Stake Fantom with Kiln, enterprise-grade staking

Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is a type of consensus mechanism used to validate cryptocurrency transactions. Through PoS, validators can contribute to the block production of a chain while keeping environmental concerns to a minimum, which is becoming an increasingly large issue in Proof-of-Work.

By staking capital rather than energy, validators risk losing a portion of their value and future potential for staking by misbehaving while creating blocks. This incentives collaboration and fair practices while validating information in a similar way that PoW has with incentives and punishments to curtail malicious

aBFT consensus stands for “asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant” consensus. When a network is said to be “Byzantine Fault Tolerant”, it means that nodes can still reach an agreement on an ordering of events even if part of the network acts maliciously.

Ethereum and Bitcoin are synchronous blockchains for instance, meaning that transactions are appended into blocks, one at a time. They follow the longest-chain rule in which the chain with the most number of blocks determines the final ordering of events.

Opera is the Fantom’s environment to build decentralized applications.

Fantom Validators help the network to be decentralized and secure by locking FTM. Fantom uses a Proof-of-Stake system that requires validators to hold FTM. Anyone with at least 1,000,000 FTM can run their own validator node to earn epoch rewards and transaction fees. Every FTM holder has the option to delegate their tokens to a validator (while keeping full custody of their funds) to receive staking rewards.Validators then take a small fee for their services.

Fantom staking APR is currently 6.47% at the time of writing this article. Fantom APR may be subject to change in the future. Rewards can be claimed through the ‘Claim’ button in the Rewards tab of your dashboard.

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Yes, when staking Fantom you can decide which wallet to receive your rewards. You can even split your rewards into multiple wallet addresses. Kiln is WalletConnect-compatible.

Yes Fantom has both transactions and gas fees. For most transactions, fees are less than $0.01, even during high-traffic periods. You can check their detailed article about fees here.

The main risk is slashing. An Fantom validator can be slashed if:

1. It signs two attestations with a different head
2. It surrounds another attestation with its attestation
3. It submits two attestations with the same target

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To prevent any risk, Kiln works with the “Better down than slashed” motto and applies the best industry standards to its Fantom infrastructure.

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Kiln also partnered with Nexus Mutual and offers a coverage policy to protect against middle slashing events. Nexus Mutual is the trusted partner for tier-1 institutional funds, family offices and custodians that seek protection across the crypto industry. 

Apart from the risk of slashing, there can also be a downtime risk that means that a node is not signing transactions. However to prevent it, Kiln maintains a strong monitoring process.

You can stake Fantom’s FTM token with as little as 1 FTM.

When you delegate your FTM token to a validator such as Kiln to receive staking rewards, you keep full custody of your funds.

There is no lockup period on Fantom, you can stake-as-you-go or lock-up your FTM for up to 12 months. It takes 7 days to unstake your FTM. During that time you will not receive rewards. Once the 7 days pass, you can withdraw the tokens from your wallet.

You can unlock your delegation before the lockup period ends. However, you’ll pay a penalty for doing so. Since your rewards are always unlocked and withdrawable, the penalty will come off your staked amount. If you unlock earlier, regardless of how much of the lock-up period is left, you’ll only receive half of the base rewards; the additional rewards will be burned.

In any case, you will never end up with fewer tokens than you delegated.

The average block time on Fantom is now 0.7 sec, meaning a new block is produced every 0.7 second.

APR, or annual percentage rate, is the fixed interest rate earned on an investment over a one-year period. It is the percentage of return investors can expect to receive on their investment. On the other hand, APY or annual percentage yield, takes into account the compounding of interest on a fixed schedule. It includes both the interest earned and the interest on previously earned interest.

When it comes to PoS protocols, compounding does not always apply as additional validators can be needed to stake more. Therefore, APR is used instead of APY. It's worth noting that APY and APR cannot be compared directly, as they measure different things. However, it is possible to convert APR to APY and vice versa.

There are many existing resources but we invite you to visit the Fantom foundation's website.