Understanding Staking Terminology

APY stands for Annual Percentage Yield. This is the amount of income that you can expect an investment to generate in a given year. At Ndax, our staking assets offer APYs of between 3% and 13%.  

Importantly, the portion of APY that is paid out in a given week or day is the APY, divided by the number of payout periods. For example, if an asset yields 10% and pays out rewards weekly, the amount you would expect to receive as a weekly reward would be 10% divided by 52 weeks, or 0.19% per week.  

Payout of rewards for most staking assets are made daily, with the exception of Ethereum (ETH) and The Graph Token (GRT), which have weekly payouts. The amount of rewards paid out in each period represent the amount earned for that timeframe, less any fees and/or penalties. 

Each staking plan has a “Redemption Option”, called Instant Redemption or Standard Redemption. Some assets, like Cardano (ADA) and Polygon (MATIC) offer both Instant and Standard Redemption. 

Additionally, some assets like Polkadot (DOT) and The Graph (GRT) have multiple staking plans, with different APYs. The different plans reflect the different unbonding periods that are available with Standard Redemption. 

For example, Polkadot has a Flexible Plan with two unique redemption options – an Instant Redemption option with no unbonding wait time, or a Standard Redemption plan with a 2 day Unbonding Period, and pays an APY of 4%. Polkadot also has a separate Fixed Plan has an Unbonding Period of 28 days and pays an APY of 12%, but does not have an Instant Redemption option. 

You are welcome to choose the plan which best suits your investing goals. However, be advised that once you have staked your assets with one plan, you cannot change it to the other plan automatically. Instead, you would need to withdraw your funds from one plan, wait the required unbonding period, if applicable, and then subscribe to the other plan.