New Feature: Now You Can Stake Your Assets Using Emeris
We’re pleased to announce that you can now stake your assets using the Emeris interface. Emeris currently supports 28 chains (with more being added all the time) and you can easily stake and unstake from the portfolio page by selecting the asset of your choice. Let’s take a quick look at the benefits of staking and why you may choose to stake with Emeris — and help secure the Cosmos network at the same time.
A Quick Overview of Staking
In a nutshell, staking involves committing the assets you hold to help secure a blockchain network and earn rewards at the same time. In simple terms, you can liken staking to depositing savings in a bank. With a savings account, the bank will make use of your money lending it out to borrowers and paying you interest in return. With staking, the blockchain uses your tokens to help process transactions and rewards you with staking rewards. For an in-depth guide to staking, see our Staking 101 guide here.
Staking — What’s the Benefit?
Staking your assets provides several advantages. For starters, staking rewards are paid out daily (or even multiple times a day) and the unstaking period is usually between 7–28 days. The interest rate (in the crypto space, known as APR (annual percentage rate)) is also notably higher than in traditional finance and varies according to the blockchain.
When you stake directly with the network, your assets never leave your wallet and you have custody over them the whole time. This means that you don’t have to trust a third party with your assets and no one can freeze or steal your funds at will. You may also be eligible for various airdrops in the Cosmos ecosystem as new chains that launch tend to reward people already staking on certain Cosmos chains.
Staking — What’s the Catch?
It would be remiss not to mention that there are risks associated with staking that you need to keep in mind. To start with, as with any new market opportunity, crypto markets are still volatile, especially when it comes to emerging chains. This means that you may be able to profit from this volatility through price appreciation, but if the market flips to the downside, you could lose some of your investment.
As mentioned, when you want to unstake, you have to wait for an unstaking period until your assets become transferable again (7–28 days). This means that you will not be able to sell your holdings quickly to respond to market fluctuations and will have to wait until your assets are available again. Of course, you can unstake your assets at any time, however, you will need to wait for 7–28 days (depending on the chain) before they are available and you will not receive staking rewards during that period.
Another risk of staking is that a validator you stake with (a validator is an independent operator of the chain), misbehaves. Validators who experience significant downtime or perform actions that go against the rules of the blockchain are penalized by the network in an act known as “slashing.” If your validator behaves in this way, part of your stake may be lost (slashed), which is up to 5% in most chains. You can avoid this by checking the background of the validator, reading reviews, looking at the validator uptime, activity, reputation, and history through tools such as Mintscan.io. See this detailed article for more information on the importance of validators in the staking process.
Finally, blockchains, similar to internet protocols, are at risk of external threats from malicious actors. Although these are very rare, especially in high-value chains like the Cosmos Hub, it’s important to know that they can happen. Rule of thumb? The higher the staking rewards, the higher the potential risk. Be sure to check out our Staking 101 FAQ for more information.
Staking with Emeris
Like everything we aim for with Emeris, the emphasis with our staking feature is on simplicity. Just launch the Emeris app, connect your Keplr wallet, and start staking tokens straight away. To get started, simply select the asset you want to stake in your portfolio. You will see a new window open up where you can see your available tokens balance, your staking tokens balance (if any), and any tokens that are being unstaked. You can also easily claim your staking rewards.
To stake, simply click the “Stake” button, choose a validator to stake with, enter the amount you wish to stake, review the staking details, and sign the transaction via Keplr. Emeris provides ultimate ease of use when it comes to staking as well as a high variety of options. Unlike other applications where only a few tokens are available to stake, with Emeris, you can stake any of the tokens supported by the platform (currently 28).
Emeris has plenty of resources to help you get started. And if you get stuck, we have a support center where you can find answers to the most commonly asked questions or get in touch with the Emeris team if needed.
Wrapping Up
We will soon be adding new features, such as staking with auto-compounding of rewards, so you no longer have to claim your rewards every day and stake them manually, saving time and maximizing reward generation. We hope that you enjoy staking with Emeris! We’ll have more information on auto-compounding and additional features coming soon, so stay tuned.
