It has been a long, long 4–6 weeks coming, but it has finally landed! POLIS staking is finally here in the form of the POLIS Locker!
Now you can go and lock your POLIS for a number of months, or even years, and earn more POLIS in return for that. It’s important to realize the returns here are not as crazy as some others out there. The team is not looking to just give away loads of extra POLIS to you, their intent is to get people involved in the upcoming governance process that will be released later this year. The earnings are really just a small incentive to do so.
DAO Portal
Though the POLIS Locker is the clear highlight here, the team also added a whole new DAO/governance segment to the website. Besides the POLIS Locker — and the ATLAS Locker soon — this section will become the future home of the DAO governance as well.
Lockup periods
When you stake your POLIS, you will have to select one of 10 different lockup periods. The longer the period you lock for, the more POLIS you will be rewarded with. An APR (Annual Percentage Rate) can’t be given due to how the staking mechanism has been set up. It will change constantly depending on the total POLIS staked and the selected lockup durations.
Voting Weight
Besides this, longer lockup periods do also increase the weight of your governance votes going forward. The image below shows the list of all 10 available lockup periods and their voting weight multipliers:
In total, there will be roughly 128 million POLIS being rewarded to those who stake their POLIS (or ATLAS) over the next 8 years.
POLIS Emissions
POLIS rewards will be emitted on a daily basis, starting August 2nd of this year (2022). To that end, a snapshot will be made on August 1 of all the POLIS staked so far (and their lockup duration).
The formula to calculate your daily rewards looks like this:
your voting power = your staked POLIS x your current voting weight total voting power = sum of everyone's voting power your daily reward = (your voting power / total voting power) x total daily reward
Locked means Locked
Please be aware that when you lock your POLIS, it is really locked. There is absolutely no way to get your POLIS back in your wallet before having been locked up for the full period you selected.
Further Reading
There is a lot more to the governance and the locking mechanism. A more detailed write-up of the POLIS DAO can be found in an article the team released shortly after the #426Live event concluded.
The team also released a video containing a visual walk-through of the staking process.
Team Lockup
Those who have read the Economics Paper, know that a good 30% slice of the total POLIS pie has been earmarked for the team. This slice will vest over time, so the team cannot spend all of it just yet. However, the White Paper explicitly states (p.17) that the team has access to their full allocation for the specific purpose of staking it.
This means that 108 million POLIS will flow into the POLIS Locker (the current circulating supply is roughly 100 million POLIS), which will guarantee that the team will have full control of the DAO for the next several years — quite important to make sure they can veto any proposal when the governance module will go live later on.
Now, as the team does not need their POLIS, it would make most economic sense for them to lock it for 5 years. However, the team has decided to divide their POLIS over 3 different lockup periods instead (3,4 and 5 years). This reduces the amount of POLIS they earn, which means there is potentially a little more POLIS for everyone else who will be staking.
ATLAS Locker
An ATLAS locker will be launched soon, which will add another locker to the Governance/DAO section. Staking your ATLAS (and locking it) will earn you POLIS. It will also reduce your Marketplace fees (when these will be introduced at a later stage).
Faction & Regional DAOs
Keep in mind that in the future (more than a year from now most likely) there are more DAOs that potentially require you to stake your POLIS: The Faction & Regional DAOs.
So far the team has not yet decided how this will work. They are exploring the possibility of building this on top of the current POLIS Locker, in which case you would be able to assign some of your POLIS to one or more sub-DAOs.
At this point in time, it looks likely this is where the team will end up. However, it is important to realize this is absolutely not set in stone, nor is it something the team made official.
