Staking: How STX Holders Contribute
How staking works under PoX-5: locking STX to a signer-manager contract, earning Bitcoin-denominated rewards, and what the lock does and does not do.
The Big Picture
Staking locks STX to help secure the network and earn Bitcoin-denominated rewards.
It is part of Proof of Transfer (PoX): miners commit BTC, and that BTC pays stakers.
You stake by naming a signer-manager contract. The STX locks in your own account and never moves.
There is no per-staker minimum. A signer-manager needs 50,000 STX in aggregate to enter the signer set.
You can unstake an STX-only position at any time, and the STX unlocks at the start of the next cycle. Bond-paired STX is committed for the bond term.
Rewards arrive as sBTC by default. A native BTC payout can be elected through your signer-manager.
Intro
Staking rewards Stacks (STX) token holders with Bitcoin-denominated payouts for locking their tokens and backing the signers that validate blocks. Signers are covered in the Signing section. This page is a conceptual overview of staking under PoX-5.
pox-5.clar is the staking contract. It activated with the Epoch 4.0 hard fork at Bitcoin block 960,230 and replaced pox-4. Every staking function lives at the deployed contract:
Mainnet:
SP000000000000000000002Q6VF78.pox-5Testnet: the primary Hiro testnet runs PoX-5, with Epoch 4.0 activating at burnchain height 2,702. To run a node against it, start from the example testnet follower configuration, which carries the PoX-5 parameters (
pox_5_sbtc_contract,pox_5_sbtc_registry_contract,pox_5_bond_admin).Devnet: Clarinet 3.23.0 and later runs devnet on Epoch 4.0 and Clarity 6 by default, with pox-5 available out of the box from a devnet snapshot that starts at block 163.
The pinned source is pox-5.clar at release 4.0.1, and SIP-045 specifies the design.
Locking and Unlocking STX
When STX locks, no transfer occurs. Locking is non-custodial: the tokens stay in your account and become unspendable at the protocol level.
Unlocking is implicit. At the start of the cycle after your chosen duration ends, or after you unstake, the tokens become spendable again. No transaction unlocks them.
The Signer-Manager Relationship
Staking means locking STX and naming a signer-manager contract to act for you. The signer-manager is the contract your stake routes through: it validates your stake when you enter, is bound to the signer key that signs blocks, and distributes your rewards.
Who does what:
You, the staker, lock STX in your own account and choose how many cycles it covers, from 1 to 96.
The signer-manager contract is bound to a signer key once, through a one-time SIP-018 grant, and receives your settled rewards for onward distribution. It may take a fee, which is contract-level logic rather than a protocol feature.
The pox-5 contract registers your position for every cycle you chose in the single staking transaction, and settles rewards per staker to the manager.
A signer-manager enters the signer set once at least 50,000 STX (SIGNER_SET_MIN_USTX) is staked to it in aggregate. The threshold is fixed, and it applies to the manager rather than to you: your own stake can be any size.
Running your own signer-manager and staking to someone else's are the same mechanism. A "solo" staker is someone running their own manager, which is operationally identical to offering a pool, because anyone can stake to that contract.
Two Ways to Participate
PoX-5 has two participation paths, and a Stacks principal can hold one position in one path at a time.
Bitcoin Staking: Protocol Bond pairs a BTC commitment with an STX lock for a bond term of 12 cycles (roughly six months). The BTC side is either a timelocked UTXO on Bitcoin L1 that stays under your own keys, or sBTC, which pox-5 holds for the term. Bonds have a Target Protocol Yield Rate (aka Target APY) on the BTC side; the paired STX earns no yield. Capacity is allowlisted per bonding period, so registering requires an allowance for that period, and register-for-bond is the entry point.
STX-Only Staking locks STX alone. You choose 1 to 96 cycles, you can unstake at any time outside the prepare phase with the unlock at the next cycle start, and there is no capacity limit. Rewards come from the miner BTC left after protocol bond obligations, split 85% to STX-only stakers pro rata and 15% to the protocol reserve.
In the bootstrap phase that allowance is allocated by the Stacks Endowment to whitelisted partners, with roughly a tenth of bond capacity kept open through selected pooling partners, so most participants reach a bond through a pool rather than by calling register-for-bond themselves. Liquid staking products work differently again: you deposit into the product, the product stakes, and you hold a token representing your share, so pox-5 never records you as a staker at all.
Bonding periods are staggered: a new one opens every two reward cycles (about a month), each runs twelve cycles, and six are active at any moment, so a bond that ends is immediately followed by one that starts. The BTC timelock expires 1,050 Bitcoin blocks (about a week) before the bond ends, and that window is when you can re-lock BTC for the next bond. On a roll-over the STX lock extends without unlocking; otherwise the STX unlocks when the bond ends. Exiting early (unstake-sbtc, or the L1 early-exit path) forfeits the remaining yield, never principal, and the paired STX stays locked to term.
Both paths route through a signer-manager, and both keep the STX in your account. Registering a bond while STX-only staking, or the reverse, is rejected by the contract.
The bond mechanics in depth are in SIP-045 and the Bitcoin Staking whitepaper.
Staking Flow
Choose a signer-manager
Pick a contract whose fee and admin set you accept; both are readable on-chain before you commit.
Broadcast the staking transaction
stake names the manager, the amount, and a duration of 1 to 96 cycles, and locks the STX in your account.
Earn across cycles
The one transaction registers you for every cycle you chose, and no further action keeps you in the reward set.
Get paid
pox-5 settles rewards per staker to your manager, which distributes them as sBTC, or as native BTC if you elected that.
Unstake when you choose
unstake ends the position and the STX unlocks at the start of the next cycle.
Staking, staking updates, and unstaking are blocked during the prepare phase, the last 100 Bitcoin blocks of every reward cycle, while the upcoming cycle's signer set is frozen. This recurs every cycle.
stake-update changes a live position without a cooldown: switch managers, increase the amount, extend the duration, or rotate a payout address. Changes take effect from the start of the next cycle. Reducing your locked amount is the exception, and still costs a cycle.
Staking Cycles
Staking happens in reward cycles of 2,100 Bitcoin blocks (roughly two weeks). The last 100 Bitcoin blocks of each cycle are the prepare phase, in which the upcoming cycle's signer set is fixed and staking transactions are rejected.
The prepare phase fixes the signer set for the upcoming cycle: every signer-manager with at least 50,000 STX staked to it in aggregate.
During the reward phase, miners commit BTC to mine Stacks blocks, and that BTC funds staker rewards.
Rewards are credited once per distribution interval of 1,050 Bitcoin blocks (roughly one week), two intervals per reward cycle. The interval gates crediting only: your signer-manager can claim credited rewards at any time.
Unlocks happen at a cycle boundary: at the start of the cycle after your chosen duration ends, or after you unstake.
Staking and Signing
Staking and signing are distinct actions, and both are necessary. The staked STX decides how much weight a signer carries, and the signer key does the signing. A signer-manager connects the two: it is bound to one signer key through a one-time grant, and the signer software detects from chain state whether its manager is in the signer set for the upcoming cycle.
You do not run a signer to stake. The manager you stake to is bound to one, and your stake adds to its weight. Running your own signer means deploying a signer-manager, binding your signer key to it, and operating the signer software: see Deploy a Signer Manager Contract and Run a Signer.
Signing itself is covered in Signing: Verifying Block Validity.
How and Where to Stake
Anyone with STX in their own account can stake. app.leather.io/staking lists signer-managers to pick from, and several pool operators run their own staking apps. Whichever you use, the transaction goes to pox-5.
For step-by-step instructions, see the Staking STX guides.
If You Knew Stacking Under PoX-4
The network renamed stacking to staking with PoX-5, and the mechanics changed with the name. The corrections to the old model, in one place:
Every PoX-4 position unlocked when Epoch 4.0 activated. Re-enroll under PoX-5 to keep earning.
Solo and pooled stacking were separate mechanisms. Both are replaced by staking to a signer-manager, and the protocol has no delegator or pool operator role.
delegate-stx,revoke-delegate-stx, andstack-aggregation-commitno longer exist. No operator commits per cycle on your behalf, so a missed commit can no longer cost a pool a cycle of rewards.The dynamic minimum is gone, and the
min_threshold_ustxfield with it.Per-transaction signer signatures are gone, replaced by the one-time signer-key grant.
The cooldown cycle is gone for everything except reducing your locked amount, which still costs a cycle.
What's Changed in PoX-5 covers the migration in operator detail.
Additional Resources
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