# Staking

There are two ways to stake $AUDIO:

• Directly staking through the Staking.sol contract by registering a validator node
• Delegating $AUDIO stake through the DelegateManager.sol contract to an existing validator (node operator) of the protocol.

This way, anyone can stake $AUDIO, no matter how much or how little.

$AUDIO stakers earn a share of the protocol's 7% annual reward rate, distributed proportionally across all staked tokens. Rewards are claimable weekly and can be claimed by any staker or delegator, ensuring a fully permissionless process that prevents deadlocks.

Staking is instant, while unstaking requires a 7-day cooldown, allowing governance proposals to complete before funds are withdrawn.

Direct Staking

Operating a validator node requires a minimum stake of 200,000 $AUDIO, with a maximum bond limit of 15,000,000 $AUDIO per node. Stake is held at the validator account level and is spread across all nodes that they operate.

For example, if a validator themselves is staking 400,000 $AUDIO and receiving a delegation of 700,000 $AUDIO, they may run between 1 and 5 nodes. If a validator is staking 1,000,001 $AUDIO and receiving 14,000,000 in delegation, they must run at least 2 nodes.

Validators choose the parameters to receive delegation:

• The percentage fee of rewards they capture from all delegated $AUDIO
• The minimum amount of stake an individual party is permitted to delegate to them

Delegate Staking

Users may wish to provide economic security to the protocol, but be unable to provide hardware directly themselves to operate a node. Therefore, they may choose to delegate stake to another existing validator on the network.

Delegators must satisfy the minimum delegation amount set by their chosen validator and share in any reductions in stake resulting from slashing or penalties due to validator negligence.

Delegator rewards are earned and claimed in the same transactions as when the validator they are staked to claims rewards.

Slashing

Negligent validators whose nodes do not meet their obligations can be slashed.

Slashing reduces a validator's staked $AUDIO when peformed. The penalty is applied by calling slash on the DelegateManager contract. Slashed tokens are burned (sent to the null address).

On-chain slashing occurs only after a governance proposal passes a vote and someone executes the proposal's calldata. Coordination (uptime, storage proofs, jailing on the Open Audio coordination layer) is described under SLA proofs; those mechanisms inform when the community might propose a slash.

Proposal calldata

Governance proposals encode a target contract, function signature, and ABI-encoded arguments. For slash, the first argument is the amount in wei (1 wei = 10⁻¹⁸ $AUDIO; $AUDIO uses 18 decimals, like ETH). The second argument is the validator service provider address to slash.

You can draft and submit proposals through the Open Audio Staking UI or the Audius Protocol Dashboard.

Example

1000000000000000000 wei equals 1 $AUDIO. The address 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD is a placeholder for examples only; replace it with the real validator address from chain state when drafting an actual proposal.

Delegate stake is penalized alongside the validator's bond according to contract rules, proportional to the validator's stake; see the DelegateManager source and the Direct staking / Delegate staking sections above for how validator vs. delegator stake is laid out.

Further details on automated mechanisms can be read in the Validators section.