# Delegated Staking
# Overview
Delegated staking is a process by which a person can stake their own IO tokens on someone elses ar.io gateway. The additional staked tokens increase that gateway's chance to be selected as an observer, and so they have the potential to earn more rewards. In exchange, the person who delegates the tokens will receive a share of the gateway's rewards. Gateway operators can set the percentage of rewards are available for delegating wallets.
You can find more specific information about delegated staking and how rewards are distributed in the ar.io whitepaper (opens new window).
# Installing the Testnet Contract repo
Delegating tokens can be accomplished very easily by running a script found in the testnet-contract repo (opens new window) on Github.
If you already have the repo installed, make sure that it is updated to the latest version by opening it in a terminal and running git pull.
If you receive an error, try git stash to remove any changes you may have made locally and then git pull again.
If you do not have the repo installed, make sure that you have git (opens new window) installed on your computer, navigate to the location where you would like to save it, and run
git clone https://github.com/ar-io/testnet-contract
This will copy all of the files from github into a new folder on your computer.
# Installing dependencies
Once the repo is installed, you need to install the code that it relies on to work. We do this using Yarn (opens new window).
Navigate your terminal into the newly created repo folder.
cd testnet-contract
and then install dependencies with:
yarn install
# Providing Wallet
In order to send tokens to be staked, you will need to use a wallet that has IO tokens in it. The easiest way to provide your wallet is to put the path to your Keyfile in your .env as WALLET_FILE_PATH.
You will need a small amount of AR in this wallet, in addition to the IO tokens, in order to pay for the contract interaction.
//.env
WALLET_FILE_PATH=<path/to/wallet>
# Running the Script
Once the repo is installed and your wallet is provided, all that is left is to run the script. This can be done with a single command in your terminal.
Make sure your terminal is in the root folder of the testnet-contract repo (the one named 'testnet-contract'), and run this command:
yarn delegate-stake
You will be prompted in your terminal for the number of tokens you want to stake, and the wallet address of the target gateway.
# Withdrawing Stake
If you want to take your staked tokens out of a gateway, the process is very similar. You will be running the decrease-delegate-stake script instead of the delegate-stake script.
yarn decrease-delegate-stake
You will again be prompted for the number of tokens you want to withdraw and the wallet address of the gateway you want to withdraw from.
Only the wallet that owns the staked tokens can withdraw, so make sure you are using the same wallet to run the script as you used to stake the tokens initially.
NOTE: Token withdrawals are not instant, and there is a period where the tokens will remain unavailable after you run the script. The length of this hold may vary a bit during testnet while optimal times are iterated upon.