STAKING ON SOLANA

To stake your SOL you need to use your preferred Wallet (most common are Solflare, Sollet or Phantom Wallet) to create a stake account from your main account and then you delegate that stake account to your chosen validator, you can search by their name (our validator is called Valhall) or vote account address.
Staking is the process of delegating your SOL to a validator on the Solana network. Validators are the machines that process and vote on transactions on the network, their ability to do so depends on how much stake they have. The stake essentially gives them more of a “vote” to participate in the network.
 
You earn staking rewards when you delegate your SOL to a validator (ideally around 8% APY) and you can unstake your SOL at any time. Your SOL always remain in your control and nothing the validator does can cause you to lose your SOL, at most if their node becomes delinquent you will not earn the staking rewards but you’ll always be able to access and withdraw your SOL.
This depends on what your priorities are: returns, supporting new validators, risk & network resilience.
 
Our validator is in a low-concentration data centre, is below the halt line, our APY is generally in the top 50 and we’re committed to the Solana network and actively participate on the Solana Discord.

Your stake has a warming up and a cooling down period. Once you’ve delegated your stake it usually becomes active from the start of the next Epoch (an Epoch in Solana lasts 2-3 days). You will earn rewards once your stake is active.

The rewards are added to your stake account at the end of the epoch. This happens fully automatically by the Solana blockchain. Validators cannot steal or change the rewards you’re entitled to.

The commission is the percentage of your rewards that the validator keeps as payment towards their effort in processing Solana transactions on the network. Most validators operate between 3-10%, so at 5% for every 1 SOL in rewards you earn 0.05 goes to the validator and 0.95 go to you.
 
Without commissions validators cannot afford to continue operating as they must pay around 1 SOL per day to vote on the Solana network’s transactions.
 
We have operated at 0%, but we have now changed our commission to 5%. This will allow us to remain sustainable as well as invest in further hardware upgrades and further development of the StakeShield™.
Well, it’s free money! If you have 100 SOL sitting in your wallet, after 12 months you’d still have 100 SOL. But if you stake them, after a year you’d have around 107 SOL (if you chose a good validator). By staking your SOL you earn rewards, comparable to earning interest on a savings account.
 
Since you can undelegate your SOL at any point (with a 1 epoch cool down period) there is very little reason not to stake your SOL. And by staking your SOL you’re contributing to the resilience and strength of the Solana network.
We take the security of our validators very seriously, that is why this Solana validator software is constantly monitored by the ML based StakeSheld™. The StakeShield™ is a ML mitigation solution specifically designed for stable and secure staking.
 
Our mainnet server is in an enterprise-grade data centre in Oslo, Norway. The data centre itself has standard access control measures in place, redundant 25Gbps network, as well as state of the art climate control and power and network backups. 
 
Access to the server is restricted by VPN, SSH keys, password login is entirely disabled. Further we operate a strict firewall with no ports outside of those required for Solana being open.
 
The keys used to operate a validator are comprised of a validator identity key and a vote account key. Both keys must remain on the server and be accessible by the runtime.
However to protect funds and prevent malicious changes to commissions in the case the server is compromised, the authorized withdraw authority of the vote account is a separate key that is stored on a hardware wallet.
 
We have a StakeShield™ real-time monitoring system that operates from a physically separate server and checks all our validators continously for delinquency, in case delinquency is confirmed for two continuous minutes we receive immediate SMS and Slack notification alerts, which continue until delinquency is resolved.

Our validation services are non-custodial. We therefore have no access to your tokens at any point in time. It is simply impossible from a technical perspective. You maintain full control over your tokens at all times.

Valhall Crowns (VAL) is a part of the Valhall ecosystem, and will give the holders a wide variety of benefits.

VAL Token: 7VeFS95G5WApQgaAgZUejwRgV8pbWDDCSiL3kQKkyFrd

All stakers will get VAL tokens when staking on a Valhall Validator. The extra bonus reward is 15000 VAL shared pr epoch on Solana.

(There is a max limit of 1000 VAL pr strake address pr epoch. There is also an exeption for large known pools and stakes below 2 SOL, these will not get the VAL reward bonus.)

Identity: 9XBZbtW61oRypcCyKko9Q9k41yFHAoCGwqs7XrNTfTf3
Vote key: AM3wUMazVnap88dVdE26jdSKBeLTe8EitNS7eTV35Tjd
Commission: 5%

Extra bonus: 15000 VAL pr shared epoch on Solana