TON Staking: How to Invest your Coins and Make Money

Despite TON's long history of siloed mining, from the beginning TON was built on the Proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus, the fundamental backbone of which is staking. In this article, we will break down what that is and how to make money from it.

Staking can be described as the analogue of bank deposits in the cryptoworld, and more specifically, it is a method of earning passive income by lending your personal coins to a nominator.

Earnings from mining and staking are fundamentally different. Unlike mining, you do not need to have computing equipment (this burden is placed on the shoulders of a validator), you only need an initial deposit of Toncoins, which will be frozen for the duration of the deposit.

In the examples below, we will run through several TON staking sites, detailing their features, the process of investing your coins, and explaining where the rewards for staking come from.

The main question you may have is where do the staking rewards come from? The answer is simple enough: the inflation.

Every year, the TON network issues 0.6% of its total issuance of new coins (that's about 30 million TON per year), all of which is distributed to validators and nominators as a reward for their work.

Validators and nominators are two key figures in blockchain:

• Validators are the ones who keep the entire blockchain running, a bit like classic miners, they just have more responsibility. Their role is to process transactions on the Web. They are required to have extremely powerful equipment and work around the clock without interruption.
  
  To motivate the validators to do their job properly, they are required to make a huge deposit of TON coins - a minimum of 350,000 TON. A large fine will be imposed on the validator for interruptions and erratic operation.
  
  However, even if a person has sufficiently powerful equipment and a desire to become a validator, not everyone will have such a massive deposit of coins. So, validators turn to nominators for help.
• Nominators are sponsors of the validators - users with huge stocks of TON coins, either their own or borrowed from ordinary users. Nominators have no responsibilities, their whole job is to pledge the necessary funds to the validator, in exchange for their interest from inflation.
• The distribution of revenue from the inflation system is usually as follows: 60% is taken by the nominator, 40% by the validator, and the proportionality of their contributions is also considered.
• Typically, the nominator has its own seed capital of Toncoins, but funds can also be lent to the nominator by ordinary users. In such cases, the nominator shares his income with the user who has lent him his funds, this is the income from the staking.

Official TON Foundation Staking
These are the official nominator smart contracts launched by TON developers. A catalogue of open nominator pools can be found on this page.

In this list, you can select a nominator to who your coins will be transferred for staking. To complete this, click on the wallet address. It should be noted that each nominator has its Telegram bot for technical support.

There is no fundamental difference between nominators - all have equal conditions, so you can choose anyone you wish. However, it is important to note that the amount of coins (TOTAL STAKE) invested in the pool must be at least 300 000 TON and not more than 900 000 TON. Otherwise, in the first case, the pool will be inactive, and in the second case, there will be a surplus of coins, which will reduce the overall yield in the pool.

After selecting the nominator, its wallet for transferring the funds will appear in the Address field, and you can also scan the QR code.

To invest your coins into Staking, send your coins with the comment "d" to the nominator's address. See the example below.

Do NOT deposit coins from exchanger wallets (FTX, EXMO etc). Almost all exchanges require a given message for deposit to identify a transaction. Pool returns funds without message, accordingly, exchange will not count transaction for coin return.

• The minimum deposit to invest is 10,001 TON. If you send less, the coins will automatically be returned to you, minus a Network fee. In future, the developers promise to lower the limit.
• Funds are blocked for at least 16 hours. Thereafter, you will be rewarded for every 24-hour period.
• The estimated yield is floating and is around 7-10% annually.
• To withdraw your funds, send 1 TON, but with the comment "w". The pool will then return all funds to you as soon as possible. Usually, it takes no more than a day.
• Withdrawal of funds is possible only to the wallet, from which it was deposited.
• Partial withdrawals are not possible, the pool will only return the full amount of the deposit upon request.

Staking from the TonWhales team
This used to be a large mining pool, but due to the end of mining, the project has completely re-qualified as a staking pool. The key difference from the official pool is affordability, the minimum deposit here is 50 TON.

To deposit coins into the staking pool, open the page and enter your TON wallet address in the field, then send the coins to the given address with the comment "Deposit". You can also use quick deposit buttons via TonHub or TonKeeper wallet.

See the example of how to send coins below.

Do NOT deposit coins from exchanger wallets (FTX, EXMO etc). Almost all exchangers require a specific message for deposit to identify the transaction. Pool returns funds without message, accordingly, exchange will not count transaction for return of coins.

• The minimum deposit is 50 TON.
• The yield is floating and at the time of writing is 9.7% annually.
• You may withdraw funds only to the same wallet from which you deposited them.
• Partial withdrawals are not possible, the pool will only refund the full amount of the deposit upon request.
• To withdraw coins you have to send 0.2 TON with the comment "Withdraw" to the same address.

Staking from Bit.com
Register with the crypto exchange Bit.com and then download its official app on this page. It requires document verification to invest.

In the app menu, find the Earn tab. Then select Toncoin from the list of cryptocurrencies. A list of available contracts for staking TON will open.

By the way, for new users, the exchange offers a time promotion - 200% annualised percentage rate for 8 days with a minimum deposit of 15 TON. You can read the terms and conditions and find out more about this promotion here.

The following contracts are also currently available:

• 15% annually for 30 days, with a minimum deposit of 300 TON (for new users).
• 1.5% annually for 30 days, minimum 50 TON.
• 1% annually for 14 days, minimum 50 TON.
  

To add funds to your wallet, go to Assets -> Deposit -> Toncoin.

Deposit is available in two networks - TON and ERC-20. If you are using standard coin, select TON network and send funds to a specified wallet, be sure to specify tag/message/memo given by the exchange. Otherwise, funds will not come.

If you use wrapped TON in the Ethereum network, select ERC-20 network, you will not need to specify tag in this case.

Currently, this is the only crypto exchange that does TON staking, but in the future the expansion of Toncoin to other exchanges is expected, it's only a matter of time. In particular, TON staking is expected to appear on the Matrixport exchange in the near future.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated or difficult to understand about staking. However, unlike mining, where one gets new coins with no investment (unless one considers buying equipment), staking carries risks.

Even though you are guaranteed to get new coins, no one is immune to a situation where the cryptocurrency drops significantly. A severe drop in the token's value could result in significant losses that would outweigh the earnings from staking, keep that in mind.