Elrond Staking FAQ
Answers to frequently asked questions for Elrond staking customers.
What is staking?
The Proof of Stake (PoS) concept states that a person can earn rewards and validate block transactions according to how many tokens they have provided those tokens are locked for this purpose i.e staked. You participate in the effort for securing the network and you are rewarded as a result.
Can I restake rewards?
Yes, we allow the rewards to be restaked to further compound your rewards. Essentially, this allows you to stake more than the delegation cap for as long as you re-stake your earnings, therefore compounding your gains.
What is the minimum EGLD I can stake/unstake?
The minimum stake is 1 EGLD. You can unstake as much as you like. Your staked balance cannot be less than 1 EGLD so you must unstake all funds should that be the case.
Are my funds safe?
We provide strictly a non-custodial service. You maintain control over your funds the whole time. For Elrond, staking/unstaking is done through web wallet, Maiar, or through our delegation manager dashboard. For as long as you do not lose access to your wallet, your funds are safe.
Beware of scammers! We do not request access to your wallet, nor ask for your Keystore and password or your 24-word wallet seed.
Can I lose my funds?
We stake our funds alongside yours. Creating an Elrond staking provider requires significant capital investment (1250 EGLD at minimum). Misbehaving nodes (i.e those attacking the network) can lose part of their stake, however, this would affect us as well, so we’re taking all precautions to make sure this does not happen. Our interests and yours are aligned.
Why can’t I unstake on short notice?
To deter stake operators from attacking the network. Attacking the network attracts penalties, so the unbinding period is there to make sure that someone can’t attack the network then immediately unstake. For Elrond, the unbinding period is 10 days. During the unbinding period, your stake does not earn rewards. After the unbinding period, you must explicitly withdraw your funds i.e this is a two-stage process: unbind and withdraw.
Why am I not getting the expected APR on EGLD?
The APR is unpredictable in short term, but over time it should converge to the headline yearly value. This is due to the way the Elrond network is designed. We have no control over that.
The number of active validators nodes on the explorer is a bit misleading. An active validator node can have two states: eligible and waiting. An eligible node earns rewards when it participates in validating blocks. A waiting node does not earn rewards.
Every epoch (one day on mainnet) the eligible nodes are randomly selected. Precisely this random function is what makes the APR to be unpredictable on short term.
There is a weight factor applied, so nodes with higher score have higher chance of being selected to fulfil the eligible role. This gives an incentive for running a service which has the right specifications. Nodes experiencing outages are also rapidly penalised, so our resilient design using redundant nodes is justified despite its higher operating costs.