Phase I: Technical Availability [Complete]
The staking functionality is now available and live on both the Hedera Testnet and Mainnet as of July 21, 2022. In phase I, users will technically be able to stake their account to mainnet nodes but this will not contribute to a node’s consensus weight (voting power). This initial technical availability release does not reward participants for staking but enables a level playing field whereby all market participants have the possibility to join the staking program and avoids giving an unfair advantage to the first few who stake.Phase II: Ecosystem Development [Complete]
During this phase, supported exchanges and wallets will be able to integrate the staking functionality to provide account holders an easy way to stake their HBAR, but will not distribute rewards. In addition, web applications for delegating stake will likely be built for utilization by the retail ecosystem. During this phase, there will be visibility of stake per node, and staking to a node will affect its consensus weight (voting power) with monthly updates.Phase III: Staking Rewards Program Launch [Complete]
The Hedera Council will determine when the Hedera ecosystem has reached a minimum viable set of integrations to enable staking rewards. Once this is determined, the council (through CoinCom) will vote to update the reward rate, and subsequently, the mainnet will be updated with the agreed-upon reward rate. The latest staking reward rate voted on by CoinComm can be found here. Once updated, the staking reward account (0.0.800) will be eligible to distribute rewards earned by stakers, once the rewards threshold of 250M total HBAR has been met. Rewards will continue to be distributed even if, after this time, the balance of account 0.0.800 goes below 250M.Phase IV: Complete Staking Implementation
In this phase, 24-hour updates will be released for visibility into the stake per node, and the node uptime feature will be released. This means that instead of updating node stake visibility on a monthly basis, node stake visibility will be updated on a 24-hour epoch interval. When the uptime feature takes effect, staked accounts will not earn rewards when nodes cannot participate in consensus (unavailable or offline).Staking Nodes
The Hedera Council voted to change the min stake value from half of the max node stake value to 1/4 of the max node stake value.
Example:
Minimum Stake: 50,000,000,000 hbars*(1/26nodes)*(1/4) Maximum Stake: 50,000,000,000 hbars*(1/26nodes)Lockup Period
There is no lock-up period when accounts are staked to a node. Stakers do not need to choose an amount of HBAR to stake from their account. The account’s entire balance is staked automatically to the selected node or account. There is no concept of “bonding” or “slashing” of your tokens. The staked account balance is liquid at all times.Staking Reward Account
The staking reward account distributes rewards to eligible staked accounts. The staking reward account ID is 0.0.800 on mainnet. Anyone in the community can contribute to the rewards pool by transferring HBAR into that account. This account has no keys, and therefore, any HBAR transferred into this account cannot be returned to the owner. If you choose to contribute to the rewards pool, please make sure to double-check your transfer transaction details. The staking reward account needs to meet a minimum balance before rewards can begin to distribute rewards earned to the eligible staked accounts. The minimum HBAR balance threshold for the reward account is 250 million HBAR voted on by the Hedera Council. If this balance is not met staking rewards will not be distributed. You can view the balance of this account by visiting any of the Hedera network explorers. Once the minimum threshold is met, rewards will continue to be distributed to staked accounts as long as there is a balance in the rewards account even if it falls below the initial minimum threshold. The reward rate will initially be set to zero. The Hedera Council will vote and update the reward rate when the Hedera Staking Reward Program goes live. The latest reward rate can be found here.Staking Rewards
In Phase I, the staking reward rate will initially be zero. The Hedera Council will determine when the Hedera ecosystem has reached a minimum viable set of integrations to enable staking rewards. Once this is determined, the council (through CoinCom) will vote to update the reward rate, and subsequently, the mainnet will be updated with the agreed-upon reward rate. Any account can elect to stake to a node or another account. The minimum staking period is the minimum amount of time an account needs to be staked to a consensus node before the account is eligible to earn rewards. The minimum staking period is one day (24 hours). The staking period begins at midnight UTC and ends at midnight UTC. The Hedera Council defines the staking period. The earned rewards are not transferred to the staked account immediately after an account has been staked for one full staking period. Please see the Staking Reward Distribution section for what scenarios trigger the payment of a reward. Accounts staked for less than the defined minimum staking period are not eligible to earn rewards for that period. Nodes and accounts accumulate stake and rewards per whole HBAR. Fractions are rounded down. When a node is deleted, it returns zero rewards. For a staked account to be eligible to earn rewards, the following must be true:- The staking reward account needs to have met the initial threshold balance of HBAR
- Once the minimum threshold value has been met, the rewards account will continue to reward staked accounts even if the balance falls below the initial threshold
- The account the node is staked to meets the minimum node stake threshold value
- The account needs to be staked for the minimum staking period
- The reward rate is voted on by the Hedera Council and updated on mainnet