HOPR Staking Program Full Details

HOPR’s gamified staking program is here! This post will run through all the major details, including timings, rewards, and how the NFT boost system works. When you’re ready to get started, head to https://stake.hoprnet.org to begin.

Staking and locking

The contract will be available for staking deposits from July 20th. The contract will be deployed on xDAI Chain and the staking token will be xHOPR. To stake and lock tokens, you can simply send xHOPR to the contract address from the address you want to stake from. We’ll also be providing an interface to manage your stake, rewards, and NFT boosts.

The address you send from will be your staking address throughout the entire program. You’ll use it to claim rewards, and any NFT boosts will have to be sent from this same address. Make sure it’s an address you have full control of and which can interact with our various contracts and widgets. A metamask wallet is ideal. Do NOT send tokens from a centralized exchange like AscendEX direct to the smart contract.

The staking program will run until January 17th, or 175 days. You can start staking, or add to an existing stake, at any point during this period. Any time tokens are sent to the smart contract, they will be locked until the end of the staking event.

When you’re ready to stake, head to https://stake.hoprnet.org
A step-by-step staking tutorial is available here.

Rewards

Rewards will start to pay out from July 27th. Rewards can be claimed at any time, and they accumulate with each block. Rewards can be sent back to the contract to compound your stake (but make sure you unwrap them first!). Rewards are paid out in wxHOPR and can be unwrapped to xHOPR via our wrapper widget.

The staking contract pays out 0.05% per day, which works out at 18.25% APR.

This is the base reward for the contract which applies to all tokens. Each address can further boost this APR by earning and redeeming NFTs. More on that below.

Timings

Any time we quote a day for something happening, like a start date or a deadline, it will happen at 2pm CET. Unlike the farm, which relied on block numbers, the staking contract has UNIX timestamps, so the triggers will all happen within a few seconds of 2pm.

xDAI Chain

The staking contract and NFTs will live on xDAI Chain. That means only xHOPR tokens can be staked.

Starting on July 27th, rewards will be paid out in wxHOPR, our wrapped token. They can be easily unwrapped via our wrapper widget and sent to a node or restaked in the contract.

For more information on the different types of HOPR token and how to convert between them, please see this article.

Although the staking program primarily lives on xDAI Chain, we plan to run events and testing on other partner chains as part of our mission to serve the entire crypto ecosystem. Do not try and stake tokens other than xHOPR, and do not send tokens to the smart contract on any chain other than xDAI Chain.

NFTs

The cornerstone of this program is the NFT boosts. These are a way for us to reward active and engaged community members by boosting their stake.

The primary purpose of the NFT boosts is to engage the community in testing the advanced parts of the HOPR protocol such as cover traffic, but we’ll also be issuing NFTs linked to other events such as the HOPR DAO experiments, games and promotions, and partnerships with other projects to bring new users to HOPR.

You can earn NFTs in each of these events, and NFT boosts will stack, meaning those who participate consistently and engage across the whole HOPR ecosystem will be able to boost their rewards well above the base of 18.25%.

NFTs can be exchanged and traded, but there are some constraints on how and when NFTs can be earned and redeemed.

Types and Ranks

Each NFT has four parameters to be aware of:

• Type This indicates what event the NFT is associated with, such as a testnet or a promotional campaign. Each address can only redeem one NFT of each type.
• Rank Within each type, NFTs can be one of four ranks: bronze, silver, gold and diamond. The higher the rank, the higher the associated boost. In general higher ranking NFTs will be issued to those who participate more (e.g., everyone who participates in a testnet would receive at least a bronze NFT, but users who find bugs, run particularly high-quality nodes or maintain strong uptime for the entire testnet might receive a better reward). Not every NFT will have all the different ranks.
• Boost Amount This is the amount that the NFT will boost your APR. These boosts stack, with no limit (but remember only one NFT of each type can be redeemed by each address). We’re using APR for consistency, but we’ll also provide a way to calculate actual returns, which obviously vary depending on the amount of time remaining in the staking program.
• Deadline To prevent gaming the spirit of the more valuable NFTs, some will have a redemption deadline. These must be redeemed before a certain block for the boost to apply.

Redeeming NFTs

To apply an NFT boost to your stake, you’ll need to redeem it. To do this, simply send the NFT you want to redeem from your staking address to the contract. Once the NFT is received, the boost will be applied to your rewards from the very next block until the end of the staking period.

While there is no limit to the number of NFTs you can redeem, there are a couple of rules around NFT redemption.

First, NFTs must be redeemed before the redemption deadline, which will be different for each event.

Second, you can only redeem one NFT per event. If you have two NFTs of different ranks for the same event, the highest boost will be applied, but all others will be ignored. If you acquire a higher ranking NFT at a later date, the new rank will apply from the moment of redemption, and the lower one will be ignored thereafter.

Finally, if you increase your stake, all previous NFT boosts will also apply to the new stake from the moment you stake. So if an NFT is approaching its redemption deadline, it’s fine to stake a minimal amount of HOPR to redeem it, then add to your stake later.

For example:

You deposit 20,000 HOPR to the contract on July 23rd. From July 27th, these start accruing rewards at the base rate of 18.25% APR. These can be claimed immediately.

On August 15th, you redeem two bronze NFTs, one from a testnet and one from a promotional event. Each has a 1% boost, so your APR is now 20.25%, active from as soon as the NFT is redeemed. On August 20th you realise you also got a gold NFT with a 5% boost from the same promotional event and redeem it. That replaces the bronze one you had earlier, so now your APR is 18.25+1+5 = 24.25%. You decide to send another 1000 HOPR to the staking contract, along with the rewards you’ve earned so far. As soon as they arrive, the full 24.5% APR applies to your whole stake going forward.

HODL NFTs

One of the first NFTs we’ll issue is a very special one to reward our long-term supporters. HODL NFTs will be issued to each HOPR address based on how long they’ve held HOPR tokens. So please don’t empty your addresses if you plan to participate!

The HODL ranks and APR boosts are as follows (these are still subject to change based on our analytics, but they won’t change much, if at all):

• Diamond Hodling since before March 27th, 10% boost
• Gold Hodling since before April 27th, 7.5% boost
• Silver Hodling since before June 27th, 5% boost
• Bronze All other accounts at time of analytics snapshot, 2.5% boost

We’ll be running some analytics next week to calculate the correct HODL reward for everyone, this is complicated a little by things such as the bridge, liquidity pools and the HOPR Farm. Like with our DAO vote, we want to make sure that using tokens to actively support the HOPR ecosystem doesn’t disqualify you from rewards.

NFTs can be exchanged and traded, and if you have more than one HOPR address, you will receive an NFT for each. However, remember that you can only redeem one NFT of each type per staking address, so there’s zero advantage to acquiring multiple NFTs of the same rank.

The deadline for redeeming the HODL NFTs is August 3rd.

Timeline

Here’s a rundown of the important dates mentioned throughout this article. All times are intended to be 2pm CET, although actual times may vary due to block time drift.

Contract deployed / Deposits activated: July 20th
Rewards begin: July 27th
HODL NFT redemption deadline: August 3rd
First testing event begins: August 17th (pending internal tests)
Program ends/stakes unlocked: January 17th

We hope you’re as excited about this program as we are. We can’t wait to work together with the community to test and build the next layers of the HOPR protocol.

Rik Krieger,

HOPR Co-Founder

Website: https://www.hoprnet.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hoprnet
Telegram: https://t.me/hoprnet
Discord: https://discord.gg/dEAWC4G
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hoprnet
Forum: https://forum.hoprnet.org