Cardano: minPoolCost Vote at 34 Percent

A vote is running on Cardano that touches every staking payout on the network. At stake is whether the fixed minimum fee of a stake pool drops from 170 to 75 ADA. An analysis of the Cardano chain's voting data from October 10, 2026 puts approval at 34.45 percent among the delegated representatives. The threshold is 67 percent. The last moment at which the proposal can still be accepted is the end of epoch 660 on October 11, 2026 at 21:44 UTC.

Anyone delegating Cardano notices nothing of this at first, because the fee is deducted before distribution and appears in no wallet display. It decides, however, whether a small pool can distribute anything at all. At the price of $0.2526 at which ADA trades on October 10, 170 ADA comes to roughly $43 per epoch and pool.

minPoolCost: the fixed fee every stake pool retains first

The protocol parameter minPoolCost is the minimum amount a stake pool may retain from its block rewards per epoch before anything is distributed at all. A pool can set more, not less. Only after this deduction does the operator's percentage margin apply, and whatever remains then flows to the delegators.

The sequence is the whole point. A pool producing a single block in an epoch has gross rewards in the order of 300 ADA. Of that, 170 ADA goes as a fixed fee, regardless of how many people are attached to the pool. A pool with thirty blocks per epoch spreads the same fixed amount across thirty times the volume.