In this article, we’ll walk you through how to stake your CELO tokens using Anthem with a Ledger. We will need the following things:
The first step you will need to take is to install the Celo Ledger application on your Ledger device via Ledger Live. To do so, you will need to enable “Developer mode”, which can be found in the Settings under “Experimental features”. Once you have done that, you should be able to find and install the Celo Ledger application.
Now that you have the Celo application on your Ledger, you are able to store your CELO on it. You will be able to do so by signing into Anthem with your Ledger. Go to https://anthem.chorus.one and click on “Connect” next to Celo or by pressing “Sign In” at the bottom. Then choose “Sign in to Celo Network”. There should be a prompt that Anthem wants to connect to your Ledger device from your browser. Unlock your Ledger device, allow the connection through your browser by clicking on the device and then “Connect”, and open the Celo application on your Ledger.
Now, you will need to verify the address on your Ledger. A popup on your Ledger with your Celo address should appear that you can confirm using the Ledger buttons. Once you do this, your device will be connected to Anthem.
You should now see the Anthem dashboard for Celo. To send tokens to your Ledger device, copy the address from the bottom left, or by clicking on “Send/Receive” and then “Receive”. This address (or QR code) represents your Celo mainnet account. You can withdraw CELO from an exchange to this account by pasting in this address.
Once you send CELO to your Ledger, they should appear as “Available” on the Anthem dashboard. You will now be able to stake your tokens. Before you do so, a few words on staking in Celo:
Celo’s staking model is unique in that your tokens are never at risk and because you will choose to stake with a validator group, instead of a single node, as common in other networks. Furthermore, staking rewards for those staking CELO tokens and validator nodes operating the network are separated — there is no commission rate going to validators, as typical in other Proof-of-stake networks. Instead, validator nodes are elected based on their stake backing and then receive fixed cUSD stablecoin payments from the network. For these reasons, Celo is referring to staking as “Voting”, we will stick to this terminology from now on.
To choose a validator group to vote for, switch to the “Voting” tab in Anthem. You will see a list of available validator groups.
Anthem displays some pertinent information about validator groups, most importantly their “Capacity” and “Group Score”. Celo limits how many votes a validator group can receive based on how much CELO the group and its nodes are staking themselves. Anthem indicates how much capacity a validator group has left for votes by using color coding — a green dot signals enough room for delegations, yellow means there is little capacity left, and red means this validator is out of capacity. The “Group Score” indicates the percentage of staking rewards this validator group currently earns its delegators. It can be temporarily lowered, e.g. if validator nodes within that group go offline for prolonged periods of time. As an example, if the CELO staking reward rate is 6% (see here for current values) and your group has a score of 90%, your current APR would be 6%*90% = 5.4%. Though, one should keep in mind that group scores, and with them the APR, recover over time ( TheCelo provides visualization of validator group scores over time). Find out more details about Celo’s staking model here, or feel free to reach out to us if you have questions.
Celo is an EVM network with a smart contract-based staking design. You will need to go through multiple steps to earn staking rewards. We did our best to make this flow as straightforward as possible in Anthem:
First you need to create a contract address associated with your account to interact with the staking smart contracts. Anthem will prompt you to do this when you try to vote for a validator group for the first time. Confirm and send this transaction from your Ledger.
Now you need to lock your CELO tokens. Locked CELO can be used to vote in governance and to vote for validator groups. You will only receive staking rewards when your CELO is actively voting for a validator group. Make sure to follow through with this tutorial until you have “Active Votes”, otherwise you won’t receive rewards! Pick an amount to lock, make sure to leave some CELO available for transaction fees and confirm the transaction on your Ledger. After a few moments the CELO you locked should appear as “Non-Voting” on Anthem.
Once you have locked some CELO, you are able to cast votes for validator groups. Pick the validator group you want to vote for, e.g. Chorus One ;), and select the amount to vote with. You are also able to choose a validator group to vote for from a drop down list when clicking on “Vote” next to your “Non-Voting” balance. Follow the steps to confirm your vote.
A final step before votes start earning staking rewards is to activate votes. Note that this is only possible beginning from the epoch after you sent your voting transaction. This will mean you will need to return after one day (the length of a Celo epoch) to cast this transaction (learn more here). If you do not activate your votes, you will not receive staking rewards! This final transaction should move the votes you just cast from the “Pending” to the “Active” state. Congratulations, your CELO tokens are now actively participating in consensus and you will be compounding your CELO holdings.
Once you decide to stop staking, e.g. to sell CELO tokens, you will need to first revoke your active votes and then unlock the CELO tokens you want to have available. You are only able to unlock “Non-Voting” CELO tokens, so make sure to first revoke active votes before unlocking. Revoked votes must exist in a pending withdrawal state for 3 days before they become available to withdraw. This is enforced to protect the protocol against attacks. Anthem will display tokens that are in the process of unlocking as “Pending”. To stop voting and transfer $CELO tokens, the following steps need to be taken:
1. Revoke active votes
You first need to revoke your active votes from the validator group you are staking with.
2. Unlock non-voting, locked tokens
Once you revoked votes, you can instruct Celo that you want to unlock your tokens. This takes 3 days from the time you withdrew votes during which tokens will remain in a pending state.
3. Wait 3 days for pending withdrawals to become available
4. Withdraw pending tokens
Once the 3 days have passed, you are able to withdraw your pending tokens back to your available balance.
5. Send tokens
From your available balance, you are free to do whatever with your CELO tokens!
We hope this guide helped you understand CELO staking. For feedback on Anthem or questions, feel free to reach out to us via Intercom on the website or through any other channels.
Anthem is a multi-network staking platform designed to help you with your staking needs. Anthem is developed by Chorus One, a provider of staking services on decentralized networks including Celo, Cosmos, Polkadot, Solana, NEAR, and many others.
Anthem: https://anthem.chorus.one
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Celo is an open platform that makes financial tools accessible to anyone with a mobile phone.
Website: https://celo.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CeloOrg
Discord: https://discord.gg/6yWMkgM
