Delegators

Delegators vs Delegates

All accounts on Namada with any amount of bonded NAM, is by definition, either a delegator or a delegate.

What is a delegator?

A delegator is an account that has bonded NAM to a delegate.

What is a delegate?

A delegate is an account that has been bonded to by a delegator.

Becoming a delegator

In order to become a delegator, you must first have an account with positive NAM balance. If you do not have an account, you can follow the instructions here to create one.

Once you have an account, you can bond your NAM to a delegate. At the time of writing, the only possible delegates are validators. In future Namada versions, there will be the option to delegate to other, non-validating accounts as well.

Delegating to a validator is the same as staking with a validator.

First, you may want to list the available validators you can stake to:

namadac bonded-stake

Once you've found the address of your favourite validator, you can bond to them with the following command:

namadac bond --validator <validator-address> --amount <amount> --signing-keys <account-alias>

If you have the alias saved in your wallet, you can also pass <validator-alias> instead of <validator-address>.

Redelegating

Redelegating is the process of changing the delegate you have bonded to. This process takes 4 epochs, after which your NAM will be redelegated.

Unbonding

Unbonding is the process of removing your bonded NAM from a delegate. This process is identical to unbonding tokens from a validator.