Proposal Discussion: Reduce the 1024 IP staking minimum

Proposals
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Hey all,

Some of you may have seen my commentary in Discord. We are a Story validator. We also run validators for Cosmos ecosystem chains Akash, Babylon validator and Bitcoin finality provider, Band, Bitway, Cosmos Hub, Elys, Intento, Kava, Osmosis, Seda, Symphony, and are a governor for Stride. I also am a former CFP and investment manager coming from TradFi with a background in marketing. I only mention all that to give my feedback some cred.

I have no issue with the minimum validator bond of 1024 IP tokens. I’m not suggesting that be changed.

I’m suggesting two changes:

  1. Reduce the minimum stake for the average Joe from 1024 IP to 1 IP token. 1024 IP initial bond would still be required for validators.

  2. Eliminate the minimum additional stake requirement for everyone, so validators can restake their rewards immediately, instead of waiting until we accumulate another 1024 IP.

    Crypto is known to reward those who participate, but the current IP staking minimum for average Joe is 1024 IP tokens. As of today’s IP price of $8.76 that means average Joe needs $8970 available to participate in earning IP rewards, which prevents most people from staking.

Part 1: Reduce the minimum stake for the average Joe from 1024 IP to 1 IP token. Our average delegator across all chains is staking less than $1400 and that number has been much lower. I’ve seen people on socials who talk about their life savings being in crypto and only worth a couple hundred bucks.

Crypto removes middlemen and is supposed to be the great equalizer, providing financial opportunity to the average Joe. Aside from this ideal, excluding the overwhelming majority of investors by imposing a minimum stake of 1024 IP hurts both organic growth and chain security.

Sure, we all want whales as delegators but the fact is that most are small fish.

But, those small fish can be fiercely loyal advocates and super active on social channels. They become brand ambassadors, if treated well.

Therefore, we would like to see what forum participants think of reducing the staking minimum so the world can participate.

Part 2: Eliminate the minimum additional stake requirement for everyone. Said another way, eliminate the mandatory minimum of 1024 IP to subsequently stake on top of existing stake. This allows people to actively compound their rewards, instead of waiting for 8 IP to accrue and be automatically sent to them. Cosmos delegators have the best staking experience in crypto and can claim whenever they like, stake less than 1 full token, and use REStake to automate compounding of their staking rewards.

The image below is a screenshot of our ATOM delegations. We pay the fees for our delegators who use the REStake app and every 24 hours an authz permission allows us to claim and restake their rewards.

ATOM restake
ATOM restake2075Ă—1238 188 KB

Removing the minimum required to add to original stake allows delegators to compound and build wealth, allows validators to grow without effort, and further secures the chain.

From a validator perspective, we’d like to restake the 8 IP (for example) that we earn as rewards and bond it. Forcing validators to wait until we have another 1024 IP keeps us in limbo and since there’s less opportunity to make money, our attention shifts to more profitable ventures.

If we’re allowed to compound and add IP tokens to our self-stake as often as we like, it keeps us interested and involved, and strengthens network security.

Additionally, adding delegators is exceptionally difficult with the 1024 minimum stake. As mentioned earlier, the average Joe on our other chains has less than $1400 worth of tokens staked with us and it’s been substantially lower in the past.

Allowing us to market and promote Story to anyone with a couple bucks drastically increases our chances of being profitable.

Therefore, we would like to see what forum participants think of eliminating the minimum both validators and delegators can add to their stake.

16 Likes
[Proposal] SIP-00010: Reducing Staking Threshold
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Hi @Atlas-Staking

Thanks for the submission, this is a great topic.

Minimum stake was raised during Testnet phase due to spam concerns, where we found out a lot of small stakes could delay block production. I think as you mention we should allow the average person to participate in the network, so I support lowering the minimum delegation, but we need to test thoroughly first to find a lower number that is safe for the network and more inclusive.

Regarding “claim whenever they like”, are you referring about unbonding waiting period? That period is there to make sure slashing can happen if there is wrongdoing. Lowering the stake amount should help reducing the time to compound as you mentioned.

I’m sharing below a link to our governance process for the community to start reviewing, the proposal would need to come up with a safe number tested properly by Piplabs, community support in the Forum, a Sponsor for the draft (prominent community member or dev team member) and a SIP contributor to post the PR to the repo.

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Hey there! Thanks for opening the discussion regarding this matter.

Mandragora is in favor of this proposal, as it will benefit both small stakeholders, lowering the entry barrier to let them participate and contribute to the network security with their stack, as well as validators wanting to self-stake small amounts continuously without the need to accumulate 1024 IP.

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Testnets are to work out the kinks, no? I would think mainnets can handle the traffic, but I certainly respect the opinions of those who have been here since the beginning.

I’m referring to claiming rewards manually vs being forced to wait until I’ve accumulated 8 IP and then those 8 are automatically sent to my wallet address. Correct me if I am misunderstanding the process.

I should be able to claim 1 IP token or less as long as I pay for the transaction, like every other Cosmos chain. Especially if the 1024 staking minimum is reduced, because it could take years for small delegators to accumulate 8 IP.

If someone needs the income and is restricted from claiming it, the chances he will stake are reduced.

I didn’t see whether the PIP proposer has to pay to submit a proposal? The process is a bit different than what I’m used to.

Thanks for your comments. Super appreciate your feedback.

2 Likes
[Proposal] SIP-00010: Reducing Staking Threshold
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Thank you for opening this discussion and for your contribution as a validator. Proposals like this reflect strong commitment to the project and its success, and they should be applauded as they open opportunities that deserve to be considered.

Specifically, we believe these measures go in the right direction:

1. Inclusion and decentralization
The main value of any protocol lies in its ecosystem, and lowering entry barriers fosters both inclusion and decentralization—two of the core pillars. Allowing smaller delegators to participate not only strengthens security, but also builds community and turns these small investors into advocates and ambassadors for the project.

2. Efficient restaking of rewards
The ability to restake immediately is very positive, as it enables continuous reinvestment into the project and improves the user experience, aligning with standards seen in other networks such as Cosmos.

3. Technical considerations
It is important to carefully weigh the technical implications. For example, Ethereum raised its minimum staking requirement precisely to mitigate the massive creation of low-impact nodes that added complexity without delivering meaningful decentralization.

In addition, networks that impose a minimum often do so for technical reasons. For example, Polkadot and its derivatives have such requirements. The rationale is to reduce the computational cost of reward calculations and to allow shorter block times. I am not sure whether Story is affected by this constraint, but it’s an important factor to clarify.

A potential middle-ground could be to establish certain limits or safeguards (such as an initial cap on nodes or performance monitoring), ensuring network efficiency and stability while opening the door to broader participation.

4. Competition and demand
Such dynamics can also create a competitive environment and increase demand for the token, which benefits the overall ecosystem. Without rigid staking limits, the network can grow more organically, provided there is proper technical oversight to prevent performance degradation.

In short, we believe that bringing in more validators and smaller delegators is a net positive for the ecosystem as it grows and becomes more decentralized.

DragonStake Validator

4 Likes
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Thanks to Atlas Staking for putting this proposal forward — this is exactly the discussion we had already started together in Discord, and it’s great to see it now moving into the forum.

From our perspective at Cumulo, the impact of lowering these barriers is huge. Story could potentially onboard thousands of new delegators who are currently excluded because the 1024 IP minimum is out of reach. For a network of Story’s scale, that’s a big missed opportunity for growth and decentralization.

At the same time, the small rewards that delegators and validators cannot currently restake are undervalued — yet over the medium and long term, they represent very significant amounts that should be compounding back into network security. Other ecosystems show how powerful auto-compound can be for steadily increasing staking participation and keeping everyone more engaged.

That’s why we strongly support removing any minimum for adding to stake, for both delegators and validators. This would maximize participation, capture the long-tail of rewards, and strengthen Story’s security as the network matures.

We’re glad to back this proposal in governance and look forward to collaborating on next steps.

4 Likes
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Thank you for this proposal, Atlas Staking!

This is a great topic for discussion and potential future implementation in the network.

In our opinion, the minimum stake of 1,024 IP currently creates a barrier for many delegators who would like to participate in Story. It slightly slows down both decentralization and community growth. If delegations with smaller amounts were allowed, we would see new participants, more trust and community engagement, and increased staking activity.

As for the 1,024 IP requirement to create a validator, in our view this is completely fine, since such a threshold helps maintain validator quality and reduces the risk of too many weak or inactive nodes. But for delegators, this barrier seems too high and limits the possibility of mass participation.

The fact that rewards are only paid out after 8 IP makes small stakes ineffective. If it were possible to claim and reinvest any amount, even 1 IP, participation would immediately become more attractive to others.

We will be closely following the development of this proposal and hope that it will become the foundation for a future SIP!

2 Likes
Taking Prop SIP-00010 a step further
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Jesus, thanks for your comments. Just wanted to respond to the one that differs from my OP.

Please bear in mind, I am not proposing we change the minimum bond of 1024 IP to run a validator. I think that makes sense.

I am only proposing 2 things:

  1. That average Joe delegator does not have the 1024 required staking minimum and can stake as few as 1 IP.

  2. That the minimum requirement for restaking or subsequent staking on top of the original stake be removed. That way everyone (including validators) can compound as often as they like.

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You rock! Super appreciate your support.

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Seems like we agree on it all. Thanks for your feedback.

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ITRocket team supports this proposal - we believe it will broaden participation and boost staking.

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15

Support proposal , this is important proposal

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Thanks for the proposal, this is Ramtin from Piplabs team, it makes sense to lower the min staking for delegations considering the price of token but we need to do some load testing to see how far we can go lower, for example cutting it in half or all the way to 1 IP, We are gonna put it on our teams schedule to do some testing so we can write the SIP with all the details including suggested numbers.

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Thanks so much for your comments. I must however admit, that I am confused by the feedback. This is the first time I am ever seeing this kind of concern for a mainnet.

It would seem out of the ordinary to me that a mainnet could not handle the traffic from staking transactions, but I do not know what kind of thruput the network was designed to handle.

Fortunately, there is a working testnet. Can the aeneid testnet be stress tested first, before formally submitting this proposal on-chain?

1 Like
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Its not about the traffic or the throughput, staking and unstaking operations specifically impact the consensus layer of the protocol and usually on all protocols has some limitations to minimize the spamming operations (e.g. on some networks attacker use these operations to cause turbulence on token value). I’m not saying if we reduce it would cause an issue but I think since this measure was added to prevent specific conditions we still need to test it to see what is the rational number for this.

Aeneid testnet is not the best place for the initial benchmarking since many ecosystem applications rely on it for their staging environment and adopting new changes before mainnet.
We are gonna test on a devnet and update the results here, we need those results in order to propose a SIP. An approved SIP changes are gonna be rolled-out to Aeneid and Mainnet consequently.

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Hi folks and thanks for your opinions! We’re in favor of lowering the delegator minimum . The validator bond should stay high (at least the current 1,024 IP or higher), and we’re open to raising it if tests show risk. We run nodes across chains and see the split model work in practice: high validator bond, low delegator entry (Aptos: 1 million APT minimum for validator node, 11 APT minimum for staking delegation, current price is ~5$).

What to measure: block/tx latency, reward-distribution throughput, state growth under many small stakes/claims. Guardrails: keep a payout threshold, batch micro-stakes/claims, add a tiny dust floor or rate limits.

By this we open the door for the average user without lowering validator standards.

2 Likes
[Proposal] SIP-00010: Reducing Staking Threshold
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Appreciate your feedback

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Hey there, any update on this?

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We planned some tests in upcoming weeks, hopefully will have the results soon. Thanks for your patience until we figure out the exact numbers that we should use as minimum.

2 Likes