Stake & Unstake

Lido for Polkadot is a liquid staking solution for DOT backed by industry-leading staking providers.

Lido lets users earn DOT staking rewards without needing to maintain infrastructure and enables them to trade staked positions, as well as participate in on-chain decentralized finance with their staked assets.

Lido for Polkadot gives you:

• Liquidity through tokenization — no activation delays and the ability to sell your staked tokens or use them as collateral in decentralized finance;
• One-click staking — no complicated steps;
• Decentralized security — assets spread across the industry’s leading validators chosen by the Lido DAO.

DOT is Polkadot's native token. DOT is not ERC20 token and cannot be used by Moonbeam parachain users. To get around that, xcDOT comes into play. xcDOT is ERC20 compatible token on the Moonbeam network, which can be received by users in exchange for DOT. A DOT holder locks their DOT on Polkadot and gets the same amount of xcDOT on their Moonbeam account using the Transfer tab.

You can use bridges or exchanges to deposit ERC20 and withdraw native DOT tokens.

A xcDOT token holder connects their wallet and deposits their tokens into the Lido program. They immediately receive stDOT tokens that represent a share of the total pool, and the Lido program delegates DOT to Lido-controlled validators on the Polkadot network. When these delegations accrue rewards on the allotted stake, the total DOT under management grows and this increases the value of stDOT tokens.

Liquid staking protocols allow users to earn staking rewards without locking assets or maintaining staking infrastructure. Users can deposit tokens and receive tradable liquid tokens in return. Liquid staking combines the benefits of staking (earning rewards) and brings liquidity, as well as additional possibilities to increase your assets or hedge your positions by participating in DeFi.

Furthermore, the Lido program stakes these tokens with DAO-elected staking providers. As users' funds are controlled by the program, staking providers never have direct access to the users' assets. Additionally, by involving different staking providers, Lido diversifies risks across multiple validators.

stDOT is a liquid token that represents your share of the total xcDOT pool deposited with Lido. As soon as you delegate to the pool, you receive the newly minted stDOT. Over time, as your DOT delegation accrues rewards, the amount of your stDOT increases. Interestingly, there is no waiting time for receiving stDOT tokens. When a user delegates their DOT tokens, they do not need to perform or wait for the completion of any delegation or activation steps, as is the norm in traditional staking. The user can instantly exchange stDOT for xcDOT at any time in the open market.

LDO is a token granting governance rights in the Lido DAO. The Lido DAO decides on the key parameters (e.g., fees) and executes protocol upgrades to ensure efficiency and stability. By holding the LDO token, one is granted voting rights within the Lido DAO. The more LDO a user holds, the greater decision-making power they have when voting.

As of now, we support only Metamask. We are working on the adoption of other commonly used wallets.

In traditional Polkadot staking a user has to perform several steps manually:

• Create a Stash Account and bond DOT to it;
• Nominate validators;
• Monitor validator's yield to maximize profit.

Staking on Polkadot requires expert knowledge, the main being the fact that slashing can get very severe if the staking is managed improperly.

Staking DOT through Lido will come with a variety of benefits:

• One-step process — just deposit into the pool with a single click.
• The pool takes care of validator diversification.
• Immediate appreciation — you start earning from the pool from the moment of deposit.

Withdrawals of xcDOT from the Lido program can be done through the Unstake tab. However, unstaking directly from the Lido program will incur the Polkadot stake unbonding period, which is roughly 30 days. Immediate withdrawal options will be available in the open market through liquidity pools on AMM protocols and other DEXes where one will be able to immediately exchange stDOT for xcDOT. If you wish to instantly receive xcDOT, we recommend trading stDOT directly on an exchange.

xcDOT can be instantly exchanged for DOT through the Transfer tab.

GLMR is Moonbeam’s native token. As on Ethereum, the Moonbeam network charges some fee to execute a transaction. When you perform Stake, Unstake, Claim, or Transfer, you have to pay a transactional cost, so you should hold GLMR on your Moonbeam balance to cover it.

These fees are relatively small and substantially lower than 0.001 GLMR.

Learn more on Moonbeam official site

Your current stDOT balance also indicates the number of DOT it is worth. This means that if you were to redeem all of your stDOT tokens today, you would receive the indicated number of DOT tokens. If you subtract this DOT amount from the amount of DOT invested in the Lido program, you get your lifetime earnings. You can also see the annualized APR for staking with Lido on the Moonbeam network.

• Downtime risk Polkadot validators can go offline, in which case they do not earn staking rewards. To minimize this risk, Lido stakes across multiple professional and reputable node operators with heterogeneous setups. This will also serve to mitigate potential slashing risks.

• stDOT price risk As mentioned above, withdrawals from the Lido program take some time to deactivate. Liquidity pools in the open market will be available for instantly redeeming stDOT for DOT. On such pools, users risk an exchange price of stDOT, which is lower than the inherent value due to withdrawal restrictions on Lido, making arbitrage and risk-free market-making impossible. The Lido DAO is driven to mitigate the above risks and eliminate them to the extent possible. Despite this, they may still exist, and hence it is our duty to communicate them.

Lido applies a 10% fee on a user's staking rewards. This fee is split between node operators, the DAO treasury, and Lido for Polkadot developers. This fee cut is applied to incentivize Lido maintainers.

In the Polkadot network unbonding period usually takes 30 days.

When unbonding period is over, you can claim your xcDOT tokens, that your request for redeem, simply by clicking on the "Claim" button on the "Unstake" page.