What is staking?
Staking is a generalized concept of participation in the process of forming blocks in any blockchain, based on the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm. Everyone who holds some amount of Mina has the right to produce, sign and validate blocks and get rewards in proportion to their stake.
The only thing you need to exercise your staking rights is to run a node with Mina software and keep it online and up to date.
What is delegation?
Delegation is when you delegate your staking rights to another person and are not engaged in running your own Mina node. It’s a quite useful feature as it allows you to participate in staking and receive staking rewards without the necessity of maintaining a node.
In this case all staking rewards are credited to the validator and the validator manually (or by using automated tools) pays delegators (people who delegated to him) their share of staking rewards after charging a service fee.
Is delegation safe?
Delegation in Mina is absolutely safe! Your funds are not locked or frozen and you do not have to move them anywhere. You can spend them at any time and without any delay. You only delegate your rights to stake on your behalf, that’s it.
What is better — validation or delegation?
Delegation is much more convenient for an average user. Mina validators get slightly more staking rewards, because they don’t pay a fee (but charge a fee for their service), but also, they pay for hosting and they spend their time maintaining a node. Since Mina is a Proof-of-Stake network, to successfully produce blocks, a validator needs to have substantial staking balance. Thus, for an average user delegation is the most preferred and safe way to participate in Mina staking.
What rewards can I expect from delegating?
Approximately 12% per year for locked tokens in the first 23 months after launch:
The addresses with fully-unlocked tokens are eligible for Supercharged rewards (double rewards) when delegating to an address that has time-locked tokens.
When will I receive my rewards?
Each validator has their own terms. Most of the validators make payouts every two weeks. You can see the terms of each particular validator at https://mina.staketab.com by checking the “Terms” tab.
How to delegate Mina?
It’s quite simple to delegate your Mina because all the wallets that support Mina, have implemented a convenient interface for delegating. Take a look at https://awesome.mina.tools for a full list of available wallets.
The main steps for delegating Mina are the same for each wallet:
- Open the wallet;
- Choose a validator from the list;
- Click “Delegate”;
- Confirm the transaction
After you click “Confirm the transaction”, the transaction is sent to the Mina blockchain. You can check that everything went well in the block explorer: https://minaexplorer.com
What happens if I add or withdraw funds?
Every time the balance of a delegated account is changed (e.g. you deposit additional funds or withdraw funds, or you receive staking rewards), you have to wait 2 epochs until these changes are applied. One epoch in Mina equals approximately 14 days.
Questions?
Reach out to the Mina validators on the #staking-pools channel on Discord: https://bit.ly/MinaDiscord
Natalia’s validator address: B62qjQ3k78nzaePyXhg298UEVnwbCeqQUcNwZRSR4VK1gVJ6mer6M8V
Validator fee: 5%
Payouts: every 2 weeks
Supercharged rewards policy: supercharged rewards are distributed among all the members of the pool
