How to Stake Your SOL Coins and Earn Rewards

If you're a Solana holder and want to get the most out of your coins, you should strongly consider staking your SOL.

If you’re a Solana holder and want to get the most out of your coins, you should strongly consider staking your SOL. By staking, you will earn yield on your idle coins while improving the security of the Solana network at the same time.

In this article, we’ll explain everything you need to know to get started with Solana staking. We’ll explain how and where to stake your SOL and the benefits and disadvantages of each method.

Key highlights

Solana staking explained

Like most other smart contract blockchains on the market today, Solana uses a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism to verify transactions and advance the state of its ledger.

In a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, users who want to be validators need to stake a certain amount of cryptocurrency. When it’s time to add a new block to the blockchain, the protocol selects an active validator to perform the task. Meanwhile, other validators attest to the proposed block. Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanisms include rules to penalize validators for malicious behavior.

In exchange for helping secure the network, Solana validators receive rewards in the form of SOL coins. The more coins a validator has staked, the higher chances they have of being selected to propose the next block.

SOL holders can delegate their coins to a validator in exchange for a portion of the rewards generated by the validator. Each validator can choose how much to charge for their services, which means that the APY you can earn by delegating your SOL will depend on the validator you choose.

For the vast majority of SOL holders, the best way to participate in staking is to delegate coins to an existing validator instead of launching and maintaining a new validator. Operating a Solana validator requires a considerable amount of capital and technical expertise. Meanwhile, participating in Solana staking by delegating SOL to an existing validator is very accessible.

In this article, we’ll be focusing on Solana staking via delegation. If you are interested in launching your own Solana validator, we recommend you take a look at the official Solana validator requirements page.

Where to stake Solana

If you want to stake your SOL coins, you have two main options. You can stake through your cryptocurrency wallet, or through your cryptocurrency exchange account. Staking through a wallet is slightly less convenient, but gives you full control over your funds. Meanwhile, staking through an exchange is more convenient, but requires you to hand over control of your cryptocurrency to the exchange you’re using.

There is also liquid staking, which allows you to retain the liquidity of your staked coins. When you stake SOL in a liquid staking protocol, you will receive an equivalent amount of tokens representing your staked SOL. You can use these tokens in decentralized finance protocols to get additional yield.

Stake with your wallet

If you prefer to hold cryptocurrency in your own wallet, there are plenty of wallets that natively offer support for SOL staking. Here are the leading Solana wallets with integrated staking features that will allow you to easily stake your SOL:

The main advantage of staking SOL from your own wallet is that you retain control over your private keys at all times. In other words, you don’t need to trust anyone but yourself to keep your cryptocurrency safe. In addition, staking through your own wallet also gives you the option of selecting which validator you want to delegate your coins to.

If you want even stronger security for your SOL holdings, we recommend you use a hardware cryptocurrency wallet such as a Ledger device. A hardware wallet stores private keys in a fully offline environment, helping protect your cryptocurrency from cyber attacks. When you want to transact with your cryptocurrency, your hardware wallet only signs the transaction, but doesn’t reveal the private keys to your computer or mobile phone.

If you want to stake SOL with a hardware wallet, we recommend you use a Ledger device. Ledger Live, the cryptocurrency wallet app integrated with Ledger devices, simplifies the process of staking SOL while maintaining the security benefits of using a hardware wallet.

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The minimum amount you'll need to lock up to become a validator is 180,000 SOL, which is roughly $9.4 million at current prices.

Moreover, to stay compliant with the Solana network, validators must maintain a minimum uptime of 99%. This means that they can experience a maximum of 864,000 seconds of downtime per year.

If a validator fails to meet these requirements, they will be slashed, which involves a reduction in their staked tokens and an inability to participate in the network for a period of time.

If a validator is slashed, the delegators who had assigned their tokens to that specific validator will also be affected proportionally, resulting in a decrease in their earnings.

However, if a validator is performing well and adheres to the regulations, they will