Deposit Rewards
Your Cardano ADA “coins” are actually stored on the Cardano blockchain.
Your Cardano wallet stores and secures the digital keys that maintain your Cardano identity and gives you control of your ADA coins on the Cardano blockchain. There are several types of Cardano wallet.
When you delegate your ADA stake to a Stake Pool, a Cardano Rewards Account is automatically created for you. This is linked to your Cardano wallet, and follows you wherever you choose to delegate your stake.
The first time you delegate your ADA stake to a Stake Pool, a deposit of 2 ADA is charged to maintain the Rewards Account. This is returned to you when you completely “un-stake” your ADA.
Rewards from each Epoch accumulate in your Rewards Account
Rewards you earn from staking will be automatically deposited in your Rewards Account, for each Epoch where your Stake Pool produces blocks.
Your total ADA stake always includes the ADA contents of both your wallet and your Rewards Account, and will grow as your rewards grow over time.
Withdraw ADA Rewards from your Rewards Account, and deposit in your Cardano Digital Wallet, when you want to use them
Before you can spend or trade your ADA rewards, you must withdraw your rewards to deposit them in your Cardano Wallet.
You can choose to do this any time you want, and you use your Cardano wallet to do this.
There is a small fee for this (~0.17 ₳), so you typically will let your ADA rewards accumulate for a while so that you don’t need to pay this fee more often than needed.
Rewards in your Rewards Account are still your ADA.
