The Flow network has been stable and the Flow team is prepared to enable staking rewards today at 20:00 UTC, with the first rewards payouts in one week. These payouts will be the first liquid, transferable tokens, since all genesis tokens will take one year to unlock.
What is Flow?
Flow is an upcoming decentralized blockchain designed to be the foundation for a new generation of games, apps, and the digital assets that power them. The team is best known for the partnerships they have made with a number of well-known brands, like the NBA. The team developing Flow is Dapper Labs, the company behind Crypto Kitties.
What sets Flow apart from other networks? Flow reportedly has dramatic improvements in speed and throughput by separating the jobs of networks operators into four different roles, which should improve performance. The idea is that anyone with a reliable internet connection should be able to participate as a validator for Flow, at a variety of computational and financial tiers. Figment will initially run a Collector Node and a Consensus Node, and you can delegate tokens to back our operations to earn rewards.
Why stake your FLOW tokens with Figment?
EXPERIENCED & TRUSTED
Figment is a registered Canadian company based in Toronto. Canada offers stability, rule of law and clear crypto regulation.
Serving the world’s largest FLOW holders.
30+ years of experience successfully scaling internet infrastructure companies.
FEATURES & BENEFITS
Figment Prime & discounts available for large FLOW holders. Contact us for more information.
Active participant in the FLOW ecosystem.
SECURITY & SAFETY
The world’s most advanced physical IDC + multi-cloud staking infrastructure.
You maintain custody of your FLOW at all times.
Third-party custody solutions are available through our institutional partners. Contact us for more information.
Ready to Stake?
If you’re ready to stake, the easiest way to participate is with your Ledger hardware device. If you are using a third-party custody solution or would like an introduction, contact support@figment.io. If you have more questions before staking, we have likely answered your questions below.
Staking & delegation instructions
Figment’s Node Operator IDs:
a) Consensus Node 95d61bcc7202fe7d0558baede4cc17a56aac191a0cfd110fbf824e2ef71bd49c
b) Collection Node 1408c08272beb24ad4fe4e531a9b937a26ee72c5f56b50ac8f2b889c3c42d316
You can delegate to either of the two nodes, since initially all delegators will earn the same pro-rata rewards.
All FLOW tokens will initially be locked for one year, so if you have tokens, you should consider staking them. Here’s how:
- Either
a) Have your Ledger device ready with the Flow app installed
b) Have your Blocto login information ready - Head to https://port.onflow.org using Chrome or Brave browser and click ‘Sign In’
- Click ‘Stake & Delegate’ in the left margin of the dashboard, then the ‘Start Delegating’ button to begin.
- Initially it doesn’t matter which Figment node you choose to delegate your FLOW to. Figment’s Node Operator IDs:
a) 95d61bcc7202fe7d0558baede4cc17a56aac191a0cfd110fbf824e2ef71bd49c
b) 1408c08272beb24ad4fe4e531a9b937a26ee72c5f56b50ac8f2b889c3c42d316 - Review your transaction and have your Ledger active and ready, then submit your transaction.
Questions? Critical information about staking FLOW and the Flow Network
Where can I explore the Flow network and create a Flow wallet?
Wallet: https://port.onflow.org
Explorer: https://flow.bigdipper.live
Windows 10 Wallet Users
– In Chrome or Brave, navigate to chrome://flags#new-usb-backend
– set “Enable new USB backend” to disabled
– restart your browser and head to https://port.onflow.org
When are staking rewards enabled? When are transfers enabled?
We expect staking rewards to begin on Dec 16, 2020 (with payouts one week later, Dec 23).
While transfers should currently be enabled, the only circulating tokens in the first year are expected to be those distributed as rewards to stakers, so we don’t expect to see FLOW tokens being transferred until Dec 23, 2020.
What is the name of the asset being staked?
Flow’s native token, FLOW will be staked to capture new issuance rewards (and possibly transaction fee revenue; TBD). FLOW will also be used in these ways:
- Payment for computation and validation services (i.e., transaction fees)
- Medium of exchange
- Deposit for data storage
- Collateral for secondary tokens
- Participation in governance (eventually)
Which type(s) and what rate of rewards can I expect? Can I stake locked/vesting tokens?
Locked FLOW can be staked, and stakers are expected to earn newly-issued FLOW tokens (and possibly transaction fees; TBD).
We expect stakers to earn around 4.5% in new-issuance FLOW tokens annually, depending upon the proportion of the token supply is staked.
If 50% is staked, then rewards will be 7.5%, and if 83% is staked, rewards will be 4.5%. Since all tokens will initially be locked, there’s a strong incentive for nearly all of them to be staked. If 100% are staked, rewards will be 3.75% annually.
Detailed token economics information can be found here.
Do I maintain custody of my FLOW tokens? Who or what controls my staked FLOW token?
You can self-custody your FLOW tokens, ideally using a Ledger hardware wallet. These are the instructions for using your Ledger wallet with Flow. Shorter version is here.
Figment has partnerships with a number of top-in-class custodians: support@figment.io
The Flow protocol takes control of your FLOW tokens while you are staking. If you unbond your tokens, this process will take at most 14 days before the protocol returns your tokens to you, depending when you commit to unbonding.
While your FLOW are staked, you may participate in on-chain governance once it is enabled (initially governance will be controlled by Dapper Labs).
How long does it take to unstake?
In short: between 7 and 14 days.
From the moment you initiate the unbonding process, it takes between 7 and 14 days to unstake, depending upon when the request is made. An epoch is ~7 days, so your tokens will remain staked for the remainder of the epoch and then will take one additional epoch to unlock.
During the one-week unlock period (ie. epoch) you will not earn rewards. When the process is complete, you will be able transfer/trade your FLOW tokens.
Can my staked FLOW be slashed (seized or destroyed)?
In short: no, not initially (but we expect slashing to be enabled eventually)
Initially no, but we expect that eventually the rules will change such that a portion of your staked FLOW can be destroyed if you have delegated to a malicious or insecure validator. We will update this page when those conditions are enabled.
Can I lose potential staking rewards?
No. Rewards will be paid to staked nodes and their delegators each week, regardless of uptime. Dapper Labs is only expected to remove nodes if the nodes unstake their bonded tokens, otherwise delegators expected to earn rewards indefinitely.
How can I optimize my staking income?
Stake as soon as possible. Essentially it doesn’t matter which nodes stakers delegate to initially: all stakers will earn the same rewards rate pro-rata.
In future, however, delegators will likely need to shuffle their delegations to be aligned with the staking ratios to different node types, at which time they’ll have to unbond (ie. wait 7 – 14 days without rewards for 7 days) and then rebond to a new node to be more economically efficient.
While the above may seem complex, Figment will publish guides to assist delegators and we will provide dedicated attention to Figment Prime customers.
What is the rate of new issuance (aka “annual inflation”) for FLOW? How does the token supply change?
New FLOW tokens will be minted (ie. created) and then distributed to stakers at a rate of 3.75% of the total supply yearly. All transactions fees get deposited to a fee vault in the Service Account (controlled by Dapper Labs), and the fate of these tokens will be determined by the team over the next few months.
How are changes to the Flow network decided upon and executed? ie. How is Flow governed?
The Flow Service Account has special permissions to change critical aspects of the network, including minting/burning tokens and changing the core protocol. This account will be controlled by the Flow team, Dapper Labs, at network launch. Here are the key details from the Flow team’s documentation.
Flow Service Account
The Service Account is a special account in Flow that has special permissions to manage system contracts. It is able to mint tokens, set fees, and update network-level contracts.
Tokens & Fees
The Service Account has administrator access to the FLOW token smart contract, so it has authorization to mint and burn tokens. It also has access to the transaction fee smart contract and can adjust the fees charged for transactions execution on Flow.
Network Management
The Service Account administrates other smart contracts that manage various aspects of the Flow network, such as epochs and (in the future) validator staking auctions.
Governance
Besides its special permissions, the Service Account is an account like any other in Flow. During the early phases of Flow’s development, the account will controlled by keys held by Dapper Labs. As Flow matures, the service account will transition to being controlled by a smart contract governed by the Flow community.
Where can I learn more about Flow?
- Coinlist published a great overview and token distribution disclosure.
- The Flow team published an in-depth token economics document.
- The Flow team published documentation about staking.
- The Flow team hosts a Discord channel and this is their Twitter account.
- The Flow team has published their technical papers here.
