Learning about Proof Of Stake (BLK or other?)

[GeekWisdom]

Hi,

I am interesting it trying out Blackcoin (BLK) in order to learn more about how Proof of Stake Works.  I have read some of the whitepapers, but I want to try it out for myself.

The problem I am having is that many of the exchanges that offer Blackcoin, do not seem to work for me in Canada, either I cannot get to the site, or when I do, the site does not offer Blackcoin as a trading offer.

I am not looking for much only a small amount, that I can try 'staking' just to get a feel for how it all works.

I am open to other Proof of Stake coins to try this with as well, Blackcoin seemed most interesting from my research, again not looking to make a significant investment, just something I want a little of to play around with and learn more about so that I can make my own conclusions.

Any suggestions or experience from others who have the coin and have found a way to exchange it (in Canada if possible) would be great.

Thanks.

[GeekWisdom]

So on August 20th, I was able to find some blackcoin on the Bittrix exchange.  I setup my own node on my system, and sent my blackcoin into it, and enabled it for staking.

Last night (at about 2AM), my balance went to 0.00

The ledger shows a transaction log b53f8847cf37de262455e2edfecccfc49dae6efe57b4a55e5853ecba33412c43

All my blackcoin was transferred to another account?

I am uncertain how this could happen or what went wrong. My private key was not shared with anyone, so how did my wallet get accessed and the transfer get accepted ?

[GeekWisdom]

I realize it's a little wrong to answer my own question, but I figured it out with members of the Blackcoin discord channel.

With Blackcoin's Proof of Stake, each coin is like a 'lottery ticket'.  When you 'win' the prize of being allowed to commit a block, you get 1.5BLK

But what actually happens, is that a transaction is created (with both your address as the 'from and 'to') which includes the total amount you had staked plus an output for the 1.5BLK

This new balance then gets moved into a 'holding' area in your wallet, which is thy blackmore-cli getinfo returns 0 balance.

BUT blackmore-cli getwalletinfo still shows the correct total balance but it shows in the 'staking-balance' section

It shows therefor about 9 hours (ie: you can't play the staking game again until the 9 hours are up).  After which the coin goes back into your 'getinfo' balance and the staking occurs all over again.

So nothing was 'stolen', it's just the way the staking protocol works.

And I committed my first block to the chain 

The balance of getinfo is back now, and I wanted to let anyone else know in case they have a similar 'issue' perhaps this thread will help