to create a pool. This is not a cost or deposit. It is actually the initial collateral/stake of the pool, and by setting it to 200, it will ensure that all pools have an initial stake that’s more than the minimum that’s needed to earn rewards (~170 as of now). This initial stake still earns rewards for the creator of the pool, and can be unstaked once the pool is being dissolved.
Maximum of 64 pools and 16k members in all pools. These are only there so that if there is a bug, we can easily migrate the data and perform a fix. If we reach these limits, they can trivially be lifted to a higher value. Moreover, if pools work fine for e.g. ~6 months, we can proceed with lifting them altogether.
I have worked hard on communicating that: “Pools are designed to be infinitely scalable”, I am suggesting these limits only out of extra caution.