Cancelling a Stake | Ontology (ONT) Staking
Aka why is my ONT still locked?
Disclaimer: This is NOT financial advice and should not be taken as such. Not guaranteed to be correct or continue to be correct. Do your own research.
This article is about Ontology (ONT) Staking. Find out more here.
“It‘s not you, it’s me”. It happens. You choose a node, plan to stay with it for a while. Then you hear rumours, “this node is bad!”, “that node is better!”. You change your mind. You cancel. Now your ONT is locked tills who knows when.
What happens when I cancel?
The first thing that happens is.. nothing! Ok I’m kidding, nothing seems to happen. You see less ONT in “In authorization” and those ONT now appears in “Locked”. But you have just set in motion a chain of events that will last the next 120,000 blocks (at least).
What’s next? Your ONT is locked till the end of this round. It still earns staking rewards. I’ve yet to confirm whether ONG Foundation rewards are still awarded (if anyone knows, leave a comment and I’ll update). But if you are aiming for that, it’s safer NOT to cancel until the month-end passes by. Just in case the round suddenly speeds up.
Then, if you are staking with a Consensus Node, your stake is locked for another round. Note that this round will have no rewards.
Once the locked rounds have ended, your ONT will appear in Redeemable.
Sounds ok? There’s more to come!
Just cancelled? See when the next round’ll start on this telegram bot!
Further Analysis
In general, cancelling is very expensive, especially if you are aiming for the ONG Foundation Bonus, which is the biggest component of the returns currently.
Besides, if you’re cancelling so as to switch nodes, please take this into consideration: your ONT is locked for 2 rounds (and you won’t get rewards for the second) PLUS, it gets unlocked at the end of the second round. Because of this, you won’t be able to enter the 3rd round either, since rounds start immediately after the previous ends and you can’t join midway.
With each round ranging between 33 hours to 42 days, plan it well in advance. So if you’re itching to switch nodes, just remember it’s not going to be quick. And even if you’re cancelling to free up your ONT (eg to time the market), keep in mind it might not be that quick either, and you may miss the market timing and lose staking rewards in the meanwhile.
In short, unless the rounds are going very fast, it’s almost always better to leave the stake alone, especially if you intend to continue staking in the long term.
By the way, if you’ve just cancelled, now’s a good chance to move your ONT into a hardware wallet (if it isn’t already).
Recap
When you cancel:
- Your stake is moved to “Locked”
- It is locked till the end of this round, and will still earn rewards
- If you staked with a consensus node, it will be locked for another round, with no rewards
- The stake will be freed up at the end of the round, which means you can’t enter the subsequent round either
- Each round takes between 33 hours to 42 days so plan it well in advance, and plan for sudden speeding up or slowing down.
- If you’ve already cancelled to switch nodes, monitor for end of round and move the stake as soon as possible, as the round speed can be unpredictable
- You can monitor the number of blocks remaining using OWallet and estimate the time yourself, or check here which gives you an estimate
- If you forget everything in this article, remember this: if you cancel in round x, you can withdraw in round x+2, and re-enter in round x+3
References
- https://medium.com/ontologynetwork/ontology-introduces-the-triones-membership-system-5211294976bf
- https://medium.com/ontologynetwork/owallet-stake-authorization-faq-4a4bce224122
- https://medium.com/ontologynetwork/ontology-consensus-cartoon-how-youll-be-able-to-participate-in-ontology-s-consensus-69e59d0d925c
