Staking

When you are ready and confident in your model's performance, you may optionally stake it with NMR - Numerai's token. "Staking" on a model or submission means locking up NMR during the scoring period of submissions.

By staking on Numerai, for the duration of staked submissions, you give Numerai permission to payout or burn the NMR at stake. After a staked submission finishes scoring, positive scores are rewarded with more NMR, while negative scores cause staked NMR to be burned.

INFO

It is important to note that the opportunity to stake is not an offer by Numerai to participate in an investment contract, a security, a swap based on the return of any financial assets, an interest in Numerai’s hedge fund, or in Numerai itself or any fees we earn. Users with different expectations should not stake.

Please read our Terms of Service for further information.

Why Staking Exists

Numerai trades real capital based on the Meta Model, so it needs to know which predictions it can trust before relying on them. Trust is not the same as being right: any submission can be accidentally right, and random or adversarial submissions will sometimes score well by pure luck. Staking is how Numerai separates good-faith predictions from noise - if you are willing to put your own NMR at risk on your model's performance, Numerai can be confident that your predictions are a genuine attempt to be accurate.

Staking also aligns everyone's incentives:

• Burned NMR is destroyed - it does not go to Numerai, to other users, or to anyone else. Your stake is not a loan to Numerai and is never spent or traded by anyone while it is locked.
• There is no "house" that profits when you lose. Numerai only benefits when you do: good predictions improve the Meta Model that the hedge fund trades on.

Staking is Optional

You do not need to stake to participate. Unstaked submissions are scored exactly like staked ones, so you can build a live track record without risking anything - this is often called "paper trading". The difference is that only staked submissions influence the Stake-Weighted Meta Model: an unstaked model carries zero weight in the Meta Model and is not used by the hedge fund.

If you are new, we recommend starting unstaked or with a very small stake. Validation metrics are easy to overfit, so submit live predictions for a while and let your out-of-sample scores tell you whether your model is ready before staking meaningful amounts of NMR.

Numeraire (NMR)

NMR is the utility token that powers staking and payouts on Numerai.

• You can read more about NMR on Github: https://github.com/erasureprotocol/NMR
• You can see token statistics here: https://numer.ai/nmr

To stake NMR on your model you must first acquire NMR, then use the Atomic Blockchain Staking flow to fund your Privy embedded wallet, enable your allocation strategy, and configure per-model stake settings.

Getting NMR

We recommend two places for buying NMR

• Coinbase - a safe and easy place to buy NMR with USD, GBP, EUR or Bitcoin. A good place to start if you are new to crypto. Availability depends on your region.
• Uniswap - a decentralized exchange you can use to swap Ethereum based tokens like ETH or USDC for NMR. Requires you to bring your own wallet like MetaMask. Great for DeFi enthusiasts.

Once you own NMR, send it to the Privy embedded wallet address shown on the V3 Stakes page.

Atomic Blockchain Staking

Current staking setup and stake management are handled through the standalone Atomic Blockchain Staking flow. Use that page for:

• enabling and funding your allocation strategy.
• configuring each model's per-round stake.
• choosing Compound or Fixed mode.
• understanding atomic per-round locks, claims, and migration.
• reducing future stake exposure.
• withdrawing idle strategy NMR.
• using the staking v3 API fields for automation.

Legacy Continuous Staking Payouts

Your payout is primarily a function of your scores. If you have a positive score you will get a payout. If you have a negative score a portion of your stake will burn.

The formula below describes the legacy continuous staking payout function. Atomic Blockchain Staking removes continuous-stake overlap leverage and the legacy per-round clip; see Atomic Blockchain Staking.

The maximum payout or burn per round is capped at +/-5% and uses the following formula:

score = corr20 * corr_multiplier + mmc20 * mmc_multiplier
payout = stake * clip(payout_factor * (score), -0.05, 0.05)

• corr20 and mmc20 are the 20-day CORR and MMC scores respectively. These are multiplied by their relevant multipliers, which don't change often and can be checked on a round-by-round basis (see the latest round here).
• stake is your model's stake value at the close of the round. This is also referred to as the stake value at-risk for a round. Your stake value at-risk for a round does not include idle strategy NMR, and is set to 0 if you have no valid submission for a round.

The Payout Factor

The payout_factor is a dynamic value that scales inversely with total NMR staked based on the staking_threshold.

payout_factor = min(1, stake_threshold / total_at_risk)

Tournament	Stake Threshold
Numerai	72000
Signals	36000
Crypto	10000

Here is an example of what the Numerai payout factor looks as stake grows:

Withdrawing NMR

For Atomic Blockchain Staking, see Withdrawing NMR. Active round stake remains locked until settlement.

Tax Reporting

We usually release tax reports for the previous year in mid-January. You can find these by hovering over the account icon in the top right > click "Settings" > "TAXES & REPORTS" section.