Add more contextual information to Stacking form

[GinaAbrams]

Hey folks, wondering if we could add this quick info to the wallet or if you think better to stay in the FAQ? I personally would vouch for a warning in the flow itself. Simply sharing the idea to start the discussion.

Example text in stacking window or as a pop up before folks confirm their locked STX amount:

1. Stacking thresholds are dynamic and will increase with greater total participation of liquid stacks. We'd recommend that folks do not do stack at the minimum thresholds for long periods of time given the dynamic nature of the protocol.
2. Once you have locked up Stacks from one Stacks address and they are locked, you can't add additional STX to this stacking slot from this address until the stacking cycles complete. You can do so from another address - however currently the lower bound for locking via the wallet is 70k STX.
3. You cannot "continuously stack" from one address. There is a break between stacking cycles given the prep and rewards cycles.

[GinaAbrams]

cc @markmhx

[markmhendrickson]

This set of information may be best delivered comprehensively as a "Stacking 101" sort of walkthrough before any form is presented to the user (as suggested by @aulneau).

We could also add information about how much locking above the minimum affects potential reward quantities.

[markmhendrickson]

Some customer feedback about point of clarification 3 here as passed along by @muneeb-ali:

didn't realize from any of the description that if I only locked my STX for one cycle, that I wouldn't have the opportunity to "join" the next cycle, i.e., that there was no period where you could decide, in that your STX only become unlocked after the next cycle finishes. Probably want to clarify that in the description given in the product, as otherwise, I would have made different decisions (but now appear to be sitting out this cycle).

[markmhendrickson]

@GinaAbrams Jasper is going to dive into this issue soon. Are there any other bits of information or nuances we should make sure to capture here as far as educating users about Stacking basics?

[GinaAbrams]

1. I think we could link to this blog post in the bullet re: minimums.

2. Stacks remain locked for the length of cycles selected. There is no way to revert lockings.

3. Should we include info on delegation here too?

[kyranjamie]

Can add all of this information by making layout changes to the current designs, rather than a complete redesign of the stacking forms?

[GinaAbrams]

Whatever is easiest IMO.

[moxiegirl]

@markmhx the wallet definitely needs to display more information regarding the contract. People will blow by a 101 and a blog post ages out. Whatever fields you ask for in the form should be displayed in the resulting pooling info. Right now, I have no way of knowing from the contract log or the pooling info which BTC address my rewards are going to. I think I know what I entered...but hey...humans. Bonus points to link direct to the explorer or mempool.

[markmhendrickson]

Thanks @moxiegirl! I agree this would be helpful information to show in the UI.

To be clear on your case here: did you use the desktop wallet or lockstacks.com to pool? If the former, then your rewards address would depend on each pool (e.g. Planbetter derives the legacy address from your STX address). If the latter, then you would have indicated the BTC address in the UI itself and passed it to the new wrapper contract for pools.

@friedger I presume we need some sort of indexer to support the BTC values passed to the wrapper contract, for the wallet or lockstacks.com to ingest and display them for users?

[friedger]

@markmhx we can query the contract for the address and delegation details

[moxiegirl]

@markmhx I believe I used the wallet which allowed me to pick a pool. Typical user. Your question brings up a good point. Maybe you add a line:

Pooling with: POOL_NAME

For support, contact your delegated pool POOL_NAME

Of course, link to the pool support page or main page. Maybe add the pool logo. BTW, I thought this feature from the wallet was very nifty. Kudos --- and it allows devs that don't want to develop a Wallet to concentrate on the pool. Adding the name in there is an "on-going" advert for the pool. "Who are you pooling with?" This reminder will become important as people pool for longer periods. After all, after a few days people forget the exact steps they followed. Human nature for things they do infrequently.

Quite honestly, the whole tracking what you did through the explorer to stacking.club is a bit of an issue. An "easy explorer" would be a cool app -- something that extracts the address and reverse engineers it in an explainable way. I also thought if you delegate an address in a pool you should be able to see how that delegation ends up in the pool via function calls. Apparently, users can't see that action after the contract or it isn't easy to find from the chain. God knows it is supposed to be transparent and presumably it is but this is not an easy path to see from just a contract delegation call.

If blockchain wants to promotes its transparency, the action should be as transparent as a balance sheet and unfortunately for the industry, it is not. Current tools require specialized technical knowledge and multiple tools. It sure doesn't feel transparent to use -- quite the opposite.

[markmhendrickson]

@moxiegirl Thanks for the extra context and input.

I also thought if you delegate an address in a pool you should be able to see how that delegation ends up in the pool via function calls

Mind explaining this need a bit more? By "you should be able to see how that delegation ends up in the pool", do you mean you should be able to see a list of all BTC payouts to your rewards address from the pool, or something else?

@friedger could an upgraded wrapper contract perhaps let us set – and later get – extra details about the chosen pool from on-chain, such as the pool's name, URL, and rewards method if a BTC value isn't passed in (such as in @moxiegirl's case here)? Or might there be a better approach?

[moxiegirl]

@markmhx I can see the contract call which delegates to the pool. The pool does something with that value --- for example in the Xverse wallet I can see the accumulation of bitcoin as a cycle progresses. This allows me to estimate the final total stacks for a cycle.

I used to be able to see my address by drilling down into the pool address on stacking.club. IOW, the progression of a cycle wasn't a blackbox.

[markmhendrickson]

I see, so there are three extra info needs here in particular:

1. See Bitcoin rewards address once pooling
2. See history of BTC payments to rewards address by pool
3. See estimate of total BTC rewards per cycle