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Stacks
Stake STX with Kiln, enterprise-grade staking
What is Stacks?
Stacks is a Bitcoin L2 solution built on top of Bitcoin, adding smart contract functionality while maintaining Bitcoin's decentralization. By anchoring its history on Bitcoin, the Bitcoin L2 solution ensures security and immutability.
Stacks protocol aims to bring programmability to Bitcoin enabling decentralized applications and more used-cases that are not natively supported, all while periodically settling transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. Stacks sees Bitcoin's properties like its slow speed and lack of scalability as strengths for decentralization, boosted by Stacks L2.
How is Stacks Proof-of-Transfer implemented?
The process works as follows: miners lock BTC to participate in the block mining election every bitcoin block. A share of these BTC is then distributed to "stackers" as rewards in the form of STX tokens. One miner is elected to produce Stacks blocks, with their likelihood of selection determined by the proportion of BTC they contribute to the vote compared to the total participation.
The elected miner is rewarded with newly minted STX tokens. After the miner has produced some blocks, “Stackers” validate and approve each block produced by the miner and receive BTC staking rewards for securing the chain by locking their STX tokens.
Why should you stake your assets?
Staking offers a secure and reliable method to earn rewards from your digital assets. These rewards come from both the native currency inflation of the blockchain and/or a portion of transaction fees. However, with Stacks, the rewards aren't distributed in the native STX token but rather in bitcoin (BTC). By staking Stacks native token (STX) you now have the opportunity to earn bitcoin passively.
You can stake your STX to:
- Earn BTC
- Bring new opportunities by enabling your users to earn staking rewards
- Optimize your balance of the leading cryptocurrency
Protocol Card
Token
STX
GRR
6-8%
Number of live validators
69
Consensus
PoX
Why should you stake your STX with Kiln?
Kiln is the leading enterprise-grade staking platform, enabling institutional customers to stake STX, and to whitelabel STX staking functionality into their offering. Our platform is API-first and enables fully automated validators, rewards, data, and commission management.
Our clients can stake their tokens from our dashboard, a hardware wallet, a browser wallet, a B2B custodian, a crypto exchange, or just their favorite investment app. Kiln makes staking STX easy, secure, and accessible to everyone.
We are serving thousands of businesses worldwide so that everyone can securely and seamlessly:
- Stake STX in 1 click
- Manage all your STX stakes and rewards from a single dashboard
- Non-custodial, work with your existing custodians solutions e.g.Fireblocks
- SOC 2 Type II certified and Industry leading SLAs (0 penalties recorded and 99.95% effective uptime)
Stacks FAQ
What does Proof-of-Transfer mean?
Proof of Transfer (PoX) is a consensus mechanism bridging two blockchains: Bitcoin and Stacks. Unlike traditional mining setups, PoX-based Stacks doesn't demand specialized hardware; instead, miners simply need Bitcoin to participate.
When will I receive STX rewards?
Rewards are delivered at the end of each reward cycle which is ~2 weeks.
Does interest compound when staking STX?
For now, Stacks no has a built-in compound interest mechanism.
Is there a minimum and maximum amount to stake for STX?
There is no minimum amount to stake in a Stacks pool. (Minimum of 100,000 STX for solo staking).
Do I maintain custody of my STX tokens? Is STX staking non-custodial?
While you may maintain self-custody of your staked STX (ideally using a Ledger hardware wallet), you may also choose a third-party custodian to control the withdrawal of your staked STX (i.e. Fireblocks).
What is the lockup period to stake STX? When can I unstake and withdraw my STX?
Lockup periods may vary between 1 and 12 reward cycles. Each reward cycle corresponds to exactly 2100 Bitcoin blocks, or roughly 15 days with a Bitcoin block time average of 10 minutes. Once the lockup period ends, STX holdings may be withdrawn.
What are the risks associated with staking STX?
Prior to the Nakamoto update of Stacks, stakers were not responsible for validating transactions, eliminating the necessity for a slashing mechanism in the PoX system. However, with the update, stakers are now required to validate blocks produced by Stacks miners. Unfortunately, details regarding slashing mechanisms are not currently available in the Stacks documentation.
How do rewards and penalties work?
Rewards generated by Bitcoin staking are influenced by both the amount of Bitcoin sent by miners to participate in the block mining election and the quantity of STX tokens locked within the network.
The is no slashing mechanism on Stacks currently.
What is the average block time on Stacks protocol?
The average block time on Stacks is 5 seconds.
What is a Gross Reward Rate (GRR) and how is it different from a Net Reward Rate (NRR)?
In the context of staking blockchains, the gross reward rate (GRR) refers to the total or gross amount of rewards earned from staking before deducting any fees or expenses. This is a reward rate that fluctuates with the operations of the protocol and the performance of validators, it is not set by Kiln. The net reward rate (NRR), on the other hand, takes into account the deductions or expenses, providing a measure of the actual rewards received after subtracting fees or costs.
Where can I learn more about Stacks?
You can learn more about Stacks on their official documentation and on the Stacks explorer.
