Lisk was one of my first crypto purchases. I’d been wanting to invest in cryptocurrency while I was in college, but I didn’t want my cash stuck in volatile cryptocurrency in case I needed it during college. After I graduated I went on a crypto buying spree. During this time I kept hearing Lisk come up as an alternative to Ethereum. I did some quick research, saw that it used JavaScript instead of Solidity and was sold.

I’m investing in cryptocurrency for two reasons. Firstly, as Warren Buffet said, “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” I believe being a developer gives me an edge when evaluating cryptocurrencies to invest in. And secondly, I believe in the tech, and am interested in it. Since I know how quickly things can be built with JavaScript and some of the troubles people have been having with Solidity (myself included) I figured it wasn’t a terrible investment.

Lisk has more than doubled in value since I purchased it, and, we can stake Lisk, which is what we’ll be doing today.

The Wallet

When I purchased Lisk I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just knew I wouldn’t learn what to do if I didn’t invest. Because of this, I currently have my Lisk in FreeWallet, which is not only unsafe, but you also cannot stake in it. So our first step will be to download the lisk nano wallet. This actually isn’t a bad first step, as you can make the assumption that your coins are in an exchange wallet, or any non Lisk wallet for that matter while following this tutorial, so long as you know how to transfer them.

Once you have the wallet, either login or create a new account. Next, send the transaction to get the LSK into your new nano wallet to start voting.

Voting

Only 101 delegates can forge blocks. When you vote, it costs 1 LSK and you can vote for 33 delegates with that 1 LSK. To see all of the delegates available for vote click the voting tab in the nano wallet. You’ll see that there are obviously more than 101 delegates in that list, however only the top 101 will be able to forge blocks.

When I looked into staking, initially I was a bit confused about the 1 LSK voting fee. I thought, “so what, I have to keep voting 1 LSK at a time until all my LSK is used?” Nope, the network knows the value of the LSK in your wallet and puts the weight of your vote and rewards behind your delegates appropriately. Also, voting is a one time thing, once your votes are set, you’ll continue to receive rewards.

Who to vote for?

Not all of the delegates will pay out rewards to their constituents, some use the rewards to develop the Lisk ecosystem. So this begs the question, who do you vote for?

There are a number of different sites available to help inform a vote. The first and most common is EarnLisk.com, another one is tools.mylisk.com, and finally the official Lisk Delegate Monitor. In the Delegate Monitor, you can click the profile icon next to the username. This will take you to that delegates forum post which will explain their payout proportion, if they are a pool, and what they’ll do with the funds if they aren’t.

Validating your vote

After casting your votes, you should be able to go to the Lisk Delegate Monitor, click on a delegate you voted for, and see your wallet address under the Voters header.

I’ve yet to receive any rewards yet, but I’ll be sure to update this post when I do and explain the process if it involves anything other than receiving rewards. Until next time!

Helpful Links

As usual, I like to pass along references to good content that I found while writing my posts. There really isn’t much about this topic online, but there is one really good youtube channel with good Lisk specific content.

NOTE: since this post it’s been asked what the rate of return is for staking Lisk. I’ve yet to get any returns so I can’t say for sure. However, this video lays out all of the math, and makes the claim that it should be around 20% annually, but the block rewards will decrease over 5 years, and therefore, so will the rate of return.