# Using Maintainers for Your Pool

### Why Are Maintainers Needed?

Not really needed per se...

Maintainers can be useful for bigger staking pools to automate some operations. Currently, its primary use for Staking Pools is **choosing new Operators and distributing the incoming deposits**.

Learn more about them here:

{% content-ref url="/pages/pr7YAwNKRplvqovwxwxF" %}
[Maintainers](/key-concepts/permissionless-configurable-staking-pools/maintainers.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}

{% hint style="info" %}
At any given point, a Staking Pool can have **1 maintainer** **at most.**
{% endhint %}

### Setting Your Maintainer

```javascript
Portal.changeMaintainer(id, new_maintainer_address);
```

You can set any address as your maintainer, it is <mark style="color:green;">safe to trust</mark>, as they can not do much harm 🙂

{% hint style="info" %}
If you have a script that will update your allowances as new stake comes in, set it as your Maintainer.&#x20;
{% endhint %}

If you want to use third party maintainers, we will provide some contracts in the future.

These will be community owned maintainers and will help you optimize your validators towards Profitability or Further decentralization.


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.geode.fi/ethereum-guides/staking-pool-handbook/using-maintainers-for-your-pool.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.
