Are you bummed out that you don't have the money or the hardware required for mining any coins? Me too! Fortunately, now we have other options in the form of POS. I suppose you can think of a stake as like generating interest on your holdings. Instead of being rewarded by using your computer power you are instead rewarded for holding coins for the network. This is typically done in a local wallet running on your computer, but there's also online wallet alternatives like POSWallet and BTCPop!
If you don't have internet 24/7 due to traveling, you don't want to leave your computer running, or you don't have many coins these services could be useful. However, you should be aware that they will take a percentage of your stakes. I'm not sure whether you will stake more or less often though. They do typically use a "pool" of all users coins, but then you would also have to split those stakes with all other users. Staking on your own computer means all block rewards belong to you if you find them.
There are a lot of POS coins around. Some of them pay better than others, and some of them are prohibitively expensive! I don't have piles of money laying around to purchase a Dash masternode for example. However, there are other staking coins that will give you a fair return for less of an investment. How do you find these coins? Well, you could start by hitting up the obvious places like Steemit or Bitcoin Talk Forums. The later is where you'll find information about all the newest coins, because pretty much all of them will post there. It's also a good place to find out exactly what's going on with these coins. While a good return is great it's even better if the coin has a solid development team, and an engaged community. Looking around in these forums is an excellent way to find out exactly where the coin is going.
I haven't yet found a similar site for JUST POS coins, but MasterNodesPro will tell you the highest paying master nodes. You can pretty much always also get just plain staking rewards as well if you can't afford to host a node for yourself. You can also use Cryptopia's coin info page which will allow you to find POS coins by using their filters, but you'll have to find out the yield percentages on your own.
I'm currently staking two coins. I was staking three, but I consolidated as the third was not staking as often as I wanted, and I wanted to put that investment into the second coin. Currently, I'm staking Syndicate and Rain. While you can purchase Syndicate on several exchanges Rain is currently only available on Cryptopia.
How much can I earn with staking coins?
That depends on the coin and on your investment. The bigger the investment the more opportunities you have to get stakes. Many coins will have a static reward. For example, Syndicate is always 5 coins per stake. Dope Coin is always 30 coins per stake. Bitbean is 1,000 coins per stake. Rain is a unique one in that the stakes are a random number of coins which is kind of exciting! A lesser stake number isn't always bad. Even though Syndicate stakes the least amount of coins of the ones I mentioned it stakes the most regularly, and it stakes more frequently for me. Dope Coin on the other hand was the most unreliable so I traded it in for more rain.
How To Stake Coins
1.) First, you'll need to go to the coin's official site and download the latest wallet. You can see the download page for Rain here. They have wallets for Windows, Linux and Mac!
2.) Second, you'll need to sync the wallet with the network! This can take a long time, but many times the developers will make a "bootstrap" file available. By downloading this and placing it in the wallet's program folder you can speed up this process dramatically. If you send coins to your wallet before syncing has completed the transaction might not show up until its done so don't have a heart attack yet!
3.) Next, you'll need to get some coins! Where to purchase these coins will depend on which exchanges the developers have submitted to. For example, you can purchase Rain at Cryptopia. If you're not sure check the official website for the coin or the bitcointalk thread.
4.) Okay! Now we need to encrypt the wallet. This is for your own protection to prevent unauthorized access to your staking wallet. Just like you need to guard your steemit password you also need to guard this. Click settings at the top, and then choose encrypt wallet. You'll be able to choose a passphrase here. Make sure it's something you'll remember, and don't lose it! I've written my passwords down on paper for safe keeping. If your passphrase is lost you can most likely kiss your coins good bye.
5.) Okay, you've got a great passphrase right? You wrote it down and put it in a super safe place right? You've got coins in the wallet right? Okay, now we need to unlock the wallet for staking. What!? But I just made a great passphrase why am I going to unlock it?? You need to allow the network access. Don't worry, just make sure to check the little box circled above that says for staking only!
6.) Each coin has a different time needed for the coins to "mature". This is the amount of time the coins need to be in your wallet before they are eligible for staking rewards. This time will vary per coin, but when they're ready your wallet will start to show staking information for you. The amount of time it will take you to stake is based on both your weight (amount of coins and age of coins staking) and the network's weight (everybody else's coin amount and coin age). If the time to stake looks super far away don't worry, it'll most likely adjust significantly. Now you just have to wait for your wallet to find a reward block for you. When it does you'll see new transactions in your wallet that will say "minted". These are coins you've acquired through staking rewards! (You can see the estimated time to mint coins by hovering your mouse over the coin's icon in the lower right hand corner of the wallet as seen above.)
7.) Having trouble staking coins? Have you tried using coin control? Wallets have something called inputs. These are individual blocks of coins within a wallet. So, let's say your wallet balance is 10,000 coins. If this is all stacked in one input that means that once that input has found a reward block they need to "refresh" before they are eligible to find another block. Sometimes you can get more stakes by breaking up your pool into multiple blocks. You can do this by simply sending the amount of coins you want per block in a separate transaction to the same wallet address.
Your wallet will do this on its own eventually, but sometimes I like to help it a long. You will still have the same wallet weight, but with the added opportunity of possibly staking more often. You can enable this feature by going to settings, display, and then clicking on "display coin control features". To use coin control visit the send tab and choose "inputs". This will let you see all of your coin inputs. If you need to break up your coins just send coins from the largest input to the same wallet address to make smaller blocks. Don't make your blocks too small though. I typically use 1000 or 500 coin blocks, but coins that require a large number for staking might need larger blocks. You can always readjust if it's not working out.
Common Questions
"Do I have to stake my coins 24/7 to get rewards?"
No, but this will help you get the most rewards. I stake all the time.
"How can I mint coins more often?"
You can mint more coins by adding to your balance to stake more often or possibly by utilizing coin control. See step number 7 for coin control options.
"My deposit isn't showing up! Omgwtf!?!"
Did you wait for the sync to finish? If not your transfer might not appear until after it's done. If not did you wait long enough? Your transaction may not have confirmed yet. Did you send it to the correct wallet address? If not there might not be anything you can do.. : (
"I don't have any wallet connections! It's been like 87 years!"
If this is your first install you may need to add nodes manually to your config file. This just requires copy pasting some IP addresses for the network to a text file, but they will vary for each coin. Try finding the corresponding bitcoin talk thread for your coin. Someone has likely posted them.
"I had connections, but now they are gone!?"
First, try restarting the wallet. Leave it alone for an hour or so and see if you get connections. If you've tried that consult the bitcoin talk forums for your coin for a fix or you could try fiddling with the config file a bit. I've had this work in the past.
"I've been running this wallet for X number of days. Where the hell are my coins?"
First, check to make sure your wallet is unlocked for staking. If your wallet is locked you can't stake coins. If that's not it how many coins do you have? While any amount will eventually stake it could take a very long time if you only have a few coins. You may also want to use the 'coin control' feature to check your inputs. More inputs mean more opportunities for staking.
"I have a problem that's specific to my staking wallet or coin where do I get help??"
The best place to get help for a particular wallet or coin is most likely the associated bitcoin talk thread. Here you'll find other members of your coin's community, and the developers who can help you with specific questions or troubleshoot your issues. Try searching for something like "[coin name] bitcoin talk". You can also check to see if your coin has a community Slack channel where you can get support, find out about developments, or just talk to other people interested in your coin.