Delegating GEN: A Delegator's Guide

Delegating lets you put your GEN to work without running a validator node yourself. You pick a validator, delegate your GEN to it, and share in the rewards that validator earns for participating in consensus — while the validator does the operational work of running the node.

This guide is written for token holders. It walks through the whole lifecycle: choosing a validator, delegating, monitoring and claiming rewards, and switching to a different validator. For the concepts underneath delegation (epochs, shares vs. stake, validator weight, reward distribution), see Staking in GenLayer.

How delegation works, in brief

• You delegate GEN to a specific validator. Your delegation is tracked as shares in that validator's pool, not as a fixed token amount.
• Rewards compound: as the validator earns, the value of each share grows, so your position grows without any action on your part.
• Delegations follow the network's epoch timing. A new delegation activates 2 epochs after you make it (with a special exception during the genesis bootstrap — see Delegating during Epoch 0).
• Exiting is not instant. When you unstake, your GEN is locked for an unbonding period of 7 epochs before you can claim it back.

An epoch is a fixed time window in which the validator set is active; on the network, an epoch lasts one day. See Epoch System for details.

Step 1 — Choose a validator

Your rewards and risk both depend on the validator you back. Evaluate candidates before committing.

Where to look

• Block explorer (no tooling required). Open the explorer for your network and find its Validators view — it lists the active validator set with each validator's stake and status. On Testnet Bradbury that's explorer-bradbury.genlayer.com (opens in a new tab); each network's explorer is linked from the Networks page.

• CLI (for a scriptable, always-current list). The GenLayer CLI prints the validator set with stake, status, and voting power:

  genlayer staking validators
  genlayer staking validators --all   # also include banned validators

  To inspect a single validator's stake, shares, and live/banned status:

  genlayer staking validator-info --validator 0xVALIDATOR_ADDRESS

What to evaluate

Step 2 — Delegate your GEN

Make sure your wallet is connected to the right network first (RPC and chain ID are on the Networks page), and that you hold enough GEN to cover your delegation plus transaction fees.

Minimum

Under normal rules (epoch 2 onward), the minimum delegation is 42 GEN per validator. During the genesis bootstrap (epoch 0) this minimum is relaxed — see Delegating during Epoch 0.

Delegate with the CLI

genlayer staking delegator-join --validator 0xVALIDATOR_ADDRESS --amount 42gen

The --amount accepts a value in wei, or with a gen / eth suffix (for example 100gen). To delegate to several validators, run the command once per validator with the address of each.

Add more to an existing delegation

To increase a delegation you already hold, delegate again to the same validator — additional deposits have no minimum, and rewards on your existing position keep compounding in the meantime.

For the underlying contract-level calls (useful if you're integrating delegation into your own tooling rather than using the CLI), see the Staking Contract Guide.

Step 3 — Monitor and claim rewards

Rewards compound automatically

You do not need to claim to keep earning. Rewards accrue into the validator's pool and raise the value of each share, so your delegated position grows on its own. Claiming is only needed when you want to withdraw GEN back to your wallet after unstaking (Step 4).

Check your position

genlayer staking delegation-info --validator 0xVALIDATOR_ADDRESS

This shows your delegation with the given validator (defaulting to your signer address; pass --delegator 0x... to check another address). Because your position is denominated in shares, its GEN value moves as the pool earns.

To see network-wide reward context for an epoch — total inflation, how much has been claimed, and how much is still unclaimed — use:

genlayer staking epoch-info
genlayer staking epoch-info --epoch 4   # a specific (current or previous) epoch

See Reward Distribution for how rewards are shared between a validator and its delegators.

Step 4 — Unstake and claim your GEN

Unstaking is a two-phase process because of the unbonding period.

Phase 1 — Exit (start unbonding). You specify how many shares to withdraw. Those shares stop earning immediately, and the corresponding GEN enters a 7-epoch lock.

# Withdraw a number of shares from a validator you delegate to
genlayer staking delegator-exit --validator 0xVALIDATOR_ADDRESS --shares SHARES

Phase 2 — Claim (after unbonding). Once 7 full epochs have passed since your exit, claim the GEN back to your address:

genlayer staking delegator-claim --validator 0xVALIDATOR_ADDRESS

Epoch 5:      delegator-exit  →  unbonding starts, shares stop earning
Epochs 6–11:  locked period (cannot claim yet)
Epoch 12:     delegator-claim available

For the concept-level walkthrough of exits and cooldowns, see Unstaking in GenLayer.

Switching validators

There is no "redelegate" operation on GenLayer. Moving your stake from one validator to another is not atomic — it is a full unstake from the old validator followed by a fresh delegation to the new one, with the unbonding period in between. Concretely:

1. Exit your shares from your current validator: genlayer staking delegator-exit --validator 0xOLD --shares SHARES.
2. Wait the full 7-epoch unbonding period (~7 days on the network). Your GEN is locked and earning nothing during this time.
3. Claim the released GEN back to your wallet: genlayer staking delegator-claim --validator 0xOLD.
4. Delegate the claimed GEN to the new validator: genlayer staking delegator-join --validator 0xNEW --amount .... Remember this new delegation then takes 2 epochs to activate.

Delegating during Epoch 0

Epoch 0 is the genesis bootstrapping period before the network is operational. Its rules are deliberately relaxed to help the network launch, and they differ from everything above:

• Delegation is effectively free of the usual minimum — any non-zero amount is accepted, so you can delegate below the normal 42 GEN threshold.
• Below-minimum delegations are allowed to register, but a delegation only becomes active in epoch 2 if it meets the normal minimum by then. The network jumps straight from epoch 0 to epoch 2 (epoch 1 is skipped).
• No rewards are earned in epoch 0, because no transactions are processed yet.

From epoch 2 onward, normal rules apply: the 42 GEN minimum, the +2-epoch activation delay, and the 7-epoch unbonding period all take effect.

The full epoch-0 rules — including validator behavior, share calculation, and the transition to epoch 2 — are documented in Genesis Epoch 0.

Related resources