Solana staking, answered
Short answers to the questions SOL holders ask most. Each one links to a longer guide if you want the details.
Safety
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Your SOL stays in a stake account that only your wallet controls, and Solana has no on-chain penalty today that takes stake away. What you can lose is rewards: if your validator goes offline or raises its fees, you earn less. That's what our ratings and alerts help you watch.
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No. Delegating points your stake account at a validator; you lend it your voting weight, not your coins. Only your wallet can withdraw from the stake account. A bad validator can cost you rewards by going offline or raising its fees.
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Your stake stops earning while the validator isn't voting, but your SOL stays where it is. If it stays offline, you can move your stake to another validator from your wallet. Our Telegram bot can alert you when it happens.
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Staking from our validator page asks your wallet to sign one standard Solana staking transaction, which you can read before approving. We never ask for your seed phrase or private key — no legitimate site does.
Choosing a validator
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Start with red flags: skip validators that are offline, blacklisted, keep 100% of inflation rewards or raised fees recently. Then compare fees and the last 30 days of rewards. Our "Good for beginners" filter applies these rules for you.
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A 0–100 rating for every validator. Reliability counts for 65 points and fees for 35; being offline, blacklisted or taking 100% lowers it. 70 and above is rated Reliable. The full formula is public.
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It can be, but check how long it has kept 0%. New validators sometimes start at 0% to attract stake and raise fees later. Look at the fee history on its page and consider getting alerts if the commission changes.
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You can. Spreading stake over two or three validators means one going offline hurts less. Each stake account needs a small refundable deposit, so splitting very small amounts isn't worth it.
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More than 4,000,000 SOL staked with one validator — our own threshold. Very large validators concentrate the network; staking with smaller, well-run ones helps spread stake.
Rewards
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Rewards are paid every epoch, about every 1–2 days, at a yearly rate that changes. Your result depends on your validator's fees and uptime, and it's not a promise.
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Once per epoch, about every 1–2 days. A new stake starts earning after the next epoch begins, so your first reward arrives one to two epochs after you delegate.
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Mostly from new SOL issued by the network each epoch. Validators also earn MEV tips and transaction fees and may share part of them with stakers. The validator keeps its commission before your share is paid.
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Extra income validators earn from the order of transactions in blocks, paid through Jito. Validators that run Jito share part of it with stakers after their MEV commission.
Unstaking and moving
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You can unstake any time. Your SOL is usually free to withdraw by the next epoch, about 1–2 days, sometimes longer when many stakers exit at once.
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Moving stake means deactivating it and delegating again, so it stops earning for about one epoch. Some wallets do this in one step. Check your wallet's staking screen.
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No. On an exchange, the exchange holds your SOL, picks the validator and keeps a share of your rewards. In your own wallet, you keep control and choose the validator.
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Native staking keeps your SOL in your own stake account with no extra smart-contract layer. Liquid staking gives you a token you can use or sell right away, but adds the pool's smart contracts and fees.
Alerts and this site
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It watches your stake account using only your public address and messages you your rewards every epoch, plus an alert if your validator goes offline or changes its fees.
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Scores and rewards are recalculated after every epoch, about every 1–2 days; offline status updates every few minutes. Every page shows the epoch its data comes from.
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A Solana validator operator. Every validator, including any we might run in the future, is scored by the same public formula.