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How to stake and earn

Background

In Streamr 1.0, the incentivization comes from stream Sponsorship contracts which act as a decentralized mechanism for managing a stream of earnings distributed among a set of Operators. Those Operators run nodes which will join the sponsored stream and help to relay the traffic inside it.

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To earn DATA tokens on Polygon you must be willing to hold and stake DATA tokens on Polygon smart contracts that we call Sponsorships. See how to get DATA

How to participate & earn

  1. Become a node Operator
  2. Stake your Operator on stream Sponsorships, and/or,
  3. Delegate your DATA tokens onto other Operators
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  • Do NOT create or sponsor Sponsorships. If you do tokens will be irreversibly sent to that Sponsorship contract. There is no undo for this.

Sponsorships

Sponsorships are the source of incentivization. These are visible on The Hub.

The Amoy test environment

The Streamr Hub is the place to test out your Operator before creating it on Polygon with real tokens, just select "Polygon Amoy testnet" from the top-right dropdown.

You'll need Amoy MATIC - widely available with public faucets and you'll need TEST tokens (the Amoy network's worthless DATA tokens) - There is a TEST token faucet on the Streamr Discord.

Community resources

Safety

Please be aware of some important safety tips:

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Your tokens are at risk and the risks are real!.

  • Consider starting small with your stake amount and use common sense to never stake more than you can afford to lose. A professional audit of the incentive layer has been completed by Cyfrin, but nothing can be guaranteed of course.
  • If you want to stake on a sponsorship, DO NOT click on the "Sponsor". That's for funding the sponsorship, not staking! Instead, go to the sponsorship you want to stake on and click "Join as an operator” and enter the amount.
  • There may be an increase in activity by scammers. A common approach is to pretend to offer help or tech support in direct messages (something we never do). Report any account that is asking you to sign transactions or asking for any sort of credentials such as your private key. These accounts are trying to steal your tokens. It’s advised you disable DMs on Discord. More tips can be found in #server-safety-guide.