ICON (ICX) Project: How to Earn Staking Rewards Using ICONex Desktop Wallet
ICX Staking Rewards
ICX token holders are able to earn Staking Rewards ~everyday (in actuality, after every 43,120 blocks are produced on the ICON network, which currently takes a tad longer than 24 hours) by first staking, and then following up by voting for individual Public Representatives (P-REPs).
What is a P-REP?
For longer-term HODLers (i.e., non-traders), the fact that you can earn a “passive income” via owning ICX tokens might be music to your ears!
How much passive income can you earn?
Luckily for ICONists, there are useful tools such as ICX Stakr that are available to assist you.
For example, you can simply input the number of ICX tokens you hold into the Reward Calculator and press the “Calculate” button.
Let’s say an ICONist owns 10,000 ICX tokens; their Staking Rewards might look something like the following:
To get a sense of what the inflation-adjusted “real yield” of ICX is, please visit Staked.
Now, let’s go over the step-by-step process on how ICONists can earn Staking Rewards.
Staking
1) First, open up your ICONex wallet via Google Chrome Extension.
As highlighted below on the main menu, if you own ICX tokens in your wallet, the “Total Assets” display will show a non-zero number.
In this example, our ICONex wallet contains 11 un-staked ICX tokens, which were valued at $3.345 USD at the time of writing).
2) Next, to start the staking process, click the “Voting” tab.
3) From here, you will want to click the “My Status” section.
4) Under “Wallet Name” use the “Select” drop down menu and find the wallet you want to use for staking.
5) Enter you password and press the “Confirm” button.
6) Next, check that the “Un-staked ICX” displayed for your wallet is non-zero, which means we have available ICX tokens for staking. Press the “Adjust” button to proceed.
7) On the following screen, again, make sure there is a non-zero remaining percentage in “Un-Staked” and ICX tokens available under “Un-Staked (ICX)”.
8) You can use the slider to adjust the percentage of ICX tokens you wish to stake.
9) In this example, we will move the slider to “Max Stake” (adding 10 additional ICX tokens for staking).
It’s really up to you how many ICX tokens you want to stake; the more you stake, the more you will earn.
You can stake up to a maximum until you leave behind~1 ICX token left un-staked (this is your reserve balance needed to pay and transaction fees). In this example, with ~20 ICX tokens in our wallet, we are able to stake a maximum of 94.9% (again, leaving behind 1 ICX token for reserve).
10) Press the “Complete” button to complete the staking process.
11) You should then receive a message acknowledging that your “Request for Stake has been completed.” You can press the “Check Transaction” button to view the tracker information of your transaction.
After a few moments, the “Status” row should confirm your staking transaction was a “Success”, with multiple confirmations in the “Block Height” section.
Upon being re-directed back to the “My Status” section of the “Voting” tab, we should be able to verify that the percentage of staked ICX tokens, and corresponding balances under “ICX Balance”, “Staked ICX”, and “Un-staked ICX” are correct.
As highlighted above, from our example, we were able to stake an additional 10 ICX tokens (for a total of 19, from 9 previously), while being forced to leave behind 1 ICX token un-staked (again, for reserve balance).
The important takeaway is to see that our 19 staked ICX tokens are all there!
Only now, those 19 ICX tokens are unavailable for trading (like a time deposit “locked up” at a bank).
But don’t worry, you can un-stake at anytime to retrieve full access to your ICX tokens (which we will cover in a separate article).
Voting
To earn Staking Rewards, the next step that an ICONist must take is to vote.
Please note: Staking your ICX tokens alone will NOT earn you any Staking Rewards!
In order to earn Staking Rewards, you must stake + vote.
You have to do both!
And it’s necessary to stake first before you’re allowed to vote.
1) Once you’ve finished staking your ICX tokens, to start the voting process, you will want to stay on the “My Status’ section of the “Voting” tab and first make sure you have “Available Voting Power”. Since we just staked 10 new ICX tokens in the previous staking example, we are good to go here.
2) Press the “Vote” button to proceed.
On the next screen, any P-REP team that you previously voted for will be highlighted below, and under “My Votes” it will show how many teams you’re currently voting for (a maximum of 10 distinct teams can be voted for, per ICONex wallet).
However, if this is your first time voting, “My Votes” will display 0/10, and there will be no P-REP teams highlighted. In any case, “Available” votes should be a non-zero percentage (in this example, we have 52.7% available), again, indicating to us that we have staked ICX tokens (in this example, we have 10 ICX tokens available) that we can use to assign votes to.
3) If you scroll down, you will see a list of P-REP teams that you can vote for. Currently, the ICONex online desktop wallet lists P-REP teams in random order. Once you find a team that you wish to vote for, press the “+” button found immediately to the left of the listed team.
Please note: Although voters are free to vote for ANY P-REP that they want (there are no penalties incurred to voters for ANY of their selections!), in general, it’s ALWAYS good practice to try and vote for the hardest-working + most productive teams on the ICON network.
“Hard-working” and “most productive” are of course subjective, so please do your own research + due diligence first, before making your choices. You can start looking into what P-REPs are working on by utilizing resources such as the ICON P-REPs website.
There’s absolutely no reason to rush, so please take your time to make an informed decision!
Voting for the right teams ensure that the right P-REPs get the funding needed to both secure + grow the ICON ecosystem.
However, voting for the wrong teams will only reward non-productive people who contribute little to nothing in growing the ICON ecosystem; the only real outcome here is unnecessary inflation created that harms all ICONists.
Your votes matter, so please vote wisely!
4) Once you are done making your P-REP selections (remember, you can vote for a maximum of 10 teams per wallet, but you can always elect to vote for less, like say even just 1 team, if you’d like), use the “-” and “+” buttons to allocate votes to your preference.
5) As you adjust your votes, you’ll notice that the “Delegated” percentage will start to update, alongside the “Available” percentage, reflecting your actions. Once you’ve allocate all your staked ICX tokens for voting, “Delegated” will display 100.0%, “Available” will show 0.0%, and “ICX” will read 0.0000.
Please note: To earn the MAXIMUM number of Staking Rewards possible, you should vote 100% of your staked tokens.
In our example, we were able to delegate a total of 19 ICX tokens (delegating 10 additional ICX tokens, from 9, previously), to gives us a full 100% delegation.
6) When you are ready to cast your votes, press the “Vote’ button.
7) You’ll have one more chance to review your delegations before finalizing your votes. If you are happy with your selections, press the “Vote” button again.
8) Your votes should now be recorded on the ICON network. You can hit the “Close” button to complete the voting process.
It’s worth pointing out that after voting, if we navigate page to the home page of ICONex, we will see that the “Total Assets” will show a smaller number than before we started the staking + voting process.
In our example, “Total Assets” has reduced to $0.333 USD, which reflects the fact that now 100.0% of our ICX tokens are voted for. Also, as highlighted below, our “ICON” balance now shows just 0.99762401 tokens (again, this represents the ~1 ICX we had to leave un-staked for reserve balance). In addition, “Voting Power” will show 0.0000 ICX, further confirming that all of the staked ICX tokens held in our wallet have also been used for voting.
Rest assured, though, that all your ICX tokens are still there, and nothing was lost during the staking + voting process.
As shown below, the total “ICX Balance” is 19.9980, “Available” is 0.9976, and “Staked” is 19.0004, which illustrates a more complete picture of what’s actually going on.
I-Score
As mentioned earlier, Staking Rewards are distributed and can be claimed by ICONists ~everyday (after every 43,120 blocks are produced on the ICON network).
Please note: The first time around (immediately after voting), it will take ~48 hours (~2 days) before your Staking Rewards will show up in your wallet.
To receive daily notifications when I-Score has been distributed, please consider the following options:
- I-Score Distribution Telegram Bot
- Rhizome MetrICX 2.0 App for smartphone
1) To check your Staking Rewards, from the home page, click on the “Voting” tab.
2) Next, click on the “My Status” section.
3) Under “Wallet Name” use the “Select” drop down menu and find the wallet you want to use to claim Staking Rewards.
4) Enter you password and press the “Confirm” button.
The following screen should look familiar (it’s same section we navigated to earlier to stake + vote).
5) Now, if we keep scrolling down past the “Stake” and “Vote” sections, we will find “I-Score”.
I-Score is the reward an ICONist earns for staking + voting; I-Score can be claimed and “redeemed” for newly minted ICX tokens.
1,000 I-Score = 1 ICX token
However, keep in mind, immediately following staking + voting, our balance for both “Current I-Score” and “You can receive” will initially display 0.
Please note: Again, as a reminder, after our first time staking + voting, it will take ~48 hours (~2 days) for both “Current I-Score” and “You can receive” to show non-zero.
Moving forward after that, I-Score should be rewarded ~everyday (after every 43,120 blocks are produced on the ICON network).
When I-Score is available in your wallet, both “Current I-Score (ISC)” and “Receivable amount (ICX)” will show a non-zero number.
6) When you are ready to claim I-Score, press the “Claim” button.
Please note: It only really makes sense to claim I-Score if your “You can receive (ICX)” amount is much greater than the “Estimated Maximum Fee”.
Otherwise, you may want to wait a few days/weeks/months to let I-Score keep accumulating, to reduce the total number of transaction fees.
In general the larger your ICX holdings, the less of a burden these individual transaction fees will impose.
8) Press the “Claim” button to execute the transaction and claim your I-Score.
You should receive a confirmation that your request to claim I-Score has been completed.
That’s all there is to it to earning Staking Rewards!
Thanks for reading. Salamat po!
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