Staking Mina – A Simple Guide

This guide has been created to explain the concept of staking Mina in a basic and easy to follow way. It will show you how to do it and attempt to explain the benefits for you and for the Mina ecosystem.

What is Staking?

Staking is essentially participating in the formation of blocks in any blockchain, based on a consensus algorithm. ie Proof of Stake. Unlike Bitcoin for example, Mina is an inflationary coin so by staking Mina it also means there is less volume available on the open market to buy which can in turn counterbalance the additional Mina coins being minted and the effects of the inflation (see below for inflation rates for the first 4 years).

Anyone who holds Mina can produce blocks (and be entitled to receive rewards (based proportionally to your stake) by running a node using Mina Software (more info here). It is a relatively straightforward thing to do, however, you will need to regularly connect to the network and update the data continuously to do this.

Because of Mina’s lightweight blockchain size in the future, the Mina Foundation has plans to enable Mina holders to become validators just from their mobile phones. When this happens it will increase the decentralisation and decrease the likelihood of bad actors attempting to take over the system (which would not be possible).

Delegating your Stake

Another easy way to earn rewards is to just delegate your Mina to a node operator. They would then pay you rewards for using their service – again the amount of rewards is based on the amount of Mina you are staking. The more in a the more rewards. You would pay a small service fee to the node operator (between 5 & 15%).
You can find a good list of the top Mina node operators here > and also here https://minaexplorer.com/top-epoch-stakers.

Things to remember

1: Only addresses with fully-unlocked tokens are eligible for Supercharged rewards (double rewards – up to 24%) when delegating to an address that has time-locked tokens from the first 15 months of release. There are variations between the frequency Mina node operators will payout rewards. Some will do it at each Epoch (approx every 2 weeks) and others will pay monthly. You can check the different terms for each validator here
https://mina.staketab.com/

2: It will take at least one and depending on when you do it, possibly two Epochs before you begin to see any rewards. This is true both if you stake immediately after purchase (eg, somewhere like coinlist) or if you move your Mina off exchange and onto a wallet such as Clorio.
You can view a complete list of Mina compatible wallets here >

SWITCHING MINA – IMPORTANT – info by Mina Explorer creator Gareth Davies
The epoch staking ledger is a snapshot of the (snarked) ledger at the last block of the current epoch – 2. For example, the staking ledger for the current (11) epoch is the snapshot of balances of the (snarked) ledger of the last block of the 9th epoch. The staking ledger for an epoch is fixed. So if you switch mid-way your existing validator should pay you for the rest of the epoch and the next, assuming your stake is already active – note this doesn’t apply to exchanges like Coinlist that do their own thing. Your change in delegator would then be applied after another full epoch, so changing mid-epoch 11 would mean your new delegator would be active on epoch 13.

Mina Rewards Calculator

Towerstake have produced a Mina Rewards calculator. In an interview with Evan Shapiro, he hinted that the community would have a say on the future inflation rate of Mina in the mid to long term.