Fantom FTM staking
Staking FTM on Opera — The complete guide
This guide will show you how to securily and easily stake your FTM using the official Opera wallet.
Update: The guide has been updated to account for the new version of the wallet. Token swaps using a bridge are no longer necessary
4 Steps:
1. Create an Opera wallet
2. Transfer your ERC-20/BEP-2 FTM to the Opera FTM wallet
3. Pick a validator
4. Delegate
I will guide you through each of these steps in more detail.
Why stake on Opera?
Fantom has commited a good reward pool to stakers in order to bootstrap the network and therefore increase its security. The inflation is set at around 25% in the first year. These are 42,716,160 FTM per month (~$427,161.60 / month) in rewards.
This rewards pool is shared by all stakers. The more FTM is staked, the lower the staking reward per FTM due to dilution. This gives the following APR
The current APR can be found here: https://www.stakingrewards.com/asset/fantom
Staking via delegation to a validator node is possible with just 1 FTM.
1. Create an Opera Wallet
The offical Opera wallet is a PWA (progressive web app) and is available here
It supports Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android and iOS
Overview
- Click create a new wallet
- Enter a password
- Download the keystore file. This .json file allows you to access your wallet on other devices
- Make backups of the keystore file as well as your password and keep them secure
- Click “ View your private key”
- Write down the 24-word mnemonic phrase and your private key. Do not share them with anyone!
- Enter in your 24-word mnemonic phrase in the correct order
- Click “Verify”
- Click ”Access your wallet”
The process of wallet creation is explained in full detail here: https://medium.com/fantomfoundation/fantom-desktop-web-wallets-guide-5ee8e320b105
Congrats, you now have your wallet address which we need for the next step.
2. Transfer your ERC-20/BEP-2 FTM to the Opera FTM wallet
Go to your exchange and withdraw your FTM. At Binance, you have the option to send the ERC-20 or the BEP-2 FTM token.
Now, in your Opera wallet, select the network you use to send the tokens.
Ethereum for ERC-20, Binance for BEP-2.
The wallet will automatically swap yout tokens to FTM mainnet tokens
3. Pick a validator
Do some research on the different validators before delegating.
You keep your staked FTM, so validators cannot run away with them.
But picking a good validator is still important for several reasons
- Rewards are calculated on 3 basic criteria: FTM staked, proof of importance score and origination score. The proof of importance score is based on node performance. Therefore it is better to choose a high-performance validator
- Additionally, if a validator goes down, you won’t earn rewards during that time.
- Validators can be slashed for trying to cheat. In that case, you will be slashed too.
- Validators might offer different features. Think about what is good for the long-term health of the network. Validators earn a fixed 15% of your rewards as a delegator fee. Is there any info on how they are planning to use the capital?
A list of validators can be found here. Thanks to block42 Team for building this awesome dApp.
Not all validators are known at the moment, some are anonymous.
Here’s a list of all validators we currently have some info about
- ID 13 — Fantom Vietnam
- ID 14 — block42
- ID 15 — Fantom Validator
- ID 16 — bu1137
- ID 17 — GoFantom
- ID 18 — GoStake Network
- ID 19 — Fantom Ukraine
- ID 20 — Binary Fintech Group
- ID 21 — Fantom Global
- ID 22 — Fantom Russian
- ID 24 — lopalcar
- ID 27 — Cryptoast.io
- ID 28 — Hyperblocks
- ID 31 — Connor’s Node
- ID 32 — Fantom Labs
4. Delegate/Stake
- In your wallet, click “stake”.
- Enter the amount of FTM you want to stake. Keep a bit of FTM in your wallet to pay for gas fees
- Select the validator you want decided for in step 3 earlier based on the node ID
- Enter your password
Done! You are now staking and earn rewards for helping to secure the network
Questions?
The easiest way is to join the official Discord
Mods and community members will help you to sort out anything you are struggling with
