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Internals
StakeWise Solo
Non-custodial Ethereum validators running on banking-grade infrastructure
The goal of StakeWise Solo is to simplify participation in staking and achieve maximum returns for users that prioritize self-custody of withdrawal key and have at least 32 ETH to stake.
We charge a fee of 10 DAI ($) per validator per month and offer a unique billing method to handle regular payments for your validators without linking a credit card. To our knowledge, our fees are the most competitive on the market, which is consistent with our goal of maximizing profit for stakers.
Overview
StakeWise Solo is a non-custodial staking service where users provide the public part of their withdrawal key and blocks of 32 ETH for StakeWise to create and manage validators on their behalf. All validators created in this manner run on our infrastructure and benefit from a failover setup, meaning that they are never offline. Their deposit data prevents anyone but the respective private key holders from withdrawing their balance upon Phase 2. Solo validators will keep running for as long as the user is paying a staking fee or until a validator exit from the network is performed. The latter can happen either upon the user's voluntary in-app request or as a result of two missed validator bills.
Depositing
To create a Solo validator, you must submit your
withdrawal credentials and deposit at least 32 ETH via our Solo Deposit interface in the app. The withdrawal credentials are something that you must generate on your own before creating a validator, or use Ledger Nano X that will create and store the withdrawal key for you. Use our guide on how to do that below. Once you submit the
withdrawal credentials and confirm the deposit transaction, the operator running in a cluster will provision validator keys, start a validator node, and submit the deposit data through the Solos smart contract. There is no way for StakeWise to replace the withdrawal credentials you have submitted with something different as the validator registration transaction would then be rejected. You can examine the Solos and Validator Registration contracts yourself to confirm this before making a deposit. 
Once the Validator Registration contract (VRC) receives the deposit data, it registers a new validator in the Beacon Chain. Following an obligatory activation stage, this validator starts participating in the consensus mechanism and earns staking rewards for you.
Tracking earnings
It is also possible to check attestation/proposal performance for each validator individually by pressing on the
Details button and clicking on the Validator link. The link leads to the beaconcha.in stats page for your validator.
Withdrawal
Withdrawal of the validator balance will be natively allowed by the ETH2 specs upon Phase 2.
Solo validator owners will use their withdrawal key to request withdrawals to the address that they specify.
Voluntary Exit
The voluntary exit is an action that stops the validator attesting duties and exits it from staking. A validator that exits from the network will stop earning staking rewards but also will not incur penalties for being offline. There may be different good reasons for exiting a validator, but the downside to exiting it before Phase 2 is the inability to access the validator balance (i.e. withdraw funds) due to ETH2 specs. The specs also do not allow exited validators to re-enter staking before Phase 2.
Before requesting a voluntary validator exit, please consider the implications of exiting your validator before Phase 2.
In the mainnet, Solo users will be able to request an exit for their validator(s) within the
Validator dashboard in the Solo app once this functionality is enabled. The staking fee will continue accruing until the validator has exited from the network, which may take a few days from the moment of submitting an exit request.Users of StakeWise Solo must also remember that if a bill for their validator(s) is not paid within two months, StakeWise will automatically request an exit for their validators. Therefore, we advise you to always keep your billing balance topped up with DAI.
Validator Keys
At the moment, there is no safe way to hand over the validator keys of Solo users if they wish to migrate their validator(s) from StakeWise to elsewhere. Therefore, you must consider that by depositing in StakeWise Solo, you will be bound to use our service until Phase 2.
You can be certain that whenever a solution for the safe handover of validator keys emerges, StakeWise will implement it as a new feature.
Billing
Billing for Solo staking begins as soon as your validator(s) start earning rewards and continues until your validator exits the network or two consequent monthly staking bills are missed. We advise you to keep your DAI billing balance topped-up for as long as you are using the Solo service to avoid not paying the bills. You can top-up your DAI balance at any time, even before you create your first Solo validator.
Automatic payment system
StakeWise uses a payment system that simplifies and automates the process of paying for one's validators without the need to create an account on our website or link a credit card. This system is based on DAI deposits into a special account, which is charged monthly to pay for your validators.
Each Solo user has a dedicated deposit account. It works akin to a pay-as-you-go SIM card, where you top-up a certain sum on your card and use this balance to pay for the services over time. With a DAI deposit account, users can deposit any amount of DAI - this amount will become their billing balance. StakeWise will charge the staking fee for Solo validators from the billing balance of their owner. The charge will be deducted once per month meaning that the 10 DAI fee per validator is charged as one sum on a certain day every month.
Payment terms
To improve customer experience, StakeWise provides generous payment terms to Solo stakers - from the moment of receiving their bill, users have 2 months to pay it. If a user fails to pay for the service within the 2-month term, StakeWise will automatically request an exit for that user's validator(s).
Balance of the validators that exit from the network before Phase 2 gets frozen until its release. Therefore, it makes sense to top-up your billing account instead of avoiding the payment of the staking fee. See our guide on how to do it below.
Last modified 1yr ago