Injective Equinox Pre-Staking Launch

Equinox pre-staking officially launches today.

Starting right now, you can transfer your ERC-20 INJ tokens into Injective to start earning yield. To further reward the community’s patience, the baseline APY has also been raised to 15%.

This piece will cover a short intro of pre-staking and then jump right into a pre-staking walkthrough guide so you can get onboarded right away.

An Introduction to Equinox Pre-Staking

Pre-staking simply involves sending your ERC-20 INJ tokens to the deposit manager smart contract. This is done in order to bridge your INJ over to the Injective Chain and is required before you can delegate your tokens to validators during Equinox staking.

So, how is pre-staking different from staking?

Pre-staking is the first step of the Injective Equinox Staking Competition where you will begin earning a baseline APY of 15%. The pre-staking period will last for up to 1 week.

Once Equinox Staking officially begins, you will have the opportunity to transfer your pre-staked INJ tokens to the Injective Chain Equinox testnet where you’ll have the opportunity to delegate your tokens to validators. In addition, you will be able to participate in governance votes, delegator mini-contests and be eligible for surprise token drops.

Equinox staking will include additional APY boosts on top of the baseline APY (the boosts can allow users to reach an APY of 29% on Equinox).

When Equinox staking launches this month, you will have to come back to the staking dashboard in order to delegate to a validator to officially stake your INJ. The pre-staking period is designed to simply help familiarize yourself with the dashboard and to provide an easy way to start earning the 15% baseline APY.

Note: After the 1 week pre-staking period, you will only continue to earn the 15% baseline APY if you stake your funds on the official Equinox INJ testnet. If you remove your tokens before the end of the competition, you will NOT earn any rewards even if you participated in pre-staking.

If you want further information on the baseline APY and APY boosts, please read the Equinox Staking Rewards article here. Please note that the baseline APY has been increased from the previously mentioned 3% to the current 15%.

Are My Funds Safe?

Yes. The deposit manager has also been audited by Certik.

What Comes Next

Equinox Pre-Staking will serve an integral role in the evolution of Injective with mainnet launch ahead.

As more users join Equinox and test functionalities, contributors will be able to further optimize the protocol before mainnet launch. All are encouraged to try it out and provide feedback, in order to further perfect the product.

Injective has already onboarded validators over the past few weeks. These validators will serve an important role in bootstrapping the security of the network.

Equinox pre-staking will last the next few days. Afterwards, Injective will launch Equinox Staking with governance capabilities before the end of March.

Here is a quick timeline

Equinox Pre-Staking Walkthrough

This guide will help you get started with pre-staking on Injective’s Equinox Testnet.

Note: The staking dashboard requires you to sign transactions with Metamask. If you do not know how to setup Metamask, you can visit the How to Setup Metamask article for more information.

1. Navigate to http://staking.injective.network

2. Click on the Metamask option to connect your wallet

Connecting with Metamask will allow you to access the staking dashboard, where you will be able to pre-stake your INJ tokens and start earning rewards.

3. Complete the signature request in Metamask by clicking Sign

4. Once you are connected and the staking dashboard is loaded, click the Stake button in the header

5. Click the unlock button on the Stake page to approve the transfer of your ERC-20 INJ tokens into Injective

6. Metamask will promptly open and ask you to approve the transaction. Click Confirm

Note: Depending on how much gas you submitted with the transaction and the current load on the Ethereum network, your transaction may either complete quickly or take several minutes. If the approval process takes a long time, you may want to try refreshing the page or consider speeding up the transaction by paying more gas.

7. Once the transaction is completed on Ethereum, the Stake page will display a form where you can enter the amount of your ERC-20 INJ tokens you would like to pre-stake.

Note: Pre-staking will lock your INJ for 7 days. If you choose to withdraw your tokens before the completion of Equinox Staking, you will not be eligible to receive any rewards.

8. Enter the amount for your pre-stake and click the Stake button

9. A modal will appear to confirm your pre-stake. Please note the message about the lock schedule, and then click the Stake button to confirm

10. Metamask will open asking you to approve the transaction. Click Confirm

Once your transaction is completed on Ethereum with enough confirmations, this amount will be reflected on the Stake page under “Total Staked INJ”. The amount should take about 1 minute to appear.

That’s it! Your tokens are pre-staked and have started to earn the baseline 15% APY.

About Injective

Injective is a lightning fast interoperable layer one blockchain optimized for building the premier Web3 finance applications. Injective provides developers with powerful plug-and-play modules for creating unmatched dApps. INJ is the native asset that powers Injective and its rapidly growing ecosystem. Injective is incubated by Binance and is backed by prominent investors such as Jump Crypto, Pantera and Mark Cuban.