Skip to content

Solo Staking

If node operators want to become a validator on Zilliqa 2.0, they can deposit the minimum stake required on their own. They can increase their deposit or decrease it by unstaking and withdrawing part of their deposit. Note that the remaining deposit must be at least the required minimum. If a validator does not want to participate in the consensus anymore, they must unstake their entire deposit.

Delegated Staking

Alternatively, validators can operate staking pools, allowing users to delegate stake to them. To set up a staking pool, they can use the reference implementation mentioned below or create and deploy their own smart contracts.

The reference smart contracts currently support two variants of delegated staking:

Staking Variants

1. Liquid Staking

  • Users receive a non-rebasing Liquid Staking Token (LST) upon delegation.
  • The tokens represent the delegator's share of the total stake delegated to the staking pool. As the staking pool earns rewards, the value of the liquid staking token will increase. The tokens are burned when the delegator withdraws their stake, in return for ZIL.

2. Non-Liquid Staking

  • Users can withdraw their share of the rewards in ZIL regularly without unstaking their principal amount.
  • Instead of withdrawing the accrued rewards, users can also stake the rewards to increase their share of the total stake and their future rewards. Furthermore, they can replace their registered address to make another wallet eligible for unstaking and claiming rewards.

Setup for Existing Validators

Operators of validator nodes on the proto-mainnet can set up and join a staking pool with their validator by following the instructions here.

Setup by Funding a Validator through Delegations

Node operators who do not have the minimum stake required to run a validator node can launch a staking pool, collect delegated stake and deposit it to turn their node into a validator once the total delegated stake reaches the minimum required of validators. Detailed setup instructions for this scenario will be published soon.