10 Reasons to Stake $IDO and How to Do It

We recently launched our Idexo General Staking Pool and have had a good response to it from the community. We have also complete our first staker vote and the result was a vote in favor of bridging to Binance Smart Chain first. At the same time, we have others in the community who have questions about it and we thought we’d answer them in this post. General and directional staking are core utilities of the $IDO token as outlined in the idexo whitepaper, therefore anything we can do to make this easier to understand is well worth the effort. In this post, we’ll cover some reasons why you might want to participate in becoming an idexo Staker and how to do it if you are interested.

1. Staking proves your stake in the project and weights the value of your vote.

As was covered in the whitepaper, we value the input of people in the community who have proved their stake in the project. When you stake your $IDO behind it, this carries weight. When you stake in either the General or a directional pool, this creates an NFT that has the amount of $IDO staked recorded in it. When you vote then, your vote is weighted to the size of your stake.

How to do it: To stake you can use the Staking UI. This is covered more in point 5 below.

2. The earlier you are the more rewards you get.

As a project grows over time, it is typical and expected that it generates more fees later than earlier. Therefore it is good to reward earlier stakers with special rewards. Idexo has done this in a couple of different ways:

a. Through multipliers. The first 300 stakes (represented through their NFT token ids) in the general pool receive a multiplier applied to their stake of 20%. This is applied when determining percentage of the pool size for distributing rewards. In effect then a stake of 10,000 IDO becomes like 12,000 IDO for determining percentage. For stakes 301-4000 there is a multiplier of 10%.

b. Through bonus $IDO rewards. For the first 5,000,000 IDO staked there is a guaranteed APY reward in $IDO based on length of time staked. These are outlined in more detail in the general pool staking details.

3. The primary reward token is $USDT.

Most staking programs offer only a reward in the same token that is being staked. Idexo is different however in that it has products in the market and in the pipeline that generate fees in $USDT. Since general and directional staking actively guide the roadmap that generates these fees, the reward token instead is $USDT. For instance, 80% of the fees generated from current products flow into the general staking pool.

Idexo has received positive feedback from the community about this structure and will be making this available as methods in the idexo SDK in order that other projects can adopt it as well with a few lines of code and a commercial API key from idexo.

How it works: At the end of each month, quarter and year, rewards are calculated based on eligibility of the NFTs in the pool (i.e. were they staked for the entire month, quarter or year in question) and their relative percentage of the total eligible. Claims are then added to the smart contract for each NFT and may be claimed using the Staking UI.

4. You guide the project with your actions.

Many supporters of different projects have strong opinions of what a project should be doing. In typical scenarios they can only be vocal and hope to be heard. With idexo however the general and directional staking systems provide a way to be heard and followed by design. Not only that, the directional staking pools provide a way to rewarded when those ideas turn out to be the right call.

How it works: By staking generally you are voicing confidence in the general direction the team is taking. If you have any idea for a new product feature, integration or other kind of direction, you can first create a vote on it using the Voting UI (this is covered in more detail in section 6 below). If the vote passes, then a directional staking pool is created for that direction and you can stake towards that direction and receive rewards from fees generated by that direction.

5. There is a simple UI for Staking $IDO and Claiming Rewards

Staking is made easy through the Staking UI. Assuming you have some $IDO (if not, you can find it on Ascendex and Uniswap), you will see your $IDO balance when you connect your wallet in the top right of the screen.

To stake you complete the following workflow:

Connect your wallet using the ‘Connect Wallet’ prompt in the middle of the screen and/or in the top-right.
Make sure you have selected Ethereum as the network in your Metamask and on the screen and have connected the wallet that has your $IDO.
Enter a stake amount that is less than or equal to your $IDO balance into the stake form and click ‘Stake IDO’. This will first trigger an Approve transaction to approve the smart contract to stake the $IDO. Click Approve to start that transaction and confirm it in your MetaMask wallet.
When the Approve transaction has completed, enter the amount again of your desired stake amount, and click again on ‘Stake IDO’. Confirm this new transaction in your MetaMask.
When the transaction completes you will see your $IDO balance update, as well as Your Stake. You will see the token id of your stake NFT under Available USDT reward. If you don’t see this, refresh your screen and it should appear, assuming the stake transaction has completed.

To claim $USDT rewards you compete the following workflow:

If you have a stake NFT you will see it listed under Available USDT Reward and next to it the available reward claim. If you have more than one stake NFT (possible if you stake more than once), then you will see each listed with the available USDT claim for each.
To withdraw a reward claim, enter the Token Id for the stake NFT you want to claim for, and enter the reward amount to claim (must be less than or equal to available USDT reward for that stake NFT Token Id), and hit ‘Withdraw Reward’. Confirm the transaction in your MetaMask wallet also. After the transaction is complete you will receive the USDT in your wallet.

Note: the bonus $IDO guaranteed APY rewards will be airdropped to your wallet on your 6, 9 and/or 12-month milestones of remaining staked, assuming your stake was in the first 5,000,000 $IDO staked.

6. There is a simple UI for Voting

Having a stake means you can cast votes on the votes are only open to Stakers and can also create new votes. When voting, your vote is weighted by the size of your stake. To vote, you must be connected with the wallet that holds your stake NFT. You can also create new votes and these will then be available for all Stakers to vote on. Votes can be on new project or product directions; they can also be for other things you’d like Stakers to be voting on.

To vote on an existing poll, complete the following workflow:

Make sure you are connected to the MATIC (Polygon) network with the wallet that holds your Mirror NFT
Choose the Poll you want to vote on under the ‘Available Votes’ tab of the Voting UI
Choose the Option you want to want to vote for and click ‘Vote’. Confirm the transaction in your MetaMask wallet that is connected to the MATIC (Polygon) network.

To create a new vote, complete the following workflow:

Make sure you are connected to the MATIC (Polygon) network with the wallet that holds your Mirror NFT
Choose the ‘Create Votes’ tab in the Voting UI
Enter the Poll question you would like the poll to be about.
Choose the Options you would like to have available. For a Yes or No question, you can enter Yes for Choice 1 and No for Choice 2. For a question for more than 2 Choices you can hit ‘Add Choice’ as many times as necessary and enter the Choices in the respective fields. Choose a Poll Duration using the available Date Picker and hit ‘Submit’ when all choices and poll duration have been entered.
This will create the new Poll and you should see it under the ‘Available Votes’ tab within a few minutes.

7. You can can upgrade your Staker NFT and use it for additional things

The Mirror NFT that you get on the Polygon network (that is used for voting), in addition to your Ethereum network NFT, is upgradeable. You can upgrade your image for instance by providing the idexo team with a side profile photo of yourself or an avatar you’d like to use and you will get a customized Idexonaut spacesuit photo to add to your NFT and that can be used as a profile photo across social media.

In addition to the customized NFT image, this Mirror NFT will hold various other badges and special attributes that will be added over time.

Both the main Ethereum Staker NFT and its Mirror NFT will be able to be used to access free and discounted products that we will be making available to Stakers.

Furthermore, the Ethereum Staker NFTs (i.e. the Token Ids that are minted to your wallet when you stake) are tradeable. Rather than having to withdraw your stake and trade the $IDO from it, you can simply trade the NFT itself, thereby preserving any value it has (such as multipliers) that were gained by being an early staker.

8. Access airdrops automatically

When you stake in the General Staking Pool you receive not only the stake NFT on the Ethereum Mainnet, you also receive a Mirror NFT on Polygon Mainnet. You also receive a small airdrop of MATIC tokens in order to cover the first 100 votes you make using the Voting UI. This is the start of a process where we expect to airdrop other tokens over time to our stakers as the opportunity arises from new project directions. Idexo values its Stakers and we want to consistently add positive surprises along the way.

For instance, idexo recently announced it would be adding a play-to-earn token called $KRED and we expect to provide airdrops to stakers over time of this token (with full tokenomics and amounts etc. to be decided), in addition to this token being earnable through various community and game activities.

9. Access staker-only areas

There are staker-only areas planned for both social media platforms that allow them (such as Discord) and also for future in-person events (such as community conferences). Becoming a staker provides access to these areas.

10. Participate in the Idexo Foundation

Registration is currently being completed for the Idexo Foundation (it should be completed very soon). There is an allocation of nearly 41% of all supply of $IDO to the Foundation, vesting over 84 months, as detailed in the tokenomics.

One of the items on the agenda for the Foundation will be to find ways to include the voice of Stakers in the affairs of the Foundation. Becoming a Staker and actively participating in votes, and the general and directional staking pools, should open up opportunities to become active with Foundation.

To begin your staking journey with idexo, visit the Staking UI or ask for help in the idexo Telegram community if you need some assistance or have additional questions.