There are several ways to earn Stellar Lumens for free. Some are easy, and some not so much. So here’s an attempt to share with you the best and easiest way to get free lumens in your wallet.

You will have to do some work though. For example, if you have your Stellar Lumens stored in your exchange — like Binance or Bittrex — then you have to transfer it to a wallet. Only then you can claim your free Lumens.

But before we go there, let us step back and see what exactly are we doing. First, it starts with Stellar’s pool.

Stellar Lumen Has A Community Pool

If you join the Stellar Lumen community pool, you will receive inflation rewards. What is it? You see, Stellar Lumen follows a concept of inflation. Here the number of Lumens are increased by 1% every year.

That is equal to 0.02% additional Lumens per week.

It may seem insignificant but when you take the circulation supply of Lumens? You will discover that around 20 million Lumens are added every week. You can grab a piece of it when you join the community pool.

For more details, you can go through this page on Stellar.org.

To cut the long story short, as an XLM holder, you can join a pool and cast your vote (more on this later). In return, you will earn free Lumens every week.

Explained In Detail: How To Get Free Lumens

Step 1: Select your pool.

Why? By selecting a pool, you are voting for that pool. Right now, here are the list of popular and active Lumen pools:

Which one to select? You can do your own research. But if you ask us, go with Lumenaut.

Step 2: Download the wallet

Once you have selected the pool, you will be casting your vote. For this, you will need your wallet and your wallet address. This is easy as Stellar recommends a list of trusted wallets you can download and use it right away.

Select either desktop, mobile, or web wallet. If you are using a desktop wallet, we recommend Stellar Desktop Client.

Step 3: Follow The Pool Instructions

At this point, the pool you have selected will tell you what to do. They will give you their “inflation destination.” This is the address you have to enter later while following the instructions in the pool page. (example)

That’s about it. Every week you will receive your share of Lumens.

How I Do It

To make these steps clearer, I will show you how I would do it. First, I will select Lumenaut as my desired pool.

Next, as I have my Lumens on Binance, I will transfer them to a local wallet. I am selecting Stellar Desktop Client as my local wallet (works on Mac, Windows, and Linux).

Then, from Binance, I will transfer my XLMs to this desktop client. I will copy the public key.

Next, I will go back to Lumenaut (this link) and enter my XLM public key (not private) and then follow the instructions.

Note: Wallets like Stellar Desktop Client also offers you the option to vote directly to XLMPool. Also, note that the number of votes you have is equal to your Lumen balance. For example, if you have 100 XLM then you have 100 voting power.

Is This Safe?

Absolutely. As Stellar Pool says:

If you do join our pool, you have nothing to worry about. We have no access to your Stellar account, and no way of gaining it through the pool system. All thats happening is you’re letting Stellar know “Hey, Im voting for this pool to get a share of the inflation bonus!”

How many Lumens can you collect?

At the time of writing this article, you can earn 200 Lumens for every 20,000 Lumens you have. This is good if you are a long-time holder. And hey, it is free, so why not?

Let us know if you face any problems while trying it out.