Staking/nominating: low amounts don't work

[mochet]

Problem

SSIA - there have been a few reports like this where staking lower amounts for nominating doesn't seem to work.

• The maximum number of nominators that is set within the runtime (staking.maxNominatorsCount = 20,000) doesn't appear to be exceeded (staking.counterForNominators is only at 316)
• The users are nominating with smaller amounts, but above staking.minimumActiveStake

Examples

(the user below is attempting to nominate with 3800 $JOY and has tried to nominate other validators many times)

• I think another 2-3 users have reported a similar problem over time

Solution

• It seems that nomination pools are more ideal for smaller stake amounts for nomination in cases like these
• I guess it needs to be investigated (if it hasn't already) of why this is happening

[mochet]

At this point there are about 5-6 users who have reported this issue, basically small amounts of stake do not get rewards.
It seems the only way to solve this is to implement nomination pools/upgrade substrate:

• Runtime: Nomination Pools #4941
• Upgrade Substrate version #5035