To earn a yield on your APT, you can either lend them out to custodial providers, run your own validator or delegate your tokens to staking pools of your choice. 

We recommend using a Ledger Hardware Wallet to keep full control over your funds. To delegate your tokens, you should ensure you have your APT on your Ledger or Petra Wallet and then follow the steps below:

Step 1: Go to the Aptos Staking Dashboard and connect your wallet. 

Step 2: Select a staking pool and click the ‘Stake’ button. If you are unsure which staking pool to delegate to, refer to our FAQ on how to choose a staking pool.

Step 3: Enter the amount of APT you would like to stake.

Step 4: Sign the transaction

Once you have delegated your APT, there are things you need to consider going forward:

• Firstly, rewards are auto-compounded. Any reward you (i.e., validator) earned at the end of current epoch is added to your staked amount. The reward at the end of the next epoch is calculated based on your increased staked amount (i.e., original staked amount plus the added reward), and so on. By using our Aptos staking calculator, you can calculate your expected rewards for over your planned staking period.
• Make sure the staking pool you have chosen remains “Active”. An active pool has a minimum stake of 1 000 000 APT and generates rewards for delegates. A pending pool is a pool which is not validating and not generating rewards for delegates.
• Once you have staked your APT, your stake will become active and start earning rewards with the start of the next epoch, which lasts for 2 hours.
• As a participant in the APT Ecosystem, once you have staked your tokens, you can vote on Governance Proposals. To either propose or vote, you must stake, but you are not required to run a validator node. While your contribution and vote are highly valuable to the ecosystem, participating does not affect the sum of your rewards.

It is essential for users to stake their PoS tokens with dependable and highly performant validators, which is why we have rolled out our Staking Rewards Verified Staking Provider (VSP) Program in June 2022. Through this program, we thoroughly scrutinize potential validators, evaluating factors such as security measures, their on-chain reliability, their provider setup, and value-added services for the whole ecosystem.

Our VSP documentation contains further details about the program, Staking Providers that are part of the VSP will have a blue checkmark displayed next to their names here.

There are many metrics to consider when selecting a validator to delegate to:

Commission Rates: The commission rate a staking pool charges is the % of your reward that the pool keeps for themselves. A high commission rate means your rewards will be lower whilst a low commission rate could mean that the validator is not profitable and could cause issues for them in the future. Keep in mind that pools can adjust their commission rates up or down over time. 

Number of Users: A high number of delegators could indicate positive sentiment towards a staking pool. 

Self-Staked balance: A staking pool that has a high amount of staked tokens likely has more incentive to continue operating their services as they have more to lose than those with low self-staked balances. 

Active/Inactive: You can see whether the staking pool is currently active or not by checking the staking pool list shown on this page. Validators that are active have a green dot under them.

Network Share: You typically don’t want to choose a staking pool with the highest network share or a staking pool with a low network share. Delegating to the most popular pools increases centralisation risks within the network as those pools will have more say in governance and a larger share of the blocks. A pool with a low network share, might not be profitable and hence increases the risk of them discontinuing their services.

Performance: Make sure you pick a pool with the highest possible uptime performance by viewing the pool information on the Pool Dashboard. Our recommendation is to only pick those with a >=99% performance and a long history of not getting slashed. 

Value Add to the Ecosystem: Some providers offer extra services to their delegators, such as tax reporting tools, explorers, etc. This can be another great way to filter for validators that are thinking long-term. You can view the value-added services of staking providers by searching for their profile on our website and scroll down towards the bottom of the page.

The Staking Rewards on Aptos Network are generated by:

Inflation (Block Rewards) – The Aptos Foundation has yet to publish a detailed report on their token economics. However, based on the information currently available, the starting annual reward rate is 7%, which is evaluated at each epoch. The maximum reward rate gradually decreases by 1.5% each year until it reaches a minimum of 3.25% per annum, a process expected to take more than 50 years. These rewards increase the total supply of the Aptos network and are dependent on the staked amount and validator performance.

Please note that the total annual rewards are divided by all active stakers; hence, as the amount of staked tokens goes up, the reward rate goes down. 

Whilst we want to ensure staking is as safe and transparent as possible, there are still things to consider regarding whether a specific staking option is right for you.

Slashing risk: There is currently no slashing on Aptos network.

Unbonding risk: The unbonding period for running a validator on Aptos Network is 30 days. Crypto markets are highly volatile, and investors need to be aware that they cannot sell their tokens immediately once they have staked them. They first need to wait 30 days for the tokens to unbond before they become liquid. Please take note of this lockup before you decide to stake. Consider keeping funds liquid if you do not intend to hold APT long-term. 

Dropping out of the active set: On top of potentially losing out on rewards if your validator gets slashed, a validator could also drop out of the active set, meaning they no longer earn any rewards. Ensure you check back frequently to ensure your validator is active, not jailed and has not raised their commission fees unreasonably. Note that a validator will only be part of the active validator set when the delegation pool satisfies the minimum cumulative staking requirement of 1 million APT.

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of all the risks related to staking.

APT is the native token of the Aptos network that performs the following key functions on the platform:

Token Utilities:

Staking: Users can lock up APT to contribute to the security of the Aptos Network and earn staking rewards.

Gas token: Each transaction processed by the network requires a small fee to be paid. Transaction fees are currently burned, although this may be revisited in the future with on-chain governance voting

Governance: APT is used to vote on governance proposals on the network. Only staked tokens are eligible to be used for governance voting. The amount of voting power is measured in terms of staked balance. Only the community of validators can vote through on-chain governance process to decide matters such as staking rewards and inflation.

The initial total supply of Aptos tokens (APT) at mainnet was 1 billion tokens.

Initial Distribution Breakdown:

The initial distribution of Aptos (APT) tokens is as follows:

• 51.02% is allocated to the community
• 19.00% is allocated to core contributors
• 16.50% is allocated to the foundation
• 13.48% is allocated to investors

Funding Rounds:

• $200M was raised in the Seed round on 15 March 2022, funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Multicoin Capital, Katie Haun, Three Arrows Capital, ParaFi Capital, IRONGREY, Hashed, Variant, Tiger Global Management, Blocktower Capital, FTX Ventures, Paxos and Coinbase Ventures.
• $150M was raised in the Series A on 25 July 2022, funded by FTX Ventures, Jump Crypto, Superskrypt, ParaFi Capital, Oak HC/FT, Multicoin Capital, Jump Crypto, Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton Investments, Circle Ventures and Apollo.
• An undisclosed amount was raised in the Venture Round on 15 Sept 2022, funded by Binance Labs.
• An undisclosed amount was raised in the Venture Round on 28 Sept 2022, funded by Dragonfly Capital.