Today, the CardanoFoundation published an article in which they announced that currently around US$ 500 million worth of Ada is delegated to Cardano stakepools, which donate parts of their income to charitable organisations.
“These include for example humanitarian charities, environmental initiatives, and animal protection alliances (…)“.
At the moment, there are at least 60 pools, into which more than 10,000 different delegators have already donated parts of their Ada assets. These delegators thus directly support charitable causes without it being at their own expense, because as a rule the charitable causes are paid for out of the pool operator fees (e.g. a certain percentage of the fixed fee or margin). Since the fixed fee is the same for all pools (340 Ada) and the margin is also in a range between 0 and 5% for most pools (and generally has only a subordinate influence on the amount of delegate rewards), supporting a mission driven pool is not a losing proposition for the delegates. The staking rewards of Mission Driven Pools are comparable to those of all other successful stake pools.
The CardanoFoundation and IOG have also delegated considerable sums of Ada to these pools, enabling many of them to generate blocks and become more visible in the community in the first place.
Now, of course, one can debate (as has been done here) that the decision to support charitable causes should be an individual one and not linked to the business of a pool operator. But in the end, it is a conscious decision of the pool operators and their delegators – just like you can buy FairTrade coffee or not. In any case, the CardanoFoundation has taken a clear position on this issue:
„This represents one of the largest collective giving communities in the entire blockchain space, a huge achievement that everyone in our ecosystem should be proud of. (…) Reaching US$500,000,000 of Ada staked to mission-driven stake pools is a significant milestone for the Cardano ecosystem, proving that serious use-cases focused on social good and financial inclusion are already emerging from the Cardano community.”
But which pools are we actually talking about, what charitable purposes are being pursued and what are the future prospects for MissionDrivenPools?
The following is a list of the pools currently named/supported by CF and/or IOG (see also this source on pool.pm), without claiming to be complete. The pools have been divided into categories by the author (source: information on website of pools, claim on Adapools or social media).
| ALPS | alpine clubs / environmental |
| KOALA | animal protection |
| SEAL | animal protection |
| LTES | animal protection |
| ARTZ | artists |
| NOW | artists |
| TTS17 | artists |
| WHITE | children / environmental / health / diverse |
| LIFT | children / fight hunger |
| VOLCY | children / haiti |
| RISE | children / health / fight cancer |
| SMILE | children / health in africa |
| KARMA | children / homeless children |
| GROW | children / save the children |
| NOOPS | children / UNICEF |
| CHRTY | children/education |
| JOEY | children/families |
| H2O | clean water / environmental |
| 21ADA | clean water / environmental |
| CLIMA | climate change, environmental |
| CO2P | climate change, environmental |
| ECO | climate change, environmental |
| CETH | community empowerment / education |
| MASP | community empowerment / kiva |
| 4GOOD | developing countries (community selected) |
| SHARE | developing countries |
| WEQNT | developing countries / community empowerment |
| K9K | devoloping countries / education / women |
| BUDHA | diverse (community selected) |
| MAJOR | diverse (community selected) |
| AFRIK | diverse charities / africa |
| SWAG | diverse (no more info found) |
| SVRN | environmental |
| DINGO | environmental |
| IBEE | environmental / animal protection |
| GAIA | environmental / heal the earth |
| GREEN | environmental / protect mother earth |
| ARM1 | environmental / reforestation |
| LPR | environmental / reforestation |
| TRAIN | health / fight cancer |
| BELGA | health / help people with disabilities |
| FARM | local charities, Scotland |
| GNP1 | mental health |
| SALAD | open source projects |
| F4ADA | social |
| APOLO | social |
| 4ADA | social |
| ADI | social, community empowerment |
| LIV | social, community empowerment |
| FEEL | social, community empowerment |
| KIND | social, environmental |
| AIR | social, environmental |
| BANDA | social, homeless |
| SPEC | social/education |
| KURD | support of kurdish community |
| VEGAN | vegan based charities |
In the meantime, there are a number of other pools, too, which makes the eco-system of mission driven pools much more diverse (see here and here). But Mission-driven pools are still a minority among the approximately 2,100 Cardao stake pools. The current active stake of around 460 million Ada corresponds to just 7 fully saturated pools (64 million Ada = 100% saturation). This is much less than is currently staked in pool farms of individual operators such as the 1PCT pools or the Binance (BNP) pools. So there is plenty of room for delegators to do some good.
With a margin of 3%, a fully saturated pool yields around 1,000 Ada per epoch (5 days) in pool owner rewards (plus 340 Ada fixed fee). If 50 % of the margin is donated, this means that within 73 epochs, 460 million Ada Stake and an Ada price of 1 €, around 255,000 €/a could be donated. This example calculation shows what potential still exists. If, all other things being equal, only 10% of the total Ada Stake (currently 22.76 billion Ada) were spent on delegation to MissionDrivenPools, more than 1.2 million € per year could already be used for social, cultural, educational, ecological or health projects. With rising Ada prices, correspondingly more. Cardano is more than a blockchain. This project actually has the potential to do a lot of good for humanity.
Stefan Rehfus, CO2POOL