What's The Difference Between Active And Live Stake

You may have come across the term "Active Stake" and "Live Stake" when searching for a stake pool to join. You'd probably notice that these two amounts are usually never the same. To understand why this is the case, we need to know what these two terms mean.

Live Stake

Live stake refers to the amount of ADA in a pool currently. It's essentially the amount of ADA in a pool in real-time. Any changes to the amount of ADA (transfer of funds out of a wallet, etc.)in a delegator's wallet would affect the live stake to change.

Active Stake

Active stake refers to the amount of ADA in a pool at a particular time (a snapshot). Each epoch in Cardano lasts for five days, with each snapshot being taken at the start of each EPOCH. This amount will not change till the next snapshot is taken on the following epoch. Therefore, this results in the discrepancy between the live and active stake. The active stake is kept the same for five days, while the live stake constantly changes!

Why Is This Important

A pool's reward is calculated using their active stake ( amount taken during the snapshot) and not the live stake. Despite a high live stake shown in a pool, rewards calculated will be based on the active stake.

A high live stake but a low active stake doesn't necessarily mean that a pool is terrible. It may be because there was a recent stake transfer to the pool. So long as the amount is maintained till the following snapshot, the active stake would reflect the live stake amount.