Everything you need to know about how to stake Illuvium
Illuvium is an upcoming blockchain game on the Ethereum chain. There is not that much known yet about the exact game, except for the trailer that can be viewed on the Illuvium website. Illuvium has a market cap of just under 1 billion USD as of 26/11/2021. Once the game becomes live, we will endeavor to update this page with more up-to-date information.
What you need to Stake Illuvium
Firstly, you will need a web3 supported wallet. I normally use MetaMask for my day-to-day transactions. Once you have a wallet set up, you will need to buy some ILV tokens. This can be done on CEXs such as Binance, or on-chain via an aggregator such as 1inch or matcha.xyz.
Once you own ILV, send them to your wallet if not done so already, make sure you have enough ETH to pay for the gas fees, and you are good to go.
Step 1 – Heading over to the Illuvium Page
Go to the Illuvium Homepage. If you have not already done so, watch the Illuvium Trailer; it’s actually quite good. On the top of the page, click on the Staking Link highlighted below.
Step 2 – Checking out the Core Staking Pools
Next, continue by clicking on the Core Pools button, also highlighted below. Flash Pools are staking pools that only exist for short periods of time. They are partnerships with other platforms that will reward users in ILV for staking a different token. At the time of this writing, if you had staked LINK tokens you’d receive a roughly 50% APY paid out in ILV.
Step 3 – Connecting your Wallet to Illuvium
On the next screen, please Connect your Wallet. I personally use MetaMask, but most other wallets are also supported by Illuvium.
Step 4 – Staking your ILV in a staking pool
On the next screen you will see the 2 Core Staking Pools. In this tutorial we will be staking the ILV Token. You can see the TVL and the APY of both pools on this window. If you would like to calculate how much you can earn from staking ILV, head on over to our ILV Staking Calculator.
By clicking on Details in the above screen, you will be taken to a more detailed information page about the pool, as can be seen below. In the top right, you can see the pool contract address. Clicking on the address will take you to the etherscan page for this address.
Secondly, you can also see details about your own staking, how many rewards you have pending and your total staked amount in this pool.
Continue by clicking on the Stake Button highlighted below.
Step 5 – Approving the staking transaction
Before you can continue, you need to approve Illuvium on your wallet. This costs a bit of gas, so make sure you have some ETH on your wallet for this and the next transaction. The transaction should be processed in less than a few minutes.
Step 6 – Choosing between locked and flexible staking
You now have 2 options when it comes to staking ILV. Either the Flexible route, which at the time of this writing was paying 32% or the locked route, which locks your tokens for up to 12 months, but pays twice as much rewards. Both screens can be seen below. I personally chose to go for the locked period of 12 months, to supercharge my rewards. Once you have decided on the amount of ILV you’d like to stake and for how long, if at all, you’d like to lock your ILV for, continue by pressing Stake, confirm the transaction in your wallet and voila, you are now successfully staking ILV.
You can go to the Dashboard on the Illuvium website, scroll down and see your Staked Assets.
Conclusion
Staking ILV could not be any simpler. The Illuvium website walks you through the whole process and explains the locked vs flexible options quite well. I am a big fan of the fact Illuvium gives you an option for how long you’d like to stake for, as not everyone is happy locking their tokens for a year. Altogether, I paid roughly $100 for the transactions, which is quite steep. It would have been nice to have ILV on a different chain, to allow for cheaper transactions. At a price of $650 per ILV, I will need roughly 4 months to recoup my losses on the transaction, based on the current price and staking rewards.
Please remember that if you want to cash out your earnings in ILV, the rewards have a 12 month vesting period. If you would like to, however, make use of ILV in-game once the game is live, you can instead withdraw sILV – synthetic ILV, which can only be used in-game. This gives us a best of both worlds scenario. We’ll update this part once more is known about sILV.
To find out more about Illuvium, head over to our Illuvium Staking Page.