13 min read

Overview

Staking native tokens is a common way for blockchain networks to incentivize validators to secure the network. Validators are rewarded with a portion of the network's native token for their work. Staking is also an excellent way for token holders to earn passive income on their holdings. In this guide, we will cover four ways to stake SOL on Solana:

• Using a Solana wallet (e.g., Phantom or Solflare)
• Using Solana's Command Line Interface (Solana CLI)
• Using Solana's JavaScript API
• Using Liquid Staking

What You Will Need

• Solana CLI latest version installed
• Nodejs (version 16.15 or higher) installed
• Basic JavaScript experience
• A modern web browser (e.g., Google Chrome)
• A Solana wallet (e.g., Phantom)
• Some SOL tokens for staking and account rent/transaction fees

What is Staking?

Integral to Solana's security and incentive structure, staking enables validators to lock a certain amount of their SOL tokens in a staking account to participate in consensus through a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism. Validators contribute to transaction confirmation and block production, earning rewards proportional to their staked amount. This mechanism enhances network security by imposing a risk of loss for any validator acting maliciously.

Creating a stake account on Solana necessitates generating a new staking account, then transferring SOL tokens from a funded wallet to the account. Stake and withdraw authorities, controlling the account's functionality, can be assigned during creation or modified later for optimal flexibility. Each stake account is delegated to a single validator; however, a user/authority can have multiple stake accounts to allocate their stake across numerous validators. Changes to stakes (e.g., activation, delegations, and deactivations) take effect at the next epoch (an epoch is ~2 days). This gradual process promotes network stability and predictability, preventing sudden, drastic changes in stake distribution.

For more information on staking, check out the Solana Documentation.

Let's stake some SOL!

Method 1 - Using a Wallet

One of the easiest ways to stake your SOL is directly in your wallet. Both Phantom and Solflare natively support staking SOL.

Open your preferred wallet. If you are using Phantom, you will need to click on your SOL balance to open the staking interface:

Either wallet has an option here to Stake SOL. On Phantom, click "Start earning SOL," or in Solflare, click "Stake":

Each wallet will present you with a search bar to select your validator of choice. You can search by name or address. Find the validator you want to stake with and enter the amount you wish to stake. Click "Stake" to confirm. If you need help finding a validator, there are a few resources available to help you find one:

• https://stakewiz.com/
• https://www.validators.app/

And that's it! With just a few clicks, your SOL is staked. As we mentioned, your stake will finish activating at the start of the next epoch. You can check the status of your stake in your wallet or on Solana Beach, https://solanabeach.io/address/YOUR_WALLET/stakes.

It's great that staking is so easy, but what if you want to automate the process? Or what if you want to use a paper wallet? Let's look at how to stake SOL using the Solana CLI and Solana-Web3.js.

Method 2 - Using Solana CLI

Let's start by creating a project directory with a folder for the CLI and a folder for the JavaScript API (which we will use later):

mkdir -p solana-staking/cli && mkdir -p solana-staking/web3js
cd solana-staking/cli

To stake using the Solana CLI, you will need a paper wallet. If you do not already have one, you can create one by entering the following command in your terminal:

solana-keygen new --no-passphrase -o wallet.json

This will create a new keypair and save it to a file called wallet.json. Your new PublicKey will be displayed in your terminal:

Generating a new keypair
Wrote new keypair to wallet.json
============================================================================
pubkey: Fzts...kjKb
===========================================================================

Make sure your paper wallet is funded with SOL. If you just created one, you can transfer funds from any wallet to the address displayed in your terminal.

Next, we need to create a stake account. Let's create another keypair called stake-account.json:

solana-keygen new --no-passphrase -s -o stake-account.json 

Note: we use the -s flag here because we do not need a seed phrase for this account.

Now we can create a stake account using the stake-account.json keypair by using the create-stake-account command:

solana create-stake-account stake-account.json 100 \
    ----from wallet.json \
    --stake-authority wallet.json --withdraw-authority wallet.json \
    --fee-payer wallet.json \
    --url mainnet-beta  # or testnet, devnet, localhost, or your QuickNode URL

Make sure you replace the --url flag with the correct network. If you use mainnet-beta, real funds will be transferred from your wallet.

You should now be able to verify your account was created by running:

solana stake-account stake-account.json

You should see your stake account's information displayed in your terminal:

Balance: 100 SOL
Rent Exempt Reserve: 0.00228288 SOL
Stake account is undelegated
Stake Authority: FztsbEJLCmdaeQWuJKZrQ8MjN1j3yVMftynzA5e8kjKb
Withdraw Authority: FztsbEJLCmdaeQWuJKZrQ8MjN1j3yVMftynzA5e8kjKb

You will notice that our stake still needs to be delegated to a validator--let's delegate it.

First, we need to find a validator's address. You can find a list of validators here or by entering solana validators -um (or -ud for devnet) in your terminal. Find a validator and copy their Vote Account address.

We will be using FwR3PbjS5iyqzLiLugrBqKSa5EKZ4vK9SKs7eQXtT59f on devnet.

Now you can delegate your stake by calling solana delegate-stake stake-account.json <VOTE_ACCOUNT>:

solana delegate-stake stake-account.json <VOTE_ACCOUNT> \ # replace <VOTE_ACCOUNT> with your validator's address
    --stake-authority wallet.json \ 
    --fee-payer wallet.json \
    --url devnet \ # or testnet, mainnet-beta, localhost, or your QuickNode URL
    --with-memo "Delegating stake test."

You should see a signature displayed in your terminal confirming the successful delegation. You can verify your stake was delegated by running solana stake-account stake-account.json -ud again:

Balance: 0.1 SOL
Rent Exempt Reserve: 0.00228288 SOL
Delegated Stake: 0.09771712 SOL
Active Stake: 0 SOL
Activating Stake: 0.09771712 SOL
Stake activates starting from epoch: 529
Delegated Vote Account Address: FwR3PbjS5iyqzLiLugrBqKSa5EKZ4vK9SKs7eQXtT59f
Stake Authority: FztsbEJLCmdaeQWuJKZrQ8MjN1j3yVMftynzA5e8kjKb
Withdraw Authority: FztsbEJLCmdaeQWuJKZrQ8MjN1j3yVMftynzA5e8kjKb

Nice job! Your stake should be activating and will start accruing rewards at the beginning of the next epoch.

Once your stake is active, you may want to deactivate the stake or withdraw some of the SOL from the account. You can use the deactivate-stake and withdraw-stake commands to do that.

To deactivate your stake, run:

solana deactivate-stake stake-account.json \
    --stake-authority wallet.json \
    --fee-payer wallet.json \
    --url devnet \

And to withdraw some of the SOL from your stake account, run:

solana withdraw-stake stake-account.json <DESTINATION> <AMOUNT> \
    --withdraw-authority wallet.json  \
    --fee-payer wallet.json \
    --url devnet \

Make sure to replace your --url with the appropriate network you are using (testnet, mainnet-beta, localhost, or your QuickNode URL).

You now have all the basics for staking SOL from the Solana command line. There are a few other commands that we did not cover here. Feel free to explore them independently by running solana -h in your terminal to see all the available commands.

Method 3 - Staking SOL with Solana's JavaScript API

To get started in JavaScript, let's navigate to our JS subdirectory that we created earlier. From your cli directory, run:

cd ../web3js

Create a tsconfig.json with .json importing enabled:

tsc -init --resolveJsonModule true

Install SolanaWeb3.js:

npm install @solana/web3.js # or yarn add @solana/web3.js

Create a new file called app.ts:

echo > app.ts

Let's follow the same naming conventions we did in the previous section and create a new keypair called wallet.json:

solana-keygen new --no-passphrase -o wallet.json 

Rather than having a single keypair for our stake account, we will use a keypair generator in our script to allow us to create multiple stake accounts.

Structure your project

Open app.ts in your favorite editor and add the following code:

import { Connection, PublicKey, Keypair, StakeProgram, LAMPORTS_PER_SOL, Authorized } from '@solana/web3.js'
import walletSecret from './wallet.json'

const connection = new Connection('http://127.0.0.1:8899', 'confirmed');
const wallet = Keypair.fromSecretKey(new Uint8Array(walletSecret));
const stakeAccount = Keypair.generate();
const validatorVoteAccount = new PublicKey("TBD");

async function main() {
    try {
        // Step 1 - Fund the wallet
        console.log("---Step 1---Funding wallet");
        await fundAccount(wallet, 2 * LAMPORTS_PER_SOL);
        // Step 2 - Create the stake account
        console.log("---Step 2---Create Stake Account");
        await createStakeAccount({ wallet, stakeAccount, lamports: 1.9 * LAMPORTS_PER_SOL });
        // Step 3 - Delegate the stake account
        console.log("---Step 3---Delegate Stake Account");
        await delegateStakeAccount({ stakeAccount, validatorVoteAccount, authorized: wallet });
        // Step 4 - Check the stake account
        console.log("---Step 4---Check Stake Account");
        await getStakeAccountInfo(stakeAccount.publicKey);
    } catch (error) {
        console.error(error);
        return;
    }
}

async function fundAccount(accountToFund: Keypair, lamports = LAMPORTS_PER_SOL) {

}
async function createStakeAccount({ wallet, stakeAccount, lamports }: { wallet: Keypair, stakeAccount: Keypair, lamports?: number }) {

}
async function delegateStakeAccount({ stakeAccount, validatorVoteAccount }: { stakeAccount: Keypair, validatorVoteAccount: PublicKey }) {

}
async function getStakeAccountInfo(stakeAccount: PublicKey) {

}

main();

What we are doing here is:

• Importing the necessary packages from SolanaWeb3.js and our wallet.json file
• Creating a connection to our local node (you may use a different cluster if you would like)
• Creating a new keypair for our stake account
• Creating a new PublicKey for our validator vote account (we have left this as "TBD" for now--we will need to replace this when we start our local validator)
• Creating a main function that will run all of our functions in order
• Creating four functions that we will fill in to fund, create, delegate, and get info about our stake account

Let's build out our functions one by one.

Step 1 - Fund the wallet

We will need some test SOL for implementing our transactions. Let's update the fundAccounts function with the following code:

async function fundAccount(accountToFund: Keypair, lamports = LAMPORTS_PER_SOL) {
    const { blockhash, lastValidBlockHeight } = await connection.getLatestBlockhash();
    try {
        const signature = await connection.requestAirdrop(accountToFund.publicKey, lamports);
        const result = await connection.confirmTransaction({ signature, blockhash, lastValidBlockHeight }, 'finalized');
        if (result.value.err) {
            throw new Error(`Failed to confirm airdrop: ${result.value.err}`);
        }
        console.log("Wallet funded", signature);
    }
    catch (error) {
        console.error(error);
    }
    return;
}

We simply pass a Keypair and request an airdrop of 1 SOL (or a user-specified amount) using the requestAirdrop method. We are waiting for the airdrop to be confirmed (finalized) on the network to ensure our funds are available for the subsequent steps.

Step 2 - Create the stake account

Next, we will create the stake account. Update the createStakeAccount function with the following code:

async function createStakeAccount({ wallet, stakeAccount, lamports }: { wallet: Keypair, stakeAccount: Keypair, lamports?: number }) {
    const transaction = StakeProgram.createAccount({
        fromPubkey: wallet.publicKey,
        stakePubkey: stakeAccount.publicKey,
        authorized: new Authorized(wallet.publicKey, wallet.publicKey),
        lamports: lamports ?? LAMPORTS_PER_SOL
    });
    try {
        const { blockhash, lastValidBlockHeight } = await connection.getLatestBlockhash();
        transaction.feePayer = wallet.publicKey;
        transaction.recentBlockhash = blockhash;
        transaction.lastValidBlockHeight = lastValidBlockHeight;
        transaction.sign(wallet, stakeAccount);
        const signature = await connection.sendRawTransaction(transaction.serialize());
        const result = await connection.confirmTransaction({ signature, blockhash, lastValidBlockHeight }, 'finalized');
        if (result.value.err) {
            throw new Error(`Failed to confirm airdrop: ${result.value.err}`);
        }
        console.log("Stake Account created", signature);
    }
    catch (error) {
        console.error(error);
    }
    return;
}

Let's break down what is happening here:

1. First, we define our transaction using the createAccount method from the StakeProgram class. We pass in the wallet's public key, the public key of the new stake account we generated earlier, the wallet's public key as the authorized staker, and the amount of SOL we want to stake (1 SOL by default). Note: if you have not used the StakeProgram class before, we encourage you to browse the documentation to learn more about the methods available to you.
2. Next, we get the network's latest blockhash and last valid block height. We then set the fee payer, recent blockhash, and last valid block height on our transaction.
3. We sign, send, and confirm the transaction using the wallet and stake account keypairs.

Now we have a funded stake account! Let's move on to the next step, delegating the stake account to a validator.

Step 3 - Delegate the stake account

Now that we have a funded stake account, we need to delegate it to a validator. Update the delegateStakeAccount function with the following code:

async function delegateStakeAccount({ stakeAccount, validatorVoteAccount, authorized }: { stakeAccount: Keypair, validatorVoteAccount: PublicKey, authorized: Keypair }) {
    const transaction = StakeProgram.delegate({
        stakePubkey: stakeAccount.publicKey,
        authorizedPubkey: authorized.publicKey,
        votePubkey: validatorVoteAccount
    });
    try {
        const { blockhash, lastValidBlockHeight } = await connection.getLatestBlockhash();
        transaction.feePayer = authorized.publicKey;
        transaction.recentBlockhash = blockhash;
        transaction.lastValidBlockHeight = lastValidBlockHeight;
        transaction.sign(authorized);
        const signature = await connection.sendRawTransaction(transaction.serialize());
        const result = await connection.confirmTransaction({ signature, blockhash, lastValidBlockHeight }, 'finalized');
        if (result.value.err) {
            throw new Error(`Failed to confirm airdrop: ${result.value.err}`);
        }
        console.log("Stake Account delegated to vote account", signature);
    }
    catch (error) {
        console.error(error);
    }
    return;
}

Like the previous step, we leverage the StakeProgram class to create our transaction. This time we call the delegate method and pass in the stake account's public key, the authorized staker's public key, and the validator vote account's public key. We then sign, send, and confirm the transaction using the authorized staker's keypair.

We should now have a funded and delegated stake account! Let's add one more function to verify that the stake account is activating.

Step 4 - Verify the stake account is activating

We can verify that the stake account is activating by calling the getStakeAccountInfo on the Connection class. Update the getStakeAccountInfo function with the following code:

async function getStakeAccountInfo(stakeAccount: PublicKey) {
    try {
        const info = await connection.getStakeActivation(stakeAccount);
        console.log(`Stake account status: ${info.state}`);
    } catch (error) {
        console.error(error);
    }
    return;
}

We simply pass in the stake account's public key and log the status of the stake account. We can now call this function to verify that the stake account is activating.

Run the script

Now that we have all of our functions defined let's test it out.

First, let's make sure our local cluster is running. If you closed it after the CLI staking exercise or did not complete the CLI staking exercise, you can start it up again by running the following command:

solana-test-validator

Before running our script, we must find our validator's vote account public key. We can do this by running the following command:

solana validators -ul

The -ul flag will ensure we are looking at the local cluster. Copy the Vote Account public key:

This is the voting account of our local validator. Let's update the validatorVoteAccount variable we defined earlier:

const validatorVoteAccount = new PublicKey("YOUR_VALIDATOR_VOTE_ACCOUNT");

In your second terminal, run the following command to execute the script:

ts-node app.ts

You should see the following output:

Congratulations! You have successfully created, funded, delegated, and activated a stake account using the Solana Web3.js library.

Method 4 - Liquid Staking

Liquid staking is a concept that allows users to stake their SOL while maintaining liquidity. Users can stake their SOL in exchange for a number of liquid staking tokens (e.g., mSOL, jitoSOL, etc.). This allows users to earn staking rewards while still being able to use their SOL in other applications. To deep dive into liquid staking, check out our guide.

Wrap Up

Staking SOL is a critical way to help secure the Solana network while earning rewards. You now have the tools to stake your own SOL or incorporate staking into your Solana dApps. Great job!

Show us what you are building on Twitter or Discord and reach out with questions in the QuickNode forum. We'd love to see what you are up to!

We ❤️ Feedback!

Let us know if you have any feedback or requests for new topics. We'd love to hear from you.

Resources

• Solana Validator Metrics
• StakeWiz
• Solana Beach Validator Explorer
• Solana CLI Documentation
• StakeProgram Class JS Documentation