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Cold staking setup

How to secure Rhombus network while keeping your coins offline, away from malicious hackers

Before we dive into this guide, you might want to familiarize yourself with theory of cold staking, so that you know what we’re doing and why.

Rhombus’s cold staking setup is quite flexible, meaning there are many options how to stake – each approach has its pros and cons. This guide will outline all the possible variants, so that you can choose your own balance between convenience, privacy and security.

Where will you stake?

We won’t mention “classic” standalone staking, which happens automatically in your unlocked wallet and therefore isn’t a case of cold staking.

First, you need to decide where (or how) will you stake.

With Rhombus cold staking, you have the following options:

  • Staking on your own “DSD” – Dedicated Staking Devices (or “DSD” for short) are usually small single-board computers (like Raspberry Pi 3+ or Rock64) or even servers/VPS, that are running 24/7 and therefore are ideal for staking non-stop. These are ideal for larger hodlers, geeks and tinkerers, anybody who wants total control over their funds and support the network with full node.
  • Staking on staking pool – Staking pools are in a way DSDs as well, but offered for public. As with mining pools, all pool members are staking together and all staking rewards are proportionally split between its members. That’s why pools are ideal for smaller holders, but also beginners and those who are not comfortable playing with command line – kind of a “connect, stake & forget” approach.

Based on your preferences, pick one. If you’re not sure, don’t worry and start with staking on a pool. You can switch to DSD anytime you want (or the other way around).

Staking on DSD Staking on pool
Setup difficulty higher trivial
Setup cost hardware & energy none
Security your hardware, your rules you’re depending on pool operator
Staking rewards 100% yours pool incl. fees (usually 1–3 %)
Ideal for hodlers with approx. 4,000+ RHOM any amount (even small)
Network effect full node – increases decentralization centralizes funds on few bigger nodes
Setup guide Staking on DSD with Partyman –

Get staking public key

Now it’s time to get your public key for staking. You will need it for configuring your main wallet to delegate the staking to the staking device (Pool/DSD). Based on your choice, follow the links below to get your public key:

Using Staking Pool

Getting the public key from a staking Pool couldn’t be easier. Visit our list of available Staking Pools, pick one that you like and visit it’s homepage. Right at the top, you’ll see the public key for staking (or “Pool address” on some pools).

Pool public keys begin with Rcs and usually look similar to this:

Rcs14ch7w7ue2q8kadljsl42wehfw8tm99yxsez4kz

Using Dedicated Staking Device

If you haven’t set up your DSD yet, follow Staking on DSD with Partyman guide to install latest Rhombus Core daemon on your device, generate a new wallet and a new staking public key along with it.

Public keys generated by Rhomtools begin with prom and usually look similar to this:

promKVAobLsHTQpZ5LzFHcZw8LD4sEEVu23mcuAqCjDaaNJgypRmUUpFKMxbmn1hZ5V2J9SaG1QusCrngC9iiBAA8LvxVRx9aLBPjGeY4PtrxzW

When you get the public key for staking, copy it and save it for later.

Connect your wallet

The staking device part is now successfully configured – now onto connecting our wallet to it.

Rhombus has a nice selection of various wallets for different needs. Comparing all their features is out of the scope of this guide, but feel free to check Rhombus wallets: overview for more information. We’ll focus here on the staking aspects only.

Rhombus Core

  1. Open Rhombus Core
  2. Go to Window → Staking Setup
  3. Paste the staking public key/pool address (that you saved before) into the Cold staking change address field and click Apply

Rhombus Copay

  1. Open Rhombus Copay
  2. Select your wallet from overview
  3. Click on Staking tab/icon in the bottom navigation
  4. You should see a “Wallet not staking yet” screen – click on the Setup Cold Staking button
  5. Paste the staking public key/pool address (that you saved before) into the Staking key (Pool address or Node public key) field; you can optionally also label the key so you know where are you staking (e.g. “Pool XYZ” or “My Raspberry Pi”) and confirm by clicking Enable Cold Staking button

Now we’ve manged to connect your wallet to the Staking Node (your DSD or Pool of your choice).

With this setup, each time a bunch of your coins stake, they will get “moved” to the Staking Node and start staking on it. This is the best way to move your coins naturally to the Staking Node, especially if you are privacy-conscious.

Zapping coins

If you want or need to move your coins to the Staking Node right away, you can do that with “zapping”. That is useful, when you have either a small amount of coins (that would take ages to stake by themselves) or when you can’t have your main wallet online and staking 24/7.

Keep in mind that this step is entirely optional.
Zapping coins only accelerates the whole process of moving your coins to the Staking Node.

Rhombus Desktop

Again, zapping coins is very easy and straightforward in Rhombus Desktop:

  1. Click on the Zap button on the cold staking widget
  2. Click on Zap to 100% to initiate the “zapping” process

You should now see a new transaction in your History, which automatically moved your coins to the Staking Node.

Rhombus Core

In Rhombus Core, we need to enable Coin Control first:

  1. Settings → Options…
  2. In the Wallet tab, check “Enable coin control features”
  3. Confirm by clicking OK

Then generate a new Receiving address:

  1. In Receive tab → click Request payment
  2. Copy the generated address into your clipboard

Send some small amount to your newly generated address using all available inputs

  1. In Send tab → under Coin Control Features click on Inputs…
  2. Check all available inputs (you can click the (un)select all button) and confirm with OK
  3. Copy your previously generated receiving address to the Pay to field (like if you would pay yourself)
  4. Set the transaction amount to some small value (like 0.001 RHOM)
  5. Click Send

This will send all but those 0.001 RHOM to the connected Staking Node.

Rhombus Copay

  1. Open Rhombus Copay
  2. Select your wallet from overview
  3. Click on Staking tab/icon in the bottom navigation
  4. You should see a “Wallet is staking” screen → click the Zap button
  5. New window appears, confirm the action by clicking on Zap again
  6. Confirm the transaction fee for zapping → Proceed
  7. Enter your password/fingerprint for sending transactions

The zap transaction is now being sent and your coins are successfully on Staking Node.

Updated