Basic Staking for Dummies

What is DeFi Staking?

Imagine you have some digital coins, like a cryptocurrency. Instead of just holding onto them, you can "stake" them in a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) protocol to earn more coins over time. It’s a bit like putting money in a savings account to earn interest, but instead of a bank, you're using a smart contract on a blockchain.

How Does It Work?

A use the example of the contracts that im going to make, but you can see examples in real life like Olympus Protocol on Ethereum Mainnet.

1. Choose a Staking Platform: You find a DeFi platform that offers staking. Let’s say the platform allows you to stake a token called StakingToken.

2. Lock Your Tokens: You decide to participate, so you lock (stake) your StakingToken in the platform's Main Contract. This contract is a smart contract on the blockchain that manages everything automatically.

3. Earn Rewards: While your tokens are staked, the platform rewards you with another token called RewardToken. The longer you stake, the more RewardToken you earn.

4. Unstaking: If you want to stop staking, you can withdraw (unstake) your StakingToken from the contract. You still keep the RewardToken you earned.

Why Stake?

Staking in a DeFi protocol allows you to earn rewards passively. It’s an easy way to make your digital assets grow without actively trading them.

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This explanation gives a basic overview, using a relatable analogy to make the concept of DeFi staking more understandable.

Contracts

• Main Contract ➡️ Manage all the project, where the Staking and Unstaking logic are.
• StakingToken Contract ➡️ the token that users use to receive rewards from the staking platform, this contract have the ERC20 standard implementation
• RewardToken Contract ➡️ the token to rewards users, his contract have the ERC20 standard implementation.

A small diagram explaining how the contracts are connected.

graph TD
  A[Main_Contract] --> |Manages| B[StakingToken_Contract]
  A --> |Manages| C[RewardToken_Contract]
  
  B[StakingToken_Contract] --> |ERC20_Implementation| B
  C[RewardToken_Contract] --> |ERC20_Implementation| C
  
  A --> |Handles_Staking_and_Unstaking_Logic| A

Loading

Quickstart

git clone https://github.com/gab0071/basic-staking-project-foundry
cd basic-staking-project-foundry
forge install 
forge build

Usage

OpenZeppelin

OpenZeppelin Contracts Docs

OpenZeppelin GitHub Repo

Installing OpenZeppelin Contracts Package

forge install OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts --no-commit

Start a local node

make anvil

Deploy

This will default to your local node. You need to have it running in another terminal in order for it to deploy.

make deploy

Deploy - Other Network

See below

Testing

forge test

or if use Makefile

make test

Test Coverage

forge coverage

Deployment to a testnet or mainnet

1. Setup environment variables

You'll want to set your SEPOLIA_RPC_URL and PRIVATE_KEY as environment variables. You can add them to a .env file, similar to what you see in .env.example.

• PRIVATE_KEY: The private key of your account (like from metamask). NOTE: FOR DEVELOPMENT, PLEASE USE A KEY THAT DOESN'T HAVE ANY REAL FUNDS ASSOCIATED WITH IT.
  • You can learn how to export it here.
• SEPOLIA_RPC_URL: This is url of the sepolia testnet node you're working with. You can get setup with one for free from Alchemy

Optionally, add your ETHERSCAN_API_KEY if you want to verify your contract on Etherscan.

1. Get testnet ETH Head over to faucets.chain.link and get some testnet ETH. You should see the ETH show up in your metamask.

2. Deploy

make deploy-sepolia

Estimate gas

You can estimate how much gas things cost by running:

forge snapshot

And you'll see and output file called .gas-snapshot

Formatting

To run code formatting:

forge fmt

Layout of Contract

Check this readme

Made with ❤️ by catellaTech.