Coinbase Cloud Help Center

How delegating with Coinbase Cloud works

What is Delegate?

You can delegate your tokens to a Coinbase Cloud community node using our infrastructure. If you don’t have the necessary tokens to run your own validator, you can stake to one of our public validators and earn rewards.

For more information, you can select one of the links below or you can check out our developer documentation.

You can start staking to earn on the protocols that we currently support. Protocol offerings are being expanded and will be shared upon release. Protocols often have a minimum stake, a minimum staking period, and/or an unbonding period. The protocol will also deduct a commission fee that it sends to Coinbase Cloud. This fee is listed in the protocol information as the Coinbase Cloud commission fee. 

How delegating with Coinbase Cloud works

Staking with Coinbase Cloud allows you to stake your tokens to a public validator from your preferred wallet or custody solution. You can learn more about the process of delegating digital assets and how staking helps public validators conduct PoS (proof of stake) validation on our Discover site. Our help center and developer documentation will provide you with the details that you need to stake with Coinbase Cloud. Here are a few terms that you’ll see here and in the documentation that are important to understand.

Minimum stake

The minimum stake is the minimum amount of a token that you need in order to stake. You have to stake at least the minimum stake in order to delegate your funds to the public validator and earn rewards.

Minimum staking period

The minimum staking period is the minimum amount of time your crypto must be delegated. It is also sometimes called the warmup period or the lockup period.

Unbonding period

 The unbonding period is the period between when you initiate a withdrawal and when you are actually able to regain your funds. Unbonding periods vary, so be sure you research the requirements and rules for each protocol.

Coinbase Cloud commission fee

The Coinbase Cloud commission fee is applied on-chain to the rewards that you have earned by staking your tokens to a community validator. This fee is noted as a percentage in the protocol-specific information that we provide here in the help center and in the developer documentation. You will not see an invoice from Coinbase Cloud because this is an on-chain transaction.

Slashing

Slashing is a mechanism built into many blockchain protocols to discourage validator misbehavior. It's designed by protocol creators to incentivize security, availability, and blockchain participation. While the specifics are defined within each protocol, the slashing mechanisms are similar: a predefined percentage or fixed amount of a validator’s tokens are lost when it behaves abnormally on the protocol.

Image diagrams how earning rewards on Coinbase Cloud's public validator works. The diagram shows that the Coinbase Cloud service fee is applied to all rewards earned on the validator.