DISCLAIMER: THIS IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.
Security should be everyone's top priority and you need to take certain precautions (such as making sure your computer is not compromised while doing any of the steps below OR using public computers in public places such as libraries and internet cafes).
Hey folks, it seems that many people are missing out on crucial things such as setting their inflation destination & joining inflation pools and I think it's because they don't really know what it is or haven't come across it yet. If you are one of those people, keep reading!
What is Inflation?
Inflation is one of many designs (like Stellar Consensus Protocol) that makes it different from Bitcoin and others. In short, it is required in order to keep the system afloat for a long time.
The Stellar distributed network has a built-in, fixed, nominal inflation mechanism.
New lumens are added to the network at the rate of 1% each year.
Each week, the protocol distributes these lumens to any account that gets over .05% of the “votes” from other accounts in the network.
https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/concepts/inflation.html - For detailed summary
EVERY SINGLE WEEK
In this weekly distribution, it also includes all of the transactions fees that occurred since the last operation call to receive the payout.
1) The distribution of new lumens is limited to once a week...
2) Each time inflation is run, the lumens used to pay transaction fees since the last voting round are also included in the total lumens distributed....
3) .. the minimum amount of votes needed to get any part of the inflation pool.... is .05% of the existing lumens [total supply]
W A R N I N G
YOU ARE creating a transaction that sets the inflation address via Set Options, NOT SENDING LUMENS to the inflation address.
NEVER SEND Lumens to an inflation address.
IF YOU SEND LUMENS TO AN INFLATION ADDRESS, YOU MAY NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN
W A R N I N G
How to get the new lumens from the weekly distribution?
1) You need to direct to an inflation pool that requires 0.05% of the entire supply (currently 52million lumens).
2) You need to set up an inflation address from your wallet/public key, by creating a transaction under the operation: Set Options. Follow the step by step instructions here
3) Done
*(public key cannot be an exchange like Bittrex or Poloniex, has to be your own individual public key/wallet)
Essentially, it all comes down to voting power.
Now if you have 52 million lumens already, all you have to do is set up an inflation address and in your original wallet set the inflation address to that (you are voting 52 million lumens to that inflation address). This will then give you weekly lumens of around 10,000 XLM a week. However, if you have less than 52million lumens, you will then have to pool with the community and set up an inflation address together.
It all comes down to trust
Helping community pools by directing our voting power towards 1 single source which will then distribute them respectively can be a trust issue, but again this is how we bond as a community and support certain initiatives that will stay here for a long time. For as long as the Lumenaut Community Pool has been up, there has been no issues that I have seen. Aside from it being created because of the demand of some of the people in /r/Stellar and them keeping to their word also speaks highly of our community.
If you have not done so already: https://lumenaut.net/#join
List of other available Community pools
Tracking payments
For anyone wanting to see the list of payments received from a community pool with respect to the public key:
Fork the code here - https://zanderadam.github.io/StellarTransactionExport/
F A Q
What day of the week does the Stellar network pay out inflation?
What is the rationale behind Stellar Inflation?
How to join an inflation pool (with steps)
Use Stellar.Expert to view your inflation payout - Stellar.Expert
Why did I receive less inflation this week?
Why you should expect your inflation to change from last week due to transaction volume
Calculator to estimate how many lumens you can receive
If you'd like, use the official tools from Stellar.org to do any of the steps:
Official account viewer
Stellar Laboratory