Occam ISPO

What is an ISPO?

ISPO - Initial Stake Pool Offering is an innovative way to fund a new cryptocurrency project while maintaining the decentralized and functioning PoS consensus of the blockchain. This new financing option is available on Cardano as it is the leading third-generation blockchain. It may become standard practice for future projects as it is considered extremely safe as investors do not have to part with their funds.

As mentioned above, ISPOs take place on the Cardano blockchain, where the unique Ouroboros protocol is implemented. Delegates (people who have decided to stake Cardano) "vote" with their ADA funds for a stake pool of their choice. The more delegated ("voted") funds the pool has, the more likely it is that it will become a validation node and receive the right to create a new block. The winning validator receives an ADA reward that is shared within that pool, and each delegator receives a portion of the ADA reward.

When cryptocurrency holders donate their ADA to ISPO - depending on the ISPO settings - most often they do not receive ADA rewards, or they only partially receive them. Instead, or as an add-on incentive, they receive new project tokens, which they finance in this way (from their own rewards). All the ADA in investors' wallets stay in their wallets. Then the project claims the rights only to ADA block rewards obtained from the production process, which is used as financing for development. This way, investors do not risk losing their funds, and at the same time receive tokens for a new project. They forgo their ADA rewards, obtaining speculative project tokens on the Cardano network.

Is ISPO different from ICO, IEO, IDO?

Yes, totally!

ICO

ICO projects became popular in 2017. The Initial Coin Offering cryptocurrency financing model helps new projects reach potential investors through their website, based on data provided by the project (like whitepaper, investors deck and so on). Investors receive project tokens in exchange for fiat money or cryptocurrencies sent directly to the team. The cryptocurrency community has already seen many projects failing to live up to their initial promises, which has caused a lot of skepticism in the cryptocurrency space.

IDO

An IDO is an acronym for Initial Decentralized Offering. It means that the sale of newly launched tokens is done via a decentralized mechanism which ensures transparency and equal access opportunities.
The IDO mechanism enables a myriad of benefits, such as previously mentioned transparency and equal access, but also programmability of the IDO conditions—such as maximum allocation per user, time period of the fundraising process, terms of IDO termination etc. In order to receive tokens, a user has to pay with cryptocurrencies by sending them to the Dapp platform smart contract. Example: OccamRazer

IEO

An IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) is quite similar to an ICO, with the main difference being that the tokens are offered on an exchange rather than on the project website. In order to be able to participate in the IEO, you must have an account on a given exchange and pay with your funds deposited on the particular exchange.

What is a stake pool?

Think of a stake pool as a validation node. Stake pool is a server node that focuses on maintenance and holds the combined stake ("delegation") of various stakeholders in a single entity. Stake pools are responsible for processing transactions and producing new blocks and are at the core of Ouroboros, the Cardano proof-of-stake protocol.
Successfully running a solid stake pool requires serious technical and marketing skills.

How to participate in an ISPO?

First of all, participation in an ISPO is really easy. It does not differ at all from a regular Cardano staking so it is possible from all wallets that allow you to choose a stake pool (effectively, all non-custodial wallets - wallets where you are the only private key holder): Eternl, Yoroi, Flint, Typhon, Daedalus, Byron and so on.
What is important, just like staking ADA, participation in an ISPO does not require any kind of KYC - the only information you reveal is your stake and wallet address.
So, to take part in an ISPO just delegate to the stake pool that is a part of the chosen ISPO.

I don't have a Cardano wallet, how to create it?

We will use in this guide as example one the most widely used Cardano's wallet: Eternl

First step is downloading it from the official source, then proceed by creating a wallet by clicking on the "Add Wallet" button at the top left of the screen:

Then pick a name for your wallet and create your spending password, click the "Save" button once you are ready:

In the next step you need to pick how many accounts you want to manage on your wallet, for the the sake of simplicity let's pick just 1 (you can add more later if you wish), click "Save" button to proceed:

On the next screen there will be a security information displayed regarding your 24-seed secret words, please read carefully, mark the confirmation check box and click on the "Continue" button

Then your 24 secret words will be shown to you, please save it in a safe place, hit the confirmation checkbox and click on the "Continue" button.

The next screen will ask you to write down the words in order to double check, do it and then proceed by hitting the "Continue" button.

And your wallet has finally been created!

Now you need to fund your wallet first, go and switch to the "Receive" tab located at the middle of the menu, copy your wallet address, and send the funds there:

Once the transaction is confirmed in the blockchain, you can perform the Delegation/Staking in the ISPO pool.

How to find ISPO pools?

The easiest way is to visit directly OccamDAO ISPO page at https://ispo.occam.fi. Scroll down for all the ISPO pools available. Click on the one that you are interested in to see the details. The most important part is the "Pools list":

You can find the pool name here as well as other details like pool id directly from cardanoscan.io after clicking "Learn More".

How to delegate ADA on an ISPO project?

First of all, visit our website to find the details about ISPO: https://ispo.occam.fi

Click "See our pools" or simply scroll down to find currently ongoing ISPOs. Click the one you are interested in to see the details needed for staking: pool name, ticker, allocated rewards, current staking amount and token distribution schedule.

To start staking, just search for the ISPO name in your wallet staking tab and click "Delegate".

In case you use Eternl, please go to the Staking tab located on top middle and write down the ISPO pool name or ticker in the field box:

There will be basic information displayed about the ISPO pool, and you need to click the "Delegate" button in order to finally stake/delegate.

On the next screen the staking transaction is built and you need to enter your spending password in the text field in order to sign it. Write it down and press the "Sign" button

Please note, if this is the first time delegation from this wallet, an initial 2 ADA deposit will be needed in order to register your staking key in the blockchain. You can get it back at any time just by deregistering your stake key.

Once the the staking transaction is confirmed in the Cardano blockchain, you can consider yourself an ISPO participant, and you can check your delegation by clicking again on the "Staking" tab

Can you leave an ISPO early?

Yes, anytime. You are the owner of your ADA for the whole time - coins never leave your wallet, as explained above. You do not pay for the tokens with your owned funds but you use your rewards' potential to earn new coins/tokens.
In order to earn tokens via ISPO you have to stake during the epoch snapshot - Cardano blockchain is divided into 5-day periods called 'epochs'. At the beginning of each epoch, every five days, a snapshot of all delegation is taken and that is used to distribute the staking rewards.

Are the coins locked?

No! If you decide to stake your ADA, they will never leave your wallet. You can stake as much as you have since you can transfer, sell or exchange your ADA at any time.

Do I keep my ADA rewards and earn ISPO tokens?

As much as we are willing to provide our users with the best deals and offers on the market, ISPOs are innovative ways of crowdfunding for new promising projects. Therefore, ISPO delegators grant their potential ADA rewards to the projects in return for tokens (like $CURL or $CHAKRA, for example). You can notice that the ISPO pools are marked as "99% fee" - so the ADA rewards go to the ISPO projects.

How can I receive the ISPO tokens?

After you successfully delegate to one of our ISPO pools (remember that the most important moment is the snapshot at the end of each Cardano 5-day epoch), at the moment of distribution you are going to receive an airdrop with the tokens you earned during a particular period of time. See the "Token distribution schedule" of your chosen ISPO on https://ispo.occam.fi:

In this example, the distribution happens on the 23rd day of each month until the end of ISPO.

Do I receive ISPO rewards even if the pool does not produce a block during an epoch?

Yes, rewards in ISPO tokens accumulate even if the pool does not produce a block. The snapshot of delegated ADA is taken at the same time as the Cardano network staking snapshot.