How do I stake ZIL?

Stake your ZIL with Atomic Wallet to receive interest on your deposit! Here, we'll guide you through everything you need to know to stake your ZIL and earn rewards. 

Contents

Getting started with staking

Staking looks pretty straightforward as a process—instead of just keeping your ZIL deposit on your balance, you're choosing to stake it and earn interest. Where does the interest come from, though? 

By delegating your ZIL to a validator of your choice, you're expressing your trust in them, which makes them more powerful on the Zilliqa blockchain. As validators get paid for confirming blockchain transactions, they in turn pay back to those who supported them. That's how you earn your rewards.

ZIL 101: the things you need to know

First reward In 2 days
Regular rewards Every day
Yearly yield 12%
  • You’ll have to pay a network fee every time you want to stake, claim some rewards, or unstake your ZIL. The fee is charged by the ZIL blockchain itself and we cannot affect it. For more details about the network fees, see Does Atomic Wallet charge any additional transaction fees?
  • 150 ZIL will be reserved on your address for future fees for claiming/unstaking transactions when you stake. That means that these funds are still on your address and are available to send away or swap, but are not available for staking. It is done in order to avoid a situation in which you accidentally stake all of your funds and are unable to unstake your coins or claim your rewards.
  • Your ZIL deposit will be frozen throughout the staking period. Your ZIL will be delegated to a staking pool, which means that these coins won’t be counted towards your total balance. Also, you won’t be able to transfer or swap them. 
  • Unstaking can take up to 24 days. Once you hit the Unstake button, your deposit will be frozen for about 24 more days. After the unstaking period is over, your coins will be available for withdrawal. Your ZIL won’t be earning any interest over the waiting period.
  • Different validators. If you decide to stake ZIL with several different validators, you will need to claim rewards from each of them separately. For example, if you had 20 ZIL staked and decide to stake additional 30 ZIL with another validator, you will have two delegations: one for 20 ZIL and one for 30 ZIL instead of having one delegation of 50 ZIL. These are the rules of the ZIL blockchain. If you wish to unstake your ZIL or claim your rewards, you will have to unstake/claim rewards from each validator individually. There is no way to unstake/claim all of your ZIL at once. 

How to stake ZIL in your Atomic Wallet app

  1. Select the Staking tab and click ZIL;
  2. Click Stake ZIL;

  3. Decide on the amount of ZIL to stake—10 is the minimum—and choose a validator. You can also go with the default one, which is Atomic Wallet.

    Note: There's no way to cancel the staking transaction, and you won't be able to unstake your deposit in 1 more day after staking it. The unstaking process itself will take about 14 to 25 days.

    Double-check everything and click Stake.

  4. Enter your password and click Confirm;
  5. Success! Your ZIL is now staked.
    You can click the transaction hash to track it on the blockchain. Allow a couple of minutes for the transaction to be confirmed. You will also see the staked amount here on the staking screen.

  1. Go to the Staking tab and select ZIL;
  2. Tap Stake;
  3. Set the amount of ZIL to stake and pick one of the available validators;

  4. Enter your password and tap Confirm. Note that unstaking takes around 14 to 24 days to be processed on the Zilliqa blockchain.
    There'll be no way for our team or anyone else to speed the process up for you.

  5. Voila, your ZIL is now staked! Relax and wait for your first rewards to arrive within 48 hours.

Staking rewards & gZIL

From day 2 on, your staking rewards will be credited to your account every time a new block gets mined on the Zilliqa blockchain (about every 24 hours).
Your rewards will be accumulating on the staking screen. You're free to claim them whenever you want; they'll never expire.

Note: Claiming is a transaction on the blockchain, just like sending. This means you'll need to pay a network fee every time you claim your rewards. The fee can go up to 130 ZIL—the exact amount depends on the network's current congestion and load.

Note that you aren't paying that fee to Atomic Wallet, as we don't charge any commissions on staking. These network fees are charged by the blockchain. For more details on whom you're paying and why, check our guide here.

You should also keep in mind, that if you staked your ZIL with different validators, they accumulate rewards independently from each other. As a result, you will have to claim them separately. In the screenshot below, you can see that ZIL is staked with two validators, each generating a different amount of rewards. You can choose which validator you want to claim your rewards from, but you cannot claim all of them at the same time. 

Earning gZil

Note: gZIL minting was ended in October 2021.

gZil is a governance token that grants its holders the right to vote on various decisions & policies enforced within the Zilliqa ecosystem. For every 1000 $ZIL earned as staking rewards, you could previously also get 1 gZil (that is, 0.001 gZil for every 1 $ZIL). 

gZIL minting was ended by the Zilliqa blockchain in October 2021. If you hadn't claimed your gZIL before the 1,483,713 block was mined, those tokens became unclaimable. To see the tokens you claimed, go to the Wallet tab and search for gZIL.

Unstaking

Note that your deposit will be frozen for 1 full day after you stake your ZIL. You'll get this error message if you try to unstake your deposit while it's locked.

10 ZIL must always remain staked. Make sure to account for the 10 ZIL hold and the network fee when unstaking your deposit. 

How to unstake your ZIL

  1. Once you click Unstake, your staked ZIL deposit stops accumulating interest. It should now appear under Pending withdrawals in the staking screen.
    Your ZIL will become available for withdrawal in 14 to 25 days, depending on the Zilliqa blockchain's current load. Note that since this waiting period is the blockchain's policy, our team cannot cancel or reduce it for you;

  2. Step 2. Once the waiting period is over, your ZIL will appear under Available withdrawals. Just choose Withdraw to send them to your address. The blockchain will charge you a network fee for this as well;

When will my ZIL be available for withdrawal?

Once you click Unstake, the unstaking transaction gets recorded on the Zilliqa blockchain. The blockchain will need to process around 30,800 more blocks before the transaction can be successfully completed. 

If you're growing impatient wondering when your ZIL will be available, you can just check how much time has passed since the day you decided to unstake your deposit. Here's how to do that:

  1. Go to the Wallet tab, pick ZIL from the coin list, and click Receive. Copy your ZIL address.
  2. Look up your address here at Zillion.
  3. Scroll down till you see the Nodes staked section.
    Once the counter on the left hits 0, your ZIL will be available for withdrawal. Since the blockchain gets around 1800 blocks processed over 1 day, it's easy to get the general idea about when to expect your coins.
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