I see MCF and it gives a high yield with 0% commission and others. But with these validators once you stake can they ever steal your Solana? and how long does it take to stake or unstake?

  • cogent_crypto@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Hey u/caseyrobinson2,

    Validator here 👋

    Natively staking to a validator is completely non-custodial which means you keep full custody of your SOL at all times. The validator has no control over your SOL, as the private keys always remain with yourself. When you stake, you are delegating your voting power to a particular validator/s. In return you are awarded staking rewards, which helps keep your SOL in line with Solana’s inflation schedule.

    As slashing isn’t currently in place on Solana, this isn’t something you need to worry about for now. The worst that can happen when staking is that a validator becomes delinquent or rugs commission (Sets commission to 100% at epoch boundary). In both these cases your SOL always remains safe as you have the private keys. It would just mean you would lose out on rewards for the period that the validator is delinquent/rugging commission. You will always be able to unstake and withdraw your SOL.

    StakeWiz.com is a brilliant tool that can be utilized to setup alerts in the above scenarios.

    Marinade Native is a great option too as it automatically delegates across top performing validators. Unlike liquid staking, there is no smart contract risk with this method.

    A hardware wallet is recommended to help secure your private keys further as it generates and keeps them offline.

    If you have any particular questions/concerns, we welcome you to reach out and would be more than happy to assist :)