What is stake?

In the Arcblock blockchain system, staking is a way to gain benefits privileges and prevent malicious behavior. Simply put, staking is like temporarily locking your assets in a specific account to gain certain advantages or privileges, while also serving as a deterrent. Specifically, users need to lock some assets into a designated DID account and specify slashers and a revoke waiting period. Staking is similar to a deposit; users can choose to stake a certain amount of ABT tokens to gain the following benefits:

1. Gas Fee Exemption: By staking ABT tokens, users can enjoy transaction fee exemptions, similar to how banks waive certain service fees for account holders with significant deposits.
2. Cross-Chain Bridge Earnings: Staking ABT tokens also allows users to participate in the cross-chain bridge and earn corresponding rewards, much like investing in financial products.
3. Application Deployment: When users want to publish their own applications in the Blocklet Store, they also need to stake a certain amount of ABT. This ensures that if the application is found to be malicious, the staked ABT tokens will be forfeited, similar to how a deposit is forfeited if a contract is breached.

In Blocklets developed on the Arcblock platform, developers can design staking scenarios to offer benefits or discounts to stakers, verify users' asset holdings, or restrict service provision to users to prevent malicious behavior.

Which Assets Can Be Staked?#

Any asset on the Arcblock chain can be staked. This includes native tokens like ABT as well as user-issued NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

Where Are Staked Assets Stored?#

Staked assets are stored in a dedicated address generated based on the DID: ABT protocol. The staked assets cannot be transferred to other accounts and can only be withdrawn by the original account or forfeited by the designated slasher account.

Who Can Unstake Assets?#

The account that initiated the staking can unstake assets at any time, but withdrawing the funds requires a revoke waiting period. This is similar to fixed-term deposits in banks, where funds cannot be withdrawn immediately to prevent hasty withdrawals after malicious actions.