Quick Guide to Staking AION

credit to Interstellar

AION is the digital asset that powers transactions and applications on The Open Application Network (OAN).

Now you can also use AION to help secure the network by staking— and earn more AION as a reward!

This is intended to be a quick zero-to-staked guide in 3 steps:

1. Buy AION
2. Store AION in a Wallet
3. Stake (“Delegate”) Your AION

But first, let’s look at the economics of staking (or skip the next section to get straight to the guide):

Stakonomics

AION’s tokenomics are stable while staking rewards are dynamic.

A block is added to The OAN’s blockchain about every ten seconds. The validator (POW miner or POS staker) who successfully adds a block to the chain receives a 4.5 AION reward plus the transaction fees in the block.

This means the total supply of AION increases about 14.2MM AION per year, every year. This also means that the rate of inflation (percentage increase of total supply) goes down every year — Year 1 (2020) inflation will be about 3.01%, while Year 2 is 2.92%, and Year 3 is 2.84%, and so on. Over the next year (through November 2020), circulating supply will increase from about 371MM to about 487MM as the 3-year Token Release Schedule (TRS) comes to an end.

Since block production is split evenly between miners and stakers, this means about 7.1MM AION in block rewards goes to stakers annually. Rather than competing for block production with computing power like miners, stakers have a chance to add a block (and earn the block’s reward and transaction fees) based on the staker’s amount staked versus the total amount staked network-wide. The lower the total amount staked network-wide, the greater the rewards for those who are staking. The OAN’s target staking participation rate is 30% of the total supply (about 141.4MM staked of about 471MM AION total supply currently) for an annual rate of return of about 5%, but the participation rate is expected to vary over time.