⚡Stake MOTA for 4.20% APR

How PoS works on MotaCoin

MotaCoin's consensus is a coin-age weighted Proof-of-Stake, inherited from the Peercoin lineage and adapted with X13 hashing. Each unspent transaction output (UTXO) accumulates "coin age" the longer it sits unspent. When the daemon finds a valid stake kernel — a hash below the current target — it signs a new block with the private key of that UTXO, claiming the stake reward.

Requirements

• MotaCoin Core installed and fully synced to mainchain tip (see desktop wallet tutorial if you need to install)
• A balance of mainchain MOTA in your wallet (prefix M)
• A machine that stays online — laptop sleep breaks staking. Ideal: Raspberry Pi 4/5 or always-on desktop

Step-by-step

1. Check your wallet balance

   $ motacoin-cli getinfo
   {
     "version": 2000100,
     "balance": 1250.00000000,
     "stake": 0.00000000,
     "blocks": 184520,
     "connections": 8,
     "staking": false,
     "unlocked_until": 0,
     ...
   }

   If connections is 0, you're not synced — wait for the daemon to catch up before continuing. If balance is 0, bridge some SPL MOTA in from Solana first — see the bridge tutorial.

2. Encrypt the wallet (first-time setup only)

   If you haven't encrypted the wallet yet, do it now — an unencrypted wallet has zero protection if your machine is compromised:

   $ motacoin-cli encryptwallet "your-strong-passphrase-here"
   wallet encrypted; MotaCoin server stopping, restart to run with encrypted wallet.
   $ motacoind -daemon

   Back up wallet.dat before and after encrypting Copy ~/.motacoin/wallet.dat to an offline medium (USB stick, encrypted archive). If you lose your passphrase, the funds are unrecoverable.

3. Unlock the wallet for staking only

   The magic flag is the trailing true — it unlocks the wallet for signing stake blocks only, not for spending. If your machine is compromised while unlocked like this, the attacker can't drain your funds.

   $ motacoin-cli walletpassphrase "your-strong-passphrase-here" 99999999 true
   # The "99999999" is the unlock duration in seconds (~3 years) — effectively forever.
   # The trailing "true" means stake-only; the wallet cannot send coins while unlocked this way.

4. Verify staking started

   $ motacoin-cli getinfo | grep staking
     "staking": true,
   $ motacoin-cli getstakinginfo
   {
     "enabled": true,
     "staking": true,
     "errors": "",
     "currentblocksize": 1000,
     "currentblocktx": 0,
     "pooledtx": 0,
     "difficulty": 142.857,
     "search-interval": 2581,
     "weight": 1250000000,
     "netstakeweight": 987654321098,
     "expectedtime": 287520
   }

   weight is your stake weight in satoshis — roughly balance × coin-age-seconds. expectedtime (seconds) is a rough ETA to your next reward based on your share of netstakeweight. For 1,250 MOTA at current difficulty, expect a stake every few days; for 10,000+ MOTA, expect one most days.

5. Configure auto-staking on daemon start

   So you don't have to re-run walletpassphrase every time you restart the daemon, create a stake config file. This is optional but strongly recommended for always-on machines.

   $ cat > ~/.motacoin/motacoin.conf << 'EOF'
   daemon=1
   server=1
   rpcuser=mota
   rpcpassword=change-this-to-something-random
   rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
   staking=1
   reservebalance=0
   EOF

   After this you still need to run walletpassphrase once per daemon start, but auto-unlock helpers (systemd secrets, keyring) can automate that too. See the headless staking section of the desktop wallet tutorial.

6. Watch for your first stake reward

   Stake rewards arrive as coinstake transactions, tagged in your wallet transaction list:

   $ motacoin-cli listtransactions "*" 10 | jq '.[] | select(.category=="stake")'
   {
     "category": "stake",
     "amount": 0.14520000,
     "confirmations": 12,
     "txid": "e2f1a4b8...",
     "time": 1712345678,
     "generated": true,
     ...
   }

   The reward for each stake is approximately (staked_amount × 4.20%) / (365 × stakes_per_year). For 1,000 MOTA staked, expect ~0.115 MOTA per stake event on average.

Headless / always-on setup (Raspberry Pi)

For a long-term stake rig, a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with an SSD is the best option — low power, silent, and the chain fits comfortably on a 128 GB drive.

# On the Pi, after motacoind is installed (see desktop-wallet.html)
$ sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/motacoin.service > /dev/null << 'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=MotaCoin daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
User=pi
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/.motacoin
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/motacoind -daemon
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/motacoin-cli stop
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
TimeoutStopSec=300

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

$ sudo systemctl enable --now motacoin
$ motacoin-cli walletpassphrase "YOUR_PASSPHRASE" 99999999 true

For auto-unlock on boot, store the passphrase in a root-owned systemd credential file and use an ExecStartPost hook to run walletpassphrase. This is an acceptable trade-off for a dedicated stake rig that only holds staking funds.

Common issues

"Staking shows false even after unlocking"

• Check motacoin-cli getstakinginfo — if errors is non-empty, it'll tell you why.
• If your balance UTXOs are younger than 30 confirmations, they can't stake yet. Wait ~2 hours.
• If the daemon isn't fully synced (blocks < current explorer height), staking is disabled until catch-up.

"My rewards are smaller than 4.20% APR"

• 4.20% is the nominal annual rate averaged across the whole staking population. If network difficulty is high (many coins staking), you'll see slightly less; if low, slightly more.
• Small balances (< 100 MOTA) can go weeks between stakes due to randomness. Larger balances smooth out to ~4.20% over a 30–60 day window.

"I want to spend some of my staking coins"

Run motacoin-cli walletlock to re-lock the wallet, then motacoin-cli walletpassphrase "PASSPHRASE" 60 false to unlock for spending for 60 seconds. Send your tx, then re-unlock for staking with the true flag. The daemon auto-resumes staking.