Pooled Staking: Earn From a Validator, Starting at 500 ANM

Until now, putting your ANM to work meant meeting a validator’s full stake — or trusting someone else to hold your coins. Pooled staking removes both hurdles. Anyone can delegate a small amount to an operator’s validator pool, earn a share of the block reward, and keep their coins under their own key the whole time.

Stake from 500 ANM, no node required

A validator on Anemos is now a pool, run by an operator. Many people can delegate into the same pool, and the pool’s total stake grows as delegators join. You can join with as little as 500 ANM — there is no need to run node software and no need to put up a full validator’s stake yourself.

The reward your pool earns each block is split: the operator keeps a commission of up to 20% for running the infrastructure, and the rest accrues to the delegators in proportion to what each has staked.

Your rewards are yours — and they can’t be slashed

This is the part that makes pooled staking safe to use. Each position has two separate balances:

• Your principal — the ANM you staked. It is part of the validator’s stake, so it is what secures the network, and it is the only thing that can ever be slashed.
• Your rewards — held in a separate reward balance that is never part of the stake. Because slashing only ever touches staked principal, your accrued rewards can never be slashed. You can claim them to spendable ANM at any time, with no waiting period.

If a pool is ever slashed, the loss falls on principal only and is shared fairly and pro-rata across everyone in the pool — the operator included, since the operator must keep their own ANM staked in the pool as skin in the game. No single delegator absorbs more than their share, and no one’s rewards are touched.

You always know where your coins are

Pooled staking is built to be legible. Two surfaces make sure you never lose track of a delegation:

• An operator marketplace in the block explorer lists every pool with its commission, how full it is, and its reliability, so you can compare operators and pick a good one before you delegate.
• A “My Delegations” view in the wallet shows each of your positions — which pool, how much principal, how much you can claim right now, and where you are in any unbonding countdown.

Claiming a reward or undelegating is a couple of taps from that view.

Exiting

Rewards are claimable whenever you want. Your principal exits the way any validator stake does: you undelegate it, then withdraw it after the standard validator unbonding period. That waiting period is what keeps stake honest — it can’t be pulled out the instant a validator is about to be penalized — and it applies to delegators and operators alike.

Pooled staking rounds out the staking story: run a validator if you want to, or back one from 500 ANM if you don’t, with the protocol — not a contract or a custodian — keeping your rewards safe and your coins your own.