How HELIX Staking Works
Everything you need to know about time-locked staking
What is HELIX Staking?
Lock HELIX tokens for a chosen duration (1-5,555 days). Receive T-shares representing your claim on daily rewards. The longer and larger your stake, the more T-shares you earn. Your tokens are burned when you stake and minted back when you unstake or claim rewards.
T-Shares Explained
T-shares (Time-shares) are the reward units. When you stake, you receive T-shares based on your stake amount, the current share rate, and bonus multipliers. More T-shares means a larger portion of daily inflation.
Duration Bonus (Longer Pays Better)
Stakes up to 5,555 days receive up to 2x bonus. The bonus scales linearly with duration. A 1-day stake receives minimal bonus, while a max-duration stake doubles your T-shares.
Size Bonus (Bigger Pays Better)
Larger stakes receive up to 2x bonus. The bonus scales with stake size relative to a threshold. This rewards meaningful commitments to the protocol.
Daily Rewards
The protocol inflates supply at 3.69% annually. Daily inflation is distributed proportionally to T-share holders. A permissionless crank triggers distribution each day, increasing the share rate so your T-shares represent more tokens over time.
Penalties
Early Unstake
If you unstake before your lock period ends, you lose a portion of your principal. Minimum penalty: 50%. Penalty decreases as you serve more time. For example, if you committed to 100 days but unstake at day 50, you have served 50% of your commitment and pay a reduced penalty.
Late Unstake
After your stake matures, you have a 14-day grace period to unstake with no penalty. After that, penalties increase linearly until 100% loss at 365 days late. This ensures inactive stakes do not dilute active participants forever.
Penalties are redistributed to remaining stakers, rewarding commitment.
Big Pay Day
After the free claim period ends, all unclaimed tokens are distributed proportionally to active stakers based on their T-share-days (T-shares multiplied by days staked). This is a one-time bonus event that rewards those who committed early and held through the claim period.