HYDRA fans, this is for you. As you probably know, delegated HYDRA staking is now a standard offering of Changex and, of course, a guide is in order.
If you’re still not familiar with delegated staking (or delestaking), please refer to this article — it maps all the benefits that delegated staking in Changex offers (and the complicated alternative).
Now, let’s get to the actual process of delegated staking, also known as offline staking.
Prerequisites
Well, you need HYDRA surely. A minimum of 100 coins to be exact. This is not an attempt to divide users — the HydraChain blockchain just really prefers its staking transactions in chunks of anything between 100 and 200 HYDRA. This size (100–200 HYDRA in one UTXO, i.e. staked in one single transaction) is thus the optimal one when it comes to staking.
By the way, if you don’t have one, a Changex wallet might be a good idea too. You can use it to easily top-up your HYDRA balance in case you’re a few coins short.
Get it here: Changex for iOS | Changex for Android.
Delegated staking in Changex
The process
1. Go to your Changex main wallet screen, where all currently supported coins are listed.
2. Either click on the “Stake” tab on the bottom or tap the HYDRA wallet and then choose “Stake”. You will then arrive here:
3. Tap on Hydra DELEGATED — you will see the following screen:
4. In the above screen, the top field shows you how much HYDRA is currently staked. The “Earned” field tells you how much you have earned until now. Below it is the current APY (55.52% at time of writing) and the service fee paid to the superstaker — this is deducted from your staking rewards, not from your entire staking balance!
NB: If you’re seeing a “How to qualify” blue button at the bottom, this simply means you need to top-up your HYDRA balance in the staking wallet until it reaches a minimum of 100 coins.
5. If you qualify, then you see the “Stake balance” button same as the screenshot above. Tapping the button takes you to the following screen:
6. Once here, tap on the “Confirm” button and finish your transaction on the next screen.
Congrats — your HYDRA is staked and earning. Yes, it’s that easy.
Now, at some point you will see an “Optimize Transactions” button in place of the “Confirm” button which might cause some head scratching. Fear not, we explain below.
So, what does the “Optimize Transactions button” do?
There is no need to go head first into the tech behind it, so, put simply, the Optimize button prepares your HYDRA for optimal staking conditions. This helps the staking node (Changex) to stake your Hydra efficiently, which in turn helps everyone’s APR. The button will only show up if optimization is needed.
Why do you need to optimize?
When you deposit Hydra into your staking wallet, it comes in one piece (UTXO). The staking system prefers pieces that are between 100 to 200 Hydra each. Whenever a block is mined, one piece (UTXO) of HYDRA gets locked out for ~17.7 hours for the Delegator (meaning you), while another piece (from the superstaker, i.e. Changex) also goes for maturing for the same amount of time.
If you have 5000 HYDRA and all your HYDRA is all in one piece (UTXO), that would not be a very efficient way of staking as the entire 5000 HYDRA would get locked out whenever you win a block. This is where optimization comes in: it splits the 5000 HYDRA into 50 pieces of 100 coins each. That way, only one 100 HYDRA chunk gets locked, while the other 4900 coins remain available for staking.
When should you optimize?
The “Optimize transactions” button will show up for you only when you need to optimize your HYDRA. This happens whenever your HYDRA balance reaches a multiple of 100 coin chunks.
Example: if your balance is currently 1134 Hydra, the button will show up if you haven’t optimized earlier. The next time you need to optimize (and the button shows up) will be when your balance crosses 1200 HYDRA. Essentially, optimizations should only be done on two occasions:
- As soon as you stake you HYDRA
- Whenever the button shows up (i.e. when your total balance + rewards reaches multiple chunks of 100 coins each)
The Optimize button should ONLY be pressed after you have successfully staked your HYDRA coins. Once clicked, you can expect to see this reassuring green checkmark.
And that’s it — you know everything there is to know about optimizing your staking wallet!
Transaction fees for delegated staking
Delegated (decentralized) staking means that everything happens on the blockchain. Every transaction has fees that the blockchain takes in its native coin, in our case — HYDRA. The approximate fees that may be charged for the various transactions are as follows:
- Staking (delegation) fees — our observations suggest that the fee is from $6 to $8 worth of HYDRA. The blockchain may deduct a larger amount of HYDRA but once the transaction goes through it will refund the excess.
- Compounding — staking HYDRA in Changex is not favorable for compounding because the minimum amount needed to stake in one go is 100 HYDRA. This means that you need to reach 100+ HYDRA before you can optimize unless rewards are optimized regularly.
- Optimization fees — depending on the number of UTXOs being optimised, the fees will vary. For example, if you receive 5 HYDRA as rewards every 10 days (this is one UTXO), then after 210 days you will get a chance to optimize (that’s how long it would take to have 100+ HYDRA from staking rewards). Optimization of these 21 UTXOs can cost between 1.5 to 2.5 HYDRA depending on the price of the token.
- Unstaking fees — if you decide to stop staking, then you will need to unstake. This applies regular transaction fees.
Some important points
- Delegation needs to be done only once. Any amount added to or spent from your wallet will automatically affect the amount staked.
- Delegation can cost anything between 3 to 7 HYDRA depending on the current price of the HYDRA token.
- You delegate your entire wallet for staking. This means that the coins do not leave your wallet, therefore you can still access and use them normally.
- When HYDRA is added to your staking wallet, it needs to mature. This period takes ~17.7 hours after you add new HYDRA to your wallet or after you press the “Optimize transactions” button.
- The delegation transaction needs to be done only once, i.e. there is no need for restaking — the rewards are automatically added to your existing balance.
- New HYDRA can be added to the wallet without the need to stake again — it is staked automatically. Must be 100 HYDRA or more.
- The fees for transaction optimization are explained here.
- Displayed APY in-app is indicative. The displayed APY is calculated and derived from the Hydra Explorer API
Final words
There you have it — what is (probably) the most comprehensive guide on delegated HYDRA staking! We hope you found it useful and things are clearer now, especially when it comes to optimizations. If not, we are available night and day in the official Changex Telegram group where your questions are always welcome.
Thanks for reading,
The Changex team
