Energy Web Token Staking
Staking will be a crucial component of this new energy grid to operate. The decentralized operators of the grid need to guarantee the availability of their service. Like the markets operate today. This decentralized Service Level Agreement will provide a decentralized curation and trust mechanism on the platform.
Energy Web Token Staking is like and accessible to Patrons at Staking Pool (stake-ewt.io)
In the current first phase, staking rewards will be fixed and dependent only on the amount of EWT deposited into the staking contract. Energy Web Community Fund will pay compounding rewards every hour. This first stage is necessary to test in the real world 2 essential components of dSLA:
The staking mechanism itself, including the user interface, email verification and the staking smart contracts.
Decentralized, role-based authorization system, which allows the staking contracts to interact with staking patrons. This will later enable clients to identify the service providers and grid-connected devices. This implementation of decentralized identifiers (DID) and decentralized authorization is the only way of bringing together all the parties on the platform that doesn’t require any integration.
Read more about our Decentralied Service Level Assurance platform here:
Decentralized Service Level Assurance Lightpaper: How $EWT, DIDs, and dSLA power the clean energy transition
How $EWT, DIDs, and dSLA power the clean energy transition
This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or a solicitation for investment.. By staking your EWT you are accepting potential risks
Please, bear with us if you experience bugs on https://www.stake-ewt.io/ while going through the staking process. Just let us know about your issues in our Discord and we will address any widespread problems.
Follow this guide. There may be other wallets/tools not included in this guide that will also work for you. If you use them successfully, please share your success stories on Discord. However, if you encounter problems and you are not following this guide exactly, we may not be able to prioritise helping you.
Staking disclaimer (Last updated December 15, 2021)
On behalf of the Energy Web Chain Community Fund, thank you for choosing to be part of testing the EWT Community Fund Staking initiative. We’ve taken the utmost measures to ensure that this pilot is safe, secure and in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.
EWT Staking on stake-ewt.io is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis without any representation or warranty. Any data shared with stake-ewt.io is kept safe with appropriate technical and organizational security measures, and adherence to privacy regulations.
By participating in this pilot you accept all the involved risks and understand that you cannot hold Energy Web Foundation, its subsidiaries and any of Energy Web Community members and Validators liable.
All cryptocurrencies, including EWT, may experience price volatility. If you buy EWT to stake, then you are accepting this volatility risk.
Managing your own crypto comes with benefits (independence from exchanges, ability to stake!), risks (permanent loss due to losing your keys or transferring crypto to the wrong wallet), and responsibilities (backing up your keys, double-checking before transferring crypto).
You will be entrusting your EWT to a Staking smart contract that has been audited and open-sourced. An audit is a vote of confidence from subject matter experts, but it is not a guarantee that the smart contracts or any associated system are completely free of bugs. Participate at your own risk.
Your EW Chain wallet will need to hold (a small amount) EWT to proceed from here. If you’re totally new to EWT, check out this guide on what EWT is and how it works.
If you own EWT but are new to self-custody (i.e. managing your own crypto wallet), seek out beginner guides from reputable sources on secure key management (there are many written on securing Ether that also apply to EWT).
Pro Tip: When withdrawing EWT from an exchange to your personal wallet, first start with a small test withdrawal and verify everything works as expected before withdrawing more.
You can now proceed with the staking authorization process.
Now that you have an EW Chain wallet loaded with EWT, you are ready to complete the staking authorization process, which includes verifying your email address and adding a role to your EW Chain wallet. Navigate to https://stake-ewt.io/ and click “Use MetaMask”
Hardware wallets do not support the current release of the staking interface. Using hardware- or any other experimental wallets is at your own risk and not recommended.
You will be asked to sign a message with your wallet. This enables the Identity Access Management (IAM) Cache Server to check your EW Chain wallet’s authorization to stake.
On the right side of the staking page, you will see instructions to verify your email in an orange box. Enter your email and click “Submit” to initiate another signature.
If you accidentally entered the wrong email address, click “Cancel” and try again. If you encounter an error, you may have entered an email from a rejected domain or one that is already in use.
Click the verification link in your inbox - this will take you to a “Congrats'' landing page, and in the background approve your request for the role of “email.” If the landing page indicates your application is submitted successfully, click “Go back to stake-ewt.io” to return to the staking page.
You can also refresh stake-ewt.io if you kept it open in a separate tab or window. If the verification link in your email does not take you to the “Congrats” landing page, or if the landing page displays an error message, repeat Step 3 above.
Return to stake-ewt.io and click “Add Role” in the orange box on the right side of the page. This will initiate a transaction that will cost a small amount of EWT for gas to complete (note: the minimum safe gas price on the EW Chain is 0.1 gwei).
Now that your EW Chain wallet has a role authorizing it to stake, you can Stake and Unstake EWT directly in the user interface at stake-ewt.io.
Pro tip: Gas is cheap on EW Chain. Stake and unstake a small amount of EWT to test it out before staking more.
Pro tip 2: If you Stake 100% of your EWT, you won’t be able to pay the gas fee to unstake it. Leave a little EWT in your wallet.
Read this guide in its entirety before beginning the EWT staking process
Beware of scams - always check that you are on one of the official staking pages (https://stake-ewt.io/ or https://consortia-stake-ewt.io/) and make sure you are interacting with the official smart contract 0x3Bd4D48D022ACA4C3FC1Fe673CF4741D5888bcc7 (you can give the contract an alias in Metamask, example: EWT-STAKING)
Before you continue, read this
Read this guide in its entirety before beginning the EWT staking process. If you carefully follow all of the steps and still encounter a problem, please visit the dedicated Discord channel and describe your issue. Over the course of following this guide, you will add a “role” to your EW Chain wallet that authorises it to stake - you can learn more about how roles are assigned and used to govern permissions for wallets here.
You will only be able to stake using the wallet that you used in the authorization process.
Be mindful of which wallet you have selected in MetaMask, and that your MetaMask is connected to the Energy Web Chain network.
Also, please note, we only recommend running through this process using your desktop browser at this time (we do NOT recommend using mobile wallets/browsers).
In crypto, staking is best known for its role in consensus mechanisms for public blockchains (e.g. Ethereum 2.0's Proof-of-Stake, Polkadot’s Nominated Proof-of-Stake) but it is not limited to this use-case.
Staking EWT on EW Chain supports Decentralised Software-as-a-Service (dSaaS) provisioning on the Utility Layer of the Energy Web technology stack. You can learn all about this in the dSLA lightpaper, but in short, authorised members of the EW community (“Patrons”) stake their EWT to support Service Providers (“Providers”) who operate nodes to deliver Utility Layer services. When a Provider delivers fast, stable, and secure Utility Layer services, both the Provider and their Patrons are rewarded. Providers who are unreliable or fail to meet the Utility Layer performance standards will lose Patron support and/or face penalties.
The primary objective of the initial phase of EWT Staking is to test and validate the unique form of token staking governed by role-based authentication with Decentralised Identifiers (DID).
Accordingly, there are no formal penalties Providers or Patrons currently and staked EWT will not be slashed due to Provider performance.
Guide to become a patron and start staking
To stake your EWT on behalf of a Provider, you must first meet the requirements established by your Provider to become their Patron.
Currently anyone who verifies their email address in Switchboard and adds the “email” role to their is eligible to stake EWT and become a Patron. Verifying your email with Switchboard is a simple process that does not publicly expose your email.
The first step to becoming a Patron is to set up an EW Chain-compatible wallet, such as MetaMask (a popular browser-based blockchain wallet that allows you to store EWT and interact with EW Chain smart contracts).
Follow and connect it to EW Chain.
Identify the wallet address you wish to use for staking in MetaMask. You will need to have this address selected in MetaMask whenever you visit stake-ewt.io, verify your email, stake, and unstake EWT.
Pro Tip: Name your wallet in MetaMask for easy identification
Once your transaction completes, you should be able to stake your EWT!
