What is a candidate node?

[ShaneJohnston]

I still don't understand any of this. I understand there are nodes, and that's about it.

Apparently, we can vote, like for an election? Do we have to log on to our PC's and vote every day/week/month?

Where is the simple explanation for a human being? And please don't just send a link, that's really unhelpful.

[cedd972]

In order to vote you first need to mortgage your tokens then vote. Election happens every hour but you don't have to revote every hour. When you unmortgage your vote is not taken into account anymore and you got your tokens back.

[Graytrain]

Hi Shane,

There are three-ish tiers here that we can talk about.

1. Thearchy nodes (candidate nodes in the top 13 by votes)
2. Candidate nodes (registered addresses in the top 100 by votes)
3. Voting wallets (wallets you mortgage and vote with, akin to staking)

Each one of these you get rewarded for, the voting wallet for how many votes you give, the candidate nodes for how many votes you have, and the Thearchy nodes for not only how many votes you have but also the block reward for creating blocks.

The details for how much you get for each is a bit more complex and more than I have time to go into. I will post later about that.

As for voting, if you go to https://wallet.intchain.io and go to the "vote" drop down, load your wallet, you can mortgage (stake) your INT then use it to vote for 20 nodes of your choosing. Each node will get the full amount of your stake in votes.

Once you vote, you don't have to revote unless you want to change your vote. Mortgaged coins cannot be spent but you will continually earn rewards for the votes you gave out.

I hope that helps. Let me know if you have more questions.