What is Atomic Blockchain Staking?

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Atomic Blockchain Staking was announced at NumerCon 2026. It is a new staking system that will replace the current system. Now I have details and want to answer many of the questions that have been asked recently.

Why change the system?

The current system is the second iteration on staking and it forced us to move off-chain. Both v1 and v2 made tradeoffs, so we wanted to design v3 to incorporate everything learned from the past. Here’s a basic overview of the pros and cons across each version:

Staking v1

  • Pros: Users atomically stake per round and each round is an independent stake, so stake is returned to your wallet immediately when a round resolves.

  • Cons: Manual staking was cumbersome and posed a high barrier to entry for new players.

Staking v2

  • Pros: Users can “set and forget” their stake which can automatically compound without manual input each round, vastly simplifying the UX to start staking.

  • Cons: Users must lock up a large amount of stake for a single round, this causes leverage due to overlapping rounds, forcing us to set a small clip and stake decrease is cumbersome.

Staking v3 (Atomic Blockchain Staking)

  • Pros: Users can manually stake OR automate their stake. Stake is locked up atomically each round, can be claimed when a round resolves, and there is no more leverage or clipping.

  • Cons: Blockchain is moderately more complex and expensive to use.

As you can see, we’ve designed Atomic Blockchain Staking to have maximal benefits with minimal drawbacks. Let’s dive into the new contracts.

The Staking Contract

Each tournament will be assigned a new stake contract instantiation. This contract:

  • Maintains a ledger of rounds created by Numerai

  • Tracks each model’s stake for each round and an associated submission hash

  • Numerai generates a Merkle tree from payout results and posts the Merkle root

  • You can claim resolved stakes net payouts or burns based

How do I stake on a submission?

  1. Each day, Numerai creates an on-chain round with the necessary metadata (such as open/close/resolve times and stake threshold).

  2. After you upload a submission, you can request a “stake authorization” from our API. A stake authorization is a signed hash of your submission information that can be verified by the staking contract. This ensures that you submitted to the round on which you want to stake.

  3. You send this stake authorization to the staking contract, locking up NMR in the round.

How do I claim my resolved stake?

  1. When a round resolves, Numerai generates “stake claims” based on the final payout values and posts these to our API.

  2. Numerai generates a Merkle tree using the stake claims and posts this to the staking contract so it can verify payouts and burns.

  3. You can query your stake claims from the API and use the claim hash to retrieve your stake (net payouts or burns) from the staking contract.

  4. Optionally, you can immediately restake claimed NMR into a currently open round using a specialized function to handle a claim + stake operation.

As you can see, this process is very involved and very manual. This is nice for power users that want hyper-granular control over each model’s stake round-to-round, but we also need an automation layer.

Allocation Strategies

We wrote an “Allocation Strategy” contract that automates the staking and claiming flows for you. This contract is designed to support the 2 current staking strategies: compound and constant (aka “take-profit”). When you set up your stake automation, you decide the mode (constant or compound) and the per-round stake for each model, then you grant “operator” privileges to Numerai’s hotwallet. This allows Numerai to trigger your staking automation each round.

How do I manage an allocation strategy?

You can instantiate your own stake strategies on-chain manually, but we will release a new web3-native stakes page that will allow you to edit your new allocation strategy. Instead of a separate popup for each model, you’ll be able to edit multiple models at once and batch-update your stake strategies.

How does this automate my staking?

Numerai “operates” the allocation strategy on your behalf by doing the following:

  1. Numerai queries submission hashes for the current round.

  2. Numerai queries resolved, but unclaimed stakes for your models.

  3. Numerai submits claim + stake transactions across your staked, submitted models.

As you can see from the above steps, you’re not required to actually interact with the blockchain. Numerai operates your staking for you by simply calling the allocation strategy you defined.

The Migration

Migrating from the current continuous staking protocol to the new Atomic Blockchain Staking protocol is complicated. So let’s break down what that will look like:

  1. The legacy off-chain staking system will be no longer accessible. We will be turning off the ability to interact with continuous staking. You will no longer be able to increase or decrease your stake through the normal website page / APIs. Instead, we will replace the staking UI with a new web3-native staking page that can create and control an allocation strategy through a non-custodial wallet solution backed by Privy.

  2. Your Numerai Wallet will still be accessible, but will no longer be used for staking. You can still access your Numerai wallet page, but links to it will be removed and your wallet address will be hidden to prevent new users from accidentally sending to the old wallet. You can still send from your wallet, but the available NMR in the wallet will no longer be used for staking.

  3. Your stake will begin migrating from your Numerai Wallet to the new stake contracts. The current system keeps your staked NMR in your wallet and simply uses off-chain accounting to earmark that NMR as staked and unavailable. The new system will need to actually lock up that NMR on the blockchain, so we will execute on-chain transactions to move that NMR from your Numerai wallet into the new staking contracts.

  4. New rounds will now lock up a smaller portion of stake. When an old “continuous staking” round resolves, we transfer 1/24th of your staked NMR into the new stake contract and lock that up. This is because there are 24 possible overlapping rounds and your current stake must cover all 24 new rounds, only the small fraction of your NMR that needs to be locked up will be transferred each round.

  5. You don’t need to do anything during the migration. We will handle provisioning your wallets and allocation strategies. We will also handle the migration of your staked NMR from your Numerai Wallet into your allocation strategy.

As a final step, we must transfer ownership for your allocation strategy to your non-custodial wallet. Next time you want to log in and edit your stakes, you’ll just need to confirm your ownership. Once this is done, you’ve taken control of your stake and NMR and Numerai will no longer have full control of your NMR.

FAQ

Does lower leverage mean lower payouts?

Yes and no. Staking leverage is generated from having a continuous stake with overlapping rounds. In Numerai and Crypto, there are 24 overlapping rounds, but the 5% clip reduces effective leverage to just 1.2x. In addition, Numerai and Crypto have low payout factors, which reduces maximal payouts / burns to something closer to 1-2% per round. This almost never hits the clip value and thus experienced leverage is actually lower than 1, so there is a lot of head room to actually increase payouts when we transition staking systems.

For Signals, the there are 64 overlapping rounds with a 3.5% clip. This nearly doubles the effective leverage to 2.24x. Signals also has a higher payout factor which brings maximal payouts / burns closer to 7% - this hits the clip value far more often, meaning Signals actually does experience this higher leverage. When we transition to the new staking system, there is no leverage. This means maximal payouts and burns will be reduced to 100% per round.

Can I bring my own wallet?

Yes. These contracts are deployed on the blockchain, so anyone will be allowed to interact with them in a de-centralized way. You can manage your own stake directly or instantiate your own allocation strategy. At this time, Numerai will roll out the new staking system using the non-custodial wallet solution to aid in the migration. Once we’ve completely transitioned, we will be able to build in support for other wallet solutions - such as Meta Mask - to be used directly on our website.

What if I have a pending stake release?

When the transition starts, we will disable future stake changes, snapshot your current stake settings / at-risk values, and instantiate a new Allocation Strategy contract based on those settings. If you’ve decreased or drained your stake, those settings will be reflected when we instantiate your allocation strategy and released stake will begin showing up in your strategy. You will simply need to claim ownership of the strategy and re-allocate or withdraw those funds as you wish.

When will this happen and how long will it take?

  • Numerai Crypto begins migrating on June 16 and will take 24 business days to complete.
  • Numerai Signals begins migrating on June 23 and will take 64 business days to complete.
  • Numerai begins migrating June 23 and will take 24 business days to complete.

Will NMR be burned immediately or will there be some netting?

NMR will not be burned immediately when using stake automation and the claim + re-stake flow. Instead, when a model continues re-staking, burns can simply accumulate on a per-model basis and be netted out by future payouts. If a model stops staking or manually claims their stakes without immediately re-staking, the NMR must necessarily be burned.

If we’re set to compounding now, we wont be receiving spendable tokens at any point in time during the transition, right?

Correct (if you continue submitting normally and don’t have any pending drains). As rounds resolve, we will automatically transition a portion of your staked tokens to be immediately staked on new submissions until your existing stake is evenly split across all ongoing rounds and fully locked up in the new staking contract.

Does it matter if a staked slot is not submitting predictions?

If a staked slot is no longer submitting, that stake is already unlocked, idle balance. In ABS, idle balances will now pool in your allocation strategy contract. Once you claim ownership of that strategy contract, you can withdraw tokens into your wallet or stake that balance as you wish.

How will releases be handled?

The “release” equivalent in ABS is just setting your per-round stake to 0. Resolved stakes can then be claimed back into your allocation strategy contract.

Will it now be predictable where the tokens will be coming from?

Payouts have always come from our hotwallet and this will still be true. Instead of us depositing NMR directly into your Numerai Wallet upon release settlement, we will now transition resolved payout NMR into the staking contract to be used for claims and re-staking. If you continue submitting normally, your NMR will stay in the staking contract. If you stop submitting and simply claim all of your resolved stakes, that NMR comes back from the staking contract into your strategy contract. Then you can withdraw into your wallet and send it where you please.

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I’ve gotta say, I am worried about payouts and burns all being on chain. I’m worried all those transactions will make the tax man see payouts as income while burns can only be counted as capital loss. The 30 day stake hold potentially helped with the case of counting this as an appreciating/depreciating asset too because you can’t ever immediately liquidate your money. I know people have been complaining about the unstaking time, but the grass is always greener on the other side and sometimes you don’t realize what you’ve got. You could already get a lot of control if you just split your stake over extra model IDs. For example, if you had 3 models A, B, and C that you wanted to dynamically change stake between, you just split the stake over 9 model IDs. To stake evenly, you submit predictions for model A to IDs 1-3, model B to IDs 4-6, and model C to IDs 7-9. If you want to increase stake on A and decrease on B and C, you submit A predictions to 5 model IDs and give B and C 2 each instead. You can always use more slots for more granularity. Main problem is just if you want to cash out quick, but the inconvenience of having to wait 30 days might actually be helping us for taxes anyway

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Dont have any losses :rofl:

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Hi Numerai team,

I’m preparing to stake a Signals model and want to model expected returns correctly under Atomic Blockchain Staking before the transition. I’ve read the staking docs, this thread, and inspected the v3 GraphQL schema (v3StakeRound exposes payoutFactor, stakeThreshold, stakeCap, remainingPayout, remainingBurn). A few specifics aren’t covered there:

  1. Per-round payout formula (v3). With the clip removed but payoutFactor retained, what is the exact per-round payout? Is it still stake × payoutFactor × (0.3·Alpha + 0.8·MPC) with no clip applied, or has the formula changed?

  2. Capital deployment / “no leverage.” In steady state, is my full stake at risk on each of the ~64 overlapping Signals rounds (as in v2), or is only ~1/64 of my stake allocated per round? In other words, does removing overlap leverage change how much capital backs each round — and therefore the effective annual return on capital?

  3. Net effect on annual return. For a model whose per-round payouts stayed below the old 3.5% clip (so experienced leverage < 1), should I expect annual return on staked NMR to be roughly unchanged, reduced, or increased under v3?

  4. payout_factor in v3. Is it still computed as min(1, stake_threshold / total_at_risk)? What is the role of the new stakeCap and the per-round remainingPayout / remainingBurn budgets?

  5. Max payout/burn per round. Since the per-round clip is removed, what now caps a single round’s gain/loss?

  6. USDC staking. How much lower is the USDC payout factor versus NMR (a ratio or example is fine)? And are USDC stakers paid out in USDC or in NMR?

  7. Signals timeline. When does v3 staking go live for the Signals tournament? v3StakeRound currently returns “Staking V3 not available” for all tournaments (8, 11, 12).

Thanks in advance

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Per-round payout formula (v3). With the clip removed but payoutFactor retained, what is the exact per-round payout? Is it still stake × payoutFactor × (0.3·Alpha + 0.8·MPC) with no clip applied, or has the formula changed?

Yes, the formula will be changing to maintain as high a payout as possible:

  • Clip goes to 1
  • Payout Factor goes to 1
  • Alpha multiplier goes to 4x
  • MPC multiplier goes to 8x

Capital deployment / “no leverage.” In steady state, is my full stake at risk on each of the ~64 overlapping Signals rounds (as in v2), or is only ~1/64 of my stake allocated per round? In other words, does removing overlap leverage change how much capital backs each round?

Yes. In the v2 staking system, your effective at-risk on Signals is higher than your stake:

  • Let’s say you’re staking 1 NMR.
  • There are 64 overlapping rounds that each stake 1 NMR.
  • Your total stake is leveraged to 64 x 1 NMR = 64 NMR!
  • We cap your risk to 3.5% per round
  • Effective total at-risk ends up being 64*0.035 = 2.24 NMR
  • So your maximum payout / loss over these 64 rounds is over 200%!

In the new system, your 1 NMR must be actually locked up. You can’t lock up more than what you have. So, you must necessarily only lock up 1/64th of your available NMR.

Net effect on annual return. For a model whose per-round payouts stayed below the old 3.5% clip (so experienced leverage < 1), should I expect annual return on staked NMR to be roughly unchanged, reduced, or increased under v3?

As stated in the post above, payouts will be reduced to a maximum of 100% per round.

payout_factor in v3. Is it still computed as min(1, stake_threshold / total_at_risk)? What is the role of the new stakeCap and the per-round remainingPayout / remainingBurn budgets?

Payout factor is going to 1.

Max payout/burn per round. Since the per-round clip is removed, what now caps a single round’s gain/loss?

We still maintain a clip of 100% since you can lose more than what you’ve staked in a round.

USDC staking. How much lower is the USDC payout factor versus NMR (a ratio or example is fine)? And are USDC stakers paid out in USDC or in NMR?

We will be aiming at a payout factor of 1/10th that of our traditional NMR tournaments.

Signals timeline. When does v3 staking go live for the Signals tournament? v3StakeRound currently returns “Staking V3 not available” for all tournaments (8, 11, 12).

  • Numerai Crypto begins migrating on June 16 and will take 24 business days to complete.
  • Numerai Signals begins migrating on June 23 and will take 64 business days to complete.
  • Numerai begins migrating June 23 and will take 24 business days to complete.
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sorry just catching up on this…are multipliers also changing for Classic?