Mina Staking Process
This article clarifies the delegation mechanism in Mina and will help you find answers to questions such as "What's going on with my delegation", "When it starts to produce rewards" and more.
Last updated
This article clarifies the delegation mechanism in Mina and will help you find answers to questions such as "What's going on with my delegation", "When it starts to produce rewards" and more.
Last updated
The delegation process in Mina is explained here. If you need a guide to staking, then follow the link: How to stake Mina
If you don't run a node but want to stake, you can delegate your tokens to a validator. A delegation is a transaction, when a delegator (i.e. an account that doesn’t run a node and can’t stake Mina itself), delegates its tokens to a validator.
A delegation is not a transfer of tokens from one account to another a transfer is another type of transaction. With a delegation delegator’s tokens remain on its account.
After delegation, there is a latency period of 2-4 weeks before your new stake delegation comes into effect.
You don’t get your reward once you made your delegation. Overall, it takes over 2 or 3 epochs. This period includes:
1 (2) epochs until a delegation become active and start to produce rewards (depending on when you made your delegation: if you made your delegation at the beginning of an epoch, this extends the waiting time, and if you did it at the end of an epoch, it will take less time);
in the next epoch after the waiting epoch, the active delegation produces rewards;
the validator distributes rewards; it takes some time until your validator provides you your share of the rewards depending on its terms.
At any point of the delegation lifecycle, a delegator may delegate funds to another validator. In Mina, all account balance is delegated to only one validator.
In Mina, your delegated funds are never locked!
Yes, and it's very convenient. You can safely dispose of your funds after sending the delegation. The thing is that the balance snapshot, which is taken into account when staking, is done at the end of the epoch.
How many tokens you have on your balance sheet at the end of the epoch, that many will be taken into account for staking.
You can’t delegate part of your balance and you can’t delegate to multiple validators. If you’re a validator, you can delegate to yourself.
Please note that if you did not stake to anyone, then after 2 epochs the protocol will automatically stake your tokens (starting from the moment when there is more than 1 Mina on balance)
Also, you cannot cancel the delegation of your funds to Mina, since the developers of the protocol do not see any point in such an operation.
To delegate your tokens to another validator, simply send a new delegation transaction. Keep in mind that the result of the operation will be fixed only at the end of the epoch.
The result of your delegation transactions is only committed at the end of the epoch. Until the change of epochs, the blockchain does not record data in the operations ledger. Therefore, you may still have a considerable margin of time to change your mind.
Validator gets rewarded for staking accounts from coinbase (720 - for a regular block, 1440 - for a supercharged block) according to its share in the validator’s stake in the event the said validator wins block production (for more information please go to Mina Bock Production).
A delegator can receive its reward after its validator wins block production and produces its block. From the moment the block is won, the payout period depends entirely on the conditions of the validator. As a rule, the payout occurs at the beginning of the next epoch after the one when the reward was won by the validator. Sometimes it can happen in the same epoch, or vice versa, an epoch later.
Mina does not regulate the validator-delegator relationship, so each validator sets its payout schedule. You can see the reward payment terms here. Check the payment frequency to know how long it will take you to get your reward.
For more information on the reward accrual please see Mina Reward Calculation.
We have carefully illustrated the delegation process in explorer. You can see a list of all your previous delegations and their current status and the number of rewards earned after they are credited.
To do this, find your account in the Mina Explorer, go to Account Details and select the "Staking" tab.
Also, click on the details of the delegation to study its entire history in the context of past epochs from the moment it was made.
