First things first, you need a Phantom wallet. Phantom Wallet is the most popular wallet in the Solana ecosystem and is the most intuitive and user-friendly wallet I have used for any ecosystem. My personal favorite wallet! You need to go to https://phantom.app/ to download the wallet on desktop or your preferred app store on mobile.
**There are some nefarious apps posing as Phantom on the app stores so be careful. **
Once you write down your private keys and set up your wallet, you need to fill it with some Solana.
You can purchase some SOL via FTX, Coinbase, Binance, Gemini, or your exchange of choice. *It does take 10-14 days for funds to “settle” before you can withdraw them from most exchanges.
Back to Phantom Wallet, hover over your wallet name and copy your address to the clipboard. Send the SOL from the exchange to your Phantom Wallet.
Once the SOL has arrived (a minute at most) Click the Solana Token
Click “Start earning SOL”.
An overwhelming list of Validators will appear. How do you choose a validator? Go to this validator list and choose one with a low commission rate (cut they get). It is also prudent to select one outside the top 40 to increase decentralization.
I selected “AG 🔥” as they are 57th biggest and have a 0% commission. Select the amount to Stake and click Stake!
Be sure to keep a small amount of SOL in your wallet for gas to complete the transaction.
You are all done! Took maybe 5 clicks?
It is smart to go https://solanabeach.io/validators every month and make sure your validator has not increased its commission. Lots of validators start with a low commission to attract users and increase it as time goes on.
Solana currently enjoys a 5-7% Staking reward. If you wish to unstake it takes roughly 2 days to do so.
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