You maintain custody of your ATOMs at all times.

Your ATOMs stay in your wallet and you can change your delegation at any time.

All ATOM token transfers, including rewards, are processed within the Cosmos protocol.  Figment never has custody of your tokens or rewards.

There is a 21-day unbonding period to transfer your tokens after staking.  During the unbonding period, your ATOMs are illiquid and may still be subject to slashing.

Figment provides a  100% missed reward guarantee for any missed rewards due to liveness (downtime).

Your tokens are subject to a potential 5% slashing a validator “double-signs.” See how Figment approaches infrastructure and operations to protect against double signing here and here.

Figment has a near perfect operating record and has never missed rewards for downtime or been slashed.

• Decentralized finance
• Decentralized VPN services
• Global money transfer
•  Internet service provider (ISP) mesh networks
• Sustainability research
• A value-sharing content economy

• Fast-growing ecosystem: IRISnet, Terra, Kava, and over 90 others
• Diverse community: professional validator set, grassroots community; institutional backers
• Community strength: multiple wallets & explorer tools; hackathons; independent projects; >70% of circulating tokens staked

Good question!

The main drivers of the ATOM’s value could be more than transaction fees. ATOM-holders should be able to somehow extract value related to the “assets under management” that the Cosmos Hub secures (via products like DeFi). In a world of thousands of connected blockchains, credibility could be the scarcest resource, and the Hub aims to be the most credible. Owning staked ATOMs is ownership of the Cosmos Hub, entitling ATOM stakers to set/change the rules of the Hub. Read more here.

In Cosmos, validators that have poor performance or violate protocol rules my have up to 5% of tokens staked slashed

Slashing occurs when a validator signs signs two blocks at the same height, which is called double signing. This is most likely to occur when a validator mistakenly activates a backup validator when their primary validator is still online.

For this reason, Figment has prioritized avoidance of double signing over liveness (uptime). There is no slashing for limited validator downtime. Be cautious of validators that have only cloud-based infrastructure or complicated software based redundancy systems aimed at minimizing liveness. Complicated redundant backup systems to optimize for uptime can result in double signing and thus slashing.

There is no minimum amount of tokens required to validate, as long as the total delegation allows the validator to breach the top 125 among its peers.

Until IBC (inter-blockchain communication) is enabled, there is really only one type of reward: inflationary block rewards. That’s because transaction volume is so low that we consider the fees to be negligible, compared with the block reward amount. Read more about IBC here.

Currently the Cosmos Hub pays delegators roughly 7% rewards in ATOMs per year. The annual inflation rate changes depending on the percentage of the network tokens staked. When less than two-thirds of all tokens are staked, inflation gradually increase up to 20%. When over two-thirds of tokens are staked, the network inflation rate gradually decreases to 7%.

Read more about how inflation and rewards are related here. As of February 2020, the network staking rate is over 70%.

Rewards are liquid and distributed automatically. Token-holders must withdraw their rewards and then delegate them if they wish to compound rewards.

Figment is never in control of the rewards.

Rewards are liquid and do not have the same 21 day unbonding period as the staked tokens.

Rewards can be tracked via Hubble, Figment’s multi-blockchain staking explorer. Scroll up near the top where it says “Already Delegating?” and enter your public Cosmos account address. We will generate your staking rewards report, which may be downloaded in CSV format.