How to Stake Solana: Native Staking Step-by-Step

What staking Solana actually means

When you stake SOL, you delegate it to a validator: an operator running the software that produces Solana's blocks. Delegation is non-custodial — your SOL moves into a stake account only your wallet controls, and the validator can never withdraw, move or spend it. It earns rewards on your behalf and takes a commission from them.

Solana has two staking routes. This guide covers native staking, the most direct one. If you would rather keep your position liquid and tradable, read native vs liquid staking first.

What you need

• A non-custodial wallet such as Phantom or Solflare, as a mobile app or browser extension. For larger amounts, pair it with a Ledger hardware wallet.
• Some SOL in that wallet. Fund it by transferring SOL from an exchange to your wallet address, or buy directly in-wallet through the Buy button.
• A validator to delegate to. You can re-delegate later, so it is not a permanent decision.

The 1 SOL minimum, and what it does not block

Solana now enforces a minimum delegation of 1 SOL per stake account, a recent rule that curbs tiny spam accounts. Beyond the 1 SOL you delegate, keep a little extra: the stake account holds a small rent-exempt reserve (about 0.0023 SOL) and you should leave roughly 0.05 SOL spare for transaction fees.

Two things the rule does not do, which trips up anyone who staked before it landed. A stake account you already hold below 1 SOL keeps working — nothing was migrated or closed, and it goes on earning. And you can still merge such accounts together even if the result stays under 1 SOL. What you cannot do is create a new delegation below the minimum, or split one off that would leave either side under it.

Solana staking at a glance

How to stake SOL, step by step

1. Fund your wallet

   Open Phantom or Solflare and confirm you hold SOL. If this is your first time, send SOL from an exchange to your wallet address and wait for it to arrive, or use the in-wallet Buy option.

2. Open native staking

   In Phantom, open your SOL token, tap the plus button and choose Native Staking. In Solflare, open the Staking tab and choose Native SOL staking → Start staking.

3. Choose a validator

   Search for a validator by name and check both of its fees — the commission on inflation rewards and the one on MEV — because a wallet's list usually shows only the first. See how to choose a reliable validator for what separates them, and double-check the name before you confirm.

4. Enter an amount and delegate

   Type how much SOL to stake, then approve the transaction. Your wallet creates a stake account and delegates it. You sign with your own key, so the funds never leave your control.

5. Let it activate

   The stake account appears in seconds and begins activating. It goes fully active at the next epoch boundary and earns through the epoch after that; every reward from then on is restaked for you, so the balance compounds.

Staking with a Ledger

For larger balances, keep your keys offline with a hardware wallet. In Phantom or Solflare, choose Connect hardware wallet, plug in your Ledger, unlock it and open the Solana app on the device. From there you stake exactly as above, approving each transaction on the Ledger. The stake account stays controlled by the hardware key, so even a compromised computer cannot move your SOL.

What happens after you delegate

Solana time is measured in epochs, each ~32 hours. Stake you delegate during an epoch earns nothing in that epoch at all: it goes active at the next boundary, earns through the epoch after that, and the reward is credited when that epoch closes. So the first payout is never less than one epoch away and never more than two — about 32 to 64 hours, depending on how far into the current epoch you delegate. Epoch 1038 is 73% through, so delegating in the next few minutes would put your first reward about 41 hours away. From then on rewards arrive at every epoch boundary and go straight into the stake account, so native staking compounds with no action from you.

The rate is not fixed: it moves with how much SOL is staked across the network and with how well your validator performs. Your balance grows each epoch as rewards land, and you can watch the stake account in your wallet at any time. Where the yield comes from is in Solana staking rewards and APY explained.

See what your stake could earn:

Fees, commission and choosing a validator

The network transaction fee is fixed by the protocol at 5,000 lamports per signature — 0.000005 SOL, well under a cent — and you pay it each time you stake, unstake or withdraw. It comes out of your wallet balance; the commissions below come out of rewards you have not received yet.

Those deductions are the validator's commission, and there are two of them. The first is taken from your inflation rewards: the median charge across the 677 validators active this epoch is 5%, so a 5% commission leaves you 95% of that stream. The second is taken from MEV tips, which 96.6% of active validators now collect through Jito, and it is set separately — which is why a headline 0% is not a statement about your whole reward. Of the 236 validators charging nothing on inflation, 28 still keep a share of the tips. Our validator table lists both side by side.

Performance is a different kind of number. A validator earns your inflation rewards in proportion to the vote credits it lands, so a weak one does pay you less — but next to the fee the gap is small. The median active validator lands 99.9% of its vote credits, against a median commission of 5%: performance varies in tenths of a percent where the fee varies in whole ones. Uptime and skip rate are worth checking as a gate — they rule out an operator that has actually stopped — but the two commissions are what decide the size of your reward.

Stake.Cake charges 0% on inflation rewards and 0% on MEV — both fees, not just the headline one. This epoch it held 100% uptime and a 0.0% skip rate.

Want the numbers for any validator? The Validator Profit Calculator models rewards and economics with live on-chain data.

How to unstake later

Whenever you want your SOL back, you deactivate the stake account. It stops earning at the next epoch boundary and becomes withdrawable after that, then you withdraw it to your wallet. There is no penalty and no fixed term, and the wait is the rest of the current epoch and nothing more. The full process is in how to unstake Solana.

Staying safe

• Use official sites only. Confirm you are on phantom.com or solflare.com before connecting, and bookmark them. Most losses come from fake staking sites, not from staking itself.
• Never share your seed phrase. No validator, wallet or support agent needs it. Staking never requires it.
• Verify the validator. Check the exact name and identity before delegating; copycats use lookalike names.
• Keep custody. Native staking is non-custodial by design. If a site asks you to send SOL to an address to stake, it is a scam.

FAQ

Is staking Solana safe?

Native staking is non-custodial: your SOL never leaves your wallet's control and the validator cannot move it. The protocol does not slash stake for validator downtime either, and the slashing rules being worked on target validators that sign conflicting blocks, not ones that go offline. What an expensive or poorly run validator costs you is reward, not principal — and staking does not protect against the SOL price falling.

Should I stake SOL on an exchange or natively?

Staking natively, you hold the keys and pay only the commission of a validator you picked from hundreds you can compare side by side. Exchange staking is custodial: the exchange holds your SOL, sets its own cut rather than competing for it, and withdrawal runs on its terms rather than the protocol's.