Status: Under Construction — This project is actively being developed and is not yet ready for use.
Pool Ranger is a Cardano staking management platform built on Plutus V3 smart contracts.
Members delegate their stake to Pool Ranger, which routes the delegation to stake pools carefully chosen every epoch for maximum return.
Rewards are destributed at the end of every epoch.
Members receive 99% of their maximized staking rewards and Pool Ranger receives 1% for ensuring delegators the highest possible return.
The key insight: You never give up control of your ADA.
You only share your stake credential — never your spending key.
Spend your ADA anytime you want - it's never locked.
You can leave Pool Ranger and withdraw all rewards anytime without asking permission.
You are in control.
The Cardano protocol is designed to converge on approximately 500 stake pools, each running near saturation.
The reward formula favors near-saturated pools, the pledge bonus rewards operators who commit their own ADA, and the fixed fee structure makes large pools more profitable for delegators.
This design only works as intended if delegators continuously move their stake to whichever pools offer the best return.
In practice however, most ADA holders delegate once and never revisit their decision.
Stake becomes sticky — propping up pools that may have raised their margin, reduced their pledge, or let their performance slip since the initial delegation.
Pool Ranger is the rational delegator the protocol was designed for.
It tracks pool parameters every epoch, detects changes in margin, fee, and pledge, and moves delegation to whichever pools currently offer the highest return.
By acting on the incentives the protocol was built around, Pool Ranger helps push the ecosystem toward the equilibrium its designers intended: roughly 500 well-performing pools, each earning close to the highest return the protocol's mathematics allows.
In practice the Nash Equilibrium is messier. There are currently around 3,000 registered pools, because many operators run pools for reasons beyond economics — community identity, ideological commitment to decentralization, or simply the desire to participate. Many of these pools will remain undersaturated indefinitely regardless of parameter incentives. Pool Ranger works with what the ecosystem provides. It cannot manufacture the ideal outcome, but it consistently moves delegation in the direction the protocol was designed to go.
The 500-pool target is also not fixed. The Cardano community can vote to change the k parameter — raising it would spread rewards across more pools and incentivize greater decentralization; lowering it would concentrate rewards and push toward fewer, larger pools. If the community decides the current target is wrong, the entire equilibrium shifts. Pool Ranger adapts to whatever k the protocol sets.
The dominant lever for delegator ROA is margin — the percentage of rewards the pool operator takes before sharing the rest. Pledge also matters: a larger pledge increases the gross reward pot available to all delegators. Performance multiplies everything. None of these controls belong to the delegator — only the pool operator sets them. This means Pool Ranger cannot negotiate better terms; it can only select the best terms currently available and move on when something better appears.
That is exactly what it does. Operators who want Pool Ranger's delegation set parameters that attract it. The protocol's own incentives do the work.
ADA holders tend to delegate to a stake pool and then forget about it without ever checking on stake pool performance.
The result is almost certainly suboptimal performance of their investment.
Pool Ranger tracks stake pool performance and constantly moves delegation for the greatest possible return.
When too much ADA piles into one pool, rewards decline for everyone.
Pool Ranger prevents this by giving each member a unique parameterized stake script — so the administrator can delegate each member's stake to a different pool independently, spreading the load and maximizing yields.
Traditional staking services require you to send your ADA to an address they control.
**With Pool Ranger no trust is required. We don't hold your funds.
Your private keys remain in your possession at all times.
Only the stake credential is shared with the Pool Ranger.
The smart contract cannot lock or move your funds.
You can spend your ADA any time you like.
The publish handler lets either the admin or the member deregister the Pool Ranger stake credential.
You never need the administrator's permission to leave.
You can withdraw your delegation and leave Pool Ranger at any time.**
Pool Ranger's withdraw handler enforces the fee split on-chain:
- Either the admin or the member can initiate a reward withdrawal at any time.
- Admin always receives ≤ 1% of the withdrawal amount as a management fee.
- Member always receives ≥ 99% of the withdrawal minus the transaction fee.
- The transaction fee is paid from the rewards themselves — neither party needs extra ADA on hand to run a distribution.
No trust required. The smart contract enforces the rules.
Indivdual ADA holders tend to delegate to a stake pool and then forget about it without ever checking if the stake pool is continuing to act in the best interests of the community according to the ideals of the Pool Ranger membership.
Pool Ranger looks very carefully at the behaviour of stake pool operators and only delegates to those that perform well. Extra consideration is given to those stake pool operators that do extra for the Candano community. We notice those that write software and develop the protocol, participate in good governance, spread knowledge, maintain a single stake pool, and solicit for new Cardano communtity members.
On chain governance (Bemocracy) ensures that all members can participate in stake pool selections.
2. Give A Political Voice To Small ADA Holders While Achieving The Best Possible Returns For Our Members.
By pooling our delegation, small ADA holders can have big influence on stake pool operators and DReps
Every Cardano address has two parts:
- A spending credential — controls who can send your ADA. Only the holder of your private key can do this.
- A staking credential — controls which stake pool earns rewards on your behalf.
Normally both parts come from the same wallet. Pool Ranger creates a special address for you where:
- The spending credential is still your own key — only you can ever send your ADA.
- The staking credential is the Pool Ranger smart contract — this lets the administrator delegate your stake to the best pools on your behalf.
This is the only way Cardano allows a third party to manage delegation for you.
Because the staking credential must be part of your address, you do need to send your ADA to your new Pool Ranger member address.
But your ADA never enters Pool Ranger custody — no one else can spend it.
1. Join
Pool Ranger generates a unique member address for you. It is a standard Cardano address built from your own wallet's payment key (your spending control) combined with the Pool Ranger stake script (the administrator's delegation control). You send your ADA to this address. It is exclusively yours to spend — the administrator cannot touch it.
2. Register
Your Pool Ranger stake credential is registered on-chain. This requires a refundable 2 ADA deposit, which is returned to you when you leave Pool Ranger. Registration is what ties your address into Pool Ranger's delegation system.
3. Delegate
The administrator delegates your stake to the best available pool. Each member's stake is delegated independently, so you may be assigned to a different pool than other members. This prevents any one pool from becoming over-saturated, which would reduce returns for everyone. Delegation for all members is rotated up through the highest yielding pools at every epoch. So all members get equal in the very highest yielding pools.
4. Earn
Staking rewards accumulate at your stake address — a separate on-chain account linked to your Pool Ranger stake credential. Rewards do not appear in your ADA balance; they live at the stake address until they are withdrawn. See Viewing Your Rewards below.
5. Withdraw
- Either you or the administrator can withdraw accumulated rewards at any time.
- The administrator always receives ≤ 1% as a management fee; you always receive ≥ 99% minus the small transaction fee.
- The transaction fee is paid from the rewards themselves — you do not need extra ADA in your wallet to initiate a withdrawal.
- The smart contract enforces these rules. No trust is required.
6. Leave
Either you or the administrator can deregister the Pool Ranger stake credential at any time. Your 2 ADA deposit is returned to you. Your ADA stays at your Pool Ranger member address and remains yours to spend or move whenever you like.
You never lose access to your ADA. Spending a UTxO only requires satisfying the spending credential — your private key. The Pool Ranger stake script plays absolutely no role in spending transactions. As far as Cardano is concerned, sending ADA from your Pool Ranger address is identical to sending from any other address you own.
- Phase 1 (current): Use Pool Ranger's CLI scripts to build and sign spending transactions. If you use a Ledger hardware wallet, the device signs exactly as it would for any ordinary Cardano address — it sees a normal transaction that requires your payment key, nothing more.
- Phase 2 (planned): The Pool Ranger web UI will let you connect your CIP-30 wallet (e.g. Eternl) and spend directly from your Pool Ranger address in the browser.
Important note for hardware wallet users: Most hardware wallet companion apps (such as Ledger Live) derive and display only addresses where both the spending key and the staking key come from your device's seed phrase. Your Pool Ranger address uses a script for the staking credential instead of your device's staking key, so it will not appear in your hardware wallet's normal address list or balance display. You will use Pool Ranger's interface — CLI in Phase 1, web dashboard in Phase 2 — to view your balance and initiate spending transactions.
Your ADA balance is the total ADA sitting in UTxOs at your Pool Ranger member address. It does not include unclaimed staking rewards (those are at a separate stake address — see below).
- CLI (Phase 1): Run
node _view_wallet_balances.mjs— this queries your Pool Ranger address via Blockfrost and prints your current ADA balance. - Web UI (Phase 2): Your balance will be shown on your member dashboard whenever you log in.
- Cardano explorer: You can look up your Pool Ranger member address directly on cardanoscan.io (use Preview testnet for testing) to see every UTxO it holds.
Cardano holds accumulated staking rewards in a rewards account linked to your stake credential. This is entirely separate from your ADA balance — rewards do not appear in your wallet until they are explicitly withdrawn to your address.
To see rewards that have built up but not yet been sent to you:
- CLI (Phase 1):
node _view_wallet_balances.mjsqueries your stake address reward balance via Blockfrost and displays it alongside your ADA balance. - Web UI (Phase 2): Your pending rewards will appear on your member dashboard next to your wallet balance.
- Cardano explorer: Look up your stake address (it begins with
stake_test1...on Preview testnet) on cardanoscan.io. The explorer shows the full reward balance that has accumulated but not yet been withdrawn. Pool Ranger's CLI prints your stake address when you run_view_wallet_balances.mjsso you always know where to look.
| Phase | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aiken smart contract + CLI scripts (.mjs) for all Pool Ranger operations |
In progress |
| 2 | Web UI for members (CIP-30 wallet connect) and admin dashboard | Planned |
| 3 | Claude Code automation — autonomous pool selection, epoch-boundary delegation, reward distribution, solicitation for new members | Planned |
- The Pool Ranger Specification, Roadmap, and ToDo List
- How to Use The Epoch Reporting System
- How To Use The SPO and Delegator Reward Analysis - Interactive Chart
- CIP: Utilization Scaled Pledge Bonus: The Multi-Pool Buster
- SPO and Delegator Reward Analysis - Interactive Chart
- Pool Switch Calculator
- View and Analyze All Pools
- Latest Epoch Reporting Data: See which pools changed their fee, margin, or pledge since the last epoch.
- Interactive Chart for CIP: Utilization Scaled Pledge Bonus: The Multi-Pool Buster
addr1q9m7zdhxm7ecp560nyl7rnl2xstajnx0s96ppwfcv0upawzwfv6fkds3r7tagww4hq5ruz49jknfjaz5ujdch3gyng5qkhxd5v
Why Supporting Pool Ranger Returns Your Investment Many Times Over
- How the free tools already pay back your donation.
- Why the on-chain 99/1 split keeps paying you back after launch.
- Why open-sourcing the code permanently caps delegation management fees.