Staking & Governance in the Cosmos Ecosystem with Keplr Wallet
Hello Keplr users and Cosmos ecosystem community members,
We are happy to share with you a thorough staking guide that will help you delegate your precious tokens and contribute to the security of a specific Cosmos zone like Agoric, Axelar, Akash, KAVA, Regen Network, Osmosis, Desmos, BitSong and many others. At the same time, we will tackle another important aspect of being a community member of the Cosmos Ecosystem — governance.
Keplr Wallet Information
Keplr is a wallet that is well established in the Cosmos Ecosystem and allows, among multiple functionalities, the transfers of different tokens as well as participating in governance, 2 major features that the majority of the Web3 crypto community is interested in. The Keplr wallet currently supports over 25 Cosmos zones.
Install Keplr Wallet
The current official link for the Keplr Wallet is https://www.keplr.app/. From the official website you can install the Keplr Extension for Chrome.
Click “Add to Chrome” and proceed with the install.
Once the Keplr extension is installed, one has multiple options:
- Create a new account;
- Import an account from seed;
- Connect the extension with your Ledger device.
The staking guide that we prepared is split in 2 different parts:
- Using a hot wallet by creating a new account or importing an existing account from seed
- Staking by using a Hardware Wallet (Ledger Nano S & X) (recommended)
Option 1: Hot Wallet with new account / import account from seed
If you want to create a new account from which you would do staking and/or participate in governance then click on “Create new account”. On the next screen you will be able to select a mnemonic seed of 12 or 24 words. We definitely recommend using 24 words as it is more secure. It is of high importance that you secure your seed phrase properly and that you don’t lose access to the seed phrase since it is the only possibility to recover your account. Then, you can add a name for your account. Here, we recommend to define a name that is easily recognizable, especially if it is specific for a single Cosmos zone. As a next step you will have to define a password that unlocks the Keplr extension and allows for different actions to happen (like transfers, voting, etc.). This password is not as critical as the seed phrase since it doesn’t have a direct impact on the account recovery but we strongly recommend using a password that is not being used for other purposes and to back it up in a secure way, since it would allow the access and control over your tokens. This password is required only once when you first setup a wallet with the Keplr Extension.
Once you have provided all the information required, you can click on “Next”. On the following screen you will be asked to confirm your passphrase that was generated during the previous step.
Once that step is also done, everything is set up and the following screen will be shown.
Press “Done” to finish the whole process.
In case you want to import an account, once you open the Keplr extension, click on “Import existing account”. Then, on the next screen, insert your 12 or 24-words Mnemonic seed, the account name and the unlock password and click “Next”.
Once you’ve completed this you’ll get the notification that “You’re all set!” and you can click on “Done” to finish the whole process.
Stake your assets with a hot wallet
A prerequisite for the staking process is to have tokens on your address. Once this step is completed, you can go in the Keplr extension and select the Cosmos zone where you have tokens on your address and for which you want to proceed with the staking process. For this example, we will select Agoric.
Then, if you have tokens on your address for the selected Cosmos zone, their total balance should appear, like in the picture below.
Then you can press on the “Stake” button and on the Keplr dashboard for Agoric search for our validator “ChainodeTech” and click on Manage in order to proceed with the next staking step.
Once the following pop-up will appear, click on “Delegate”.
On the next screen you will be able to enter the amount you want to delegate. It is important to keep at least 1 token unstaked in order to pay for diverse transaction fees. Otherwise, you won’t be able to conduct further operations with your address unless you refill it with a sufficient amount to pay for transaction fees.
Once you have entered your desired amount for staking, press “Delegate”.
Afterwards, a new pop up will appear where you can decide to pay a low, average or high fee. It is also possible to add a memo. Once you have selected the gas fee you want to pay, you can click on “Approve”.
Congratulations! 🎉 Your tokens have now been staked and you will start to earn staking rewards in that specific Cosmos zone. If you want to check the status of your tokens, you can click on “Dashboard” in the Keplr Dashboard and see the staked amounts in each Cosmos zone for the respective address.
Unstaking assets with a hot wallet on Keplr
The unstaking process is similar to the staking process — you will have to go on the Keplr dashboard for Agoric, search for our validator “ChainodeTech” and click on Manage in order to proceed to the next staking step.
A new pop-up will appear where you can click on “Undelegate”.
On the next pop-up specify the amount you want to undelegate. Here, you will have to pay attention to the unbounding period of each Cosmos zone. In the provided example it will take 21 days until the tokens will be fully unlocked from staking so that they can be further used. Once you are ready, click on “Undelegate”.
That was it, your tokens will be free once the unbounding period has expired!
2. Connect the extension with the Ledger device (Nano S or Nano X)
In the case of staking with a hardware device and Keplr, there are 2 prerequisites:
- A Ledger Nano S or Nano X as hardware device;
- The Cosmos (ATOM) app installed on your Ledger hardware device — the official link from Ledger on how you can install the app can be found here.
Once the specified prerequisites are available, you can further proceed by opening the Keplr extension and selecting “Import Ledger”. Then, provide an account name as well as a password to access the Keplr extension.
Now you are all set for being able to stake your assets.
Stake your assets with a hardware wallet
A prerequisite for the staking process is to have tokens on your address. Once this step is secured, you can go in the Keplr extension and select the Cosmos zone for which you have tokens on your address that you would like to stake. For this example, we will select Akash.
Then press on “Stake” and on the Keplr dashboard for Akash search for our validator “ChainodeTech” and click on Manage in order to proceed to the next staking step.
Once the following pop-up will appear, click on “Delegate”.
On the next screen you will be able to enter the amount you want to delegate. It is important to keep at least 1 token unstaked in order to pay for diverse transaction fees. Otherwise, you won’t be able to conduct further operations with your address unless you refill it with a sufficient amount to pay for transaction fees.
Once you have entered your desired amount for staking, press “Delegate”.
Afterwards, a new pop up will appear where you can decide to pay a low, average or high fee. It is also possible to add a memo. Once you have selected the gas fee you want to pay, you can click on “Approve”.
Now you need to make sure that your Cosmos app is still open and active on your Ledger so that you can confirm the transaction. Once it is active, you can proceed with confirming the transaction. While waiting for the confirmation from your Ledger device, the UI will look like this:
Congratulations! 🎉 Your tokens have now been staked and you will start to earn rewards in that specific Cosmos zone. If you want to check the status of your tokens, you can click on “Dashboard” in the Keplr Dashboard and see the staked amounts in each Cosmos zone for the respective address.
Unstaking assets with a hardware wallet on Keplr
The unstaking process is similar to the staking process — you will have to go on the Keplr dashboard for Akash, search for our validator “ChainodeTech” and click on Manage in order to proceed to the next step.
A new pop-up will appear where you can click on “Undelegate”.
On the next pop-up specify the amount you want to undelegate. Here, you will have to pay attention to the unbounding period of each Cosmos zone. In the provided example it will take 21 days until the tokens will be fully unlocked from staking and can be further used. Once you are ready, click on “Undelegate”.
That was it, your tokens will be free once the unbounding period has expired.
Claiming rewards with the Keplr wallet
In order to claim your staking rewards, you can go in the Keplr extension and select the Cosmos zone for which you would like to claim the rewards. For this example, we will select Osmosis.
After selecting the Cosmos zone, in this case Osmosis, you will be able to see the OSMO balance “Available”, the OSMO balance “Staked” as well as the “Pending Staking Reward”. In order to claim your staking rewards, proceed with clicking on “Claim”.
Then, proceed with clicking on “Approve”.
As a next step, you can go on the Keplr dashboard.
Congratulations! 🎉 The new “Available” balance will display the previous balance plus the staking rewards that were claimed.
Governance in the Cosmos Ecosystem by using Keplr wallet
Governance represents a very important mechanism through which every community participant can express their opinion on numerous on-chain proposals that are being made for each Cosmos zone. Each token in an address that is participating in voting counts as one vote. In general, delegators inherit the vote of the validator they are delegated to unless they decide to submit their own vote by using for example the Keplr wallet, situation in which their own vote counts for the tokens they own. If a proposal reaches quorum then the proposal is accepted and it will be implemented as part of the respective Cosmos zone software.
In order to participate in governance as a delegator, first you have to go to the Keplr Wallet Dashboard and select the Cosmos zone for which you would like to participate in governance and voting.
For this example we have selected the Akash zone and we are checking the “Active” tab of governance proposals. We observe that there is an active proposal we could vote on and we click first on “Details”.
As a next step we read the proposal to be sure we understand what we are voting for. Once this is clear, one can press the “Vote” button.
As a next step we observe that there are a few options:
Yes — signals your agreement with the proposal;
No — signals your disagreement with the proposal;
NoWithVeto — signals a significantly stronger disagreement, where you may feel the proposal has a negative implication and might harm the respective Cosmos zone or the governance system is being abused through spam;
Abstain — signals that your vote is impartial but allows quorum to be reached. Therefore, it is important to vote even if you don’t feel strongly about the proposal.
Once you have decided which option you want to select, click on it and then on “Confirm”.
Afterwards, a new pop up will appear where you can decide to pay a low, average or high fee. Once you have selected the gas fee you want to pay, you can click on “Approve”. In case you are using a hardware wallet like Ledger Nano S or X you need to make sure that your Cosmos app is still open and active on your Ledger so that you can confirm the transaction. Once it is active, you can proceed with confirming the transaction. While waiting for the confirmation from your Ledger device, the UI will look like this:
At the end you can check the status of the voting for your address — for this example we see that “Yes” has been voted which confirms our selection during the voting process.
That’s it! 🎉 Now you are a Master in Staking and Governance in all Cosmos zones! 🎆🏆
About Chainode Tech
Founded in early 2019, Chainode Tech is a Web 3.0 infrastructure and service provider based in Zug, Switzerland, focused on bootstrapping innovative Web 3.0 protocols, providing necessary infrastructure and tooling as well as offering staking and validator services on cutting-edge Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) protocols.
The team behind Chainode Tech is young, extremely motivated and experienced with background in Software & System Engineering, System & Integration Architecture, DevOps, Marketing, Business Growth and Capital Investments.
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