A frozen record of every wallet's stake and which pool it is delegating to, taken at an epoch boundary. The protocol does not use the live delegation set, which changes every block, but the snapshot, which is stable for the whole epoch it covers.
Cardano keeps three snapshots in flight at any time: the Mark (just taken at the start of the current epoch, not yet active), the Set (one epoch old, currently driving this epoch's block production and slot-leader election), and the Go (two epochs old, currently driving this epoch's reward calculation). Each epoch boundary, Mark becomes Set and Set becomes Go. This three-epoch pipeline is the structural reason a freshly delegated stake takes about two epochs to become active stake, with its first rewards arriving a couple of epochs after that.
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- EpochA period of five days in the Cardano network during which stake distribution is fixed and rewards are calculated.View term
- DelegationThe process of assigning your stake to a stake pool without transferring your ada.View term
- RewardsAda earned by delegators and stake pool operators for participating in the network.View term
- Live StakeThe total ada currently delegated to a stake pool right now, before any epoch boundary snapshot.View term
- Controlled StakeThe total ada associated with a stake pool, combining operator pledge and all delegations.View term