FAQ

Delegation & staking, in plain language

What does delegating do?: Delegating points your FLR's vote power at an FTSO data provider (like African Proofs) without moving or locking your funds. In exchange for providing accurate price data to the network, your chosen provider earns FTSO rewards — and shares a portion of them back to you, proportional to how much vote power you delegated. You can undelegate any time; there's no lock-up.
Why do I need to wrap FLR into WFLR first?: Delegation is a smart-contract feature, and native FLR can't carry that kind of on-chain state by itself. Wrapping deposits your FLR into the WNat contract, which mints you an equal amount of WFLR — a token that behaves identically to FLR in value, but can be delegated. Unwrapping (withdraw) converts it straight back, 1:1, any time.
Why can I only delegate to 2 providers at once?: This is a hard limit built into the WNat contract — each address can split its vote power across at most 2 delegatees at a time. If you're already delegating to 2 other providers and want to add African Proofs, you'll need to undelegate from one of them first.
Why do some claims need a 'proof' and others don't?: FTSO rewards are calculated off-chain and then published on-chain as a Merkle root each epoch. The first time anyone claims from a given reward epoch, the claim transaction "initialises" that epoch on-chain using a cryptographic proof (a Merkle proof) that their claim is part of the published root. After that, the epoch is initialised for everyone, and later claims for the same epoch don't need a proof anymore — the contract already has what it needs. If the proof data hasn't been published yet, claiming is disabled for that epoch until it is (never a failing transaction).
Why do claimable rewards expire?: Unclaimed FTSO rewards burn back into the network's reward pool roughly 90 days after the epoch they're from ends. Delegate warns you once a claimable epoch is within 14 days of that deadline — claim before then or the reward is gone for good.
What's the difference between delegating and staking?: Delegating (above) is a C-chain, vote-power action for FTSO rewards — cheap, instant, no minimum. Staking is a much larger commitment on Flare's P-chain: you lock FLR for a fixed period (minimum 50,000 FLR, minimum 14 days for delegators) to back a validator's consensus participation, earning validator rewards (MIRROR claims) in return. It's a different chain, different economics, and a different signing path — see below.
Why does staking need a Ledger or a CLI tool — why can't I just use MetaMask?: Flare runs two chains under one network: the C-chain (where contracts and wallets like MetaMask live) and the P-chain (where staking happens). P-chain transactions need a raw secp256k1 signature over the transaction bytes — a signing method that browser EVM wallets don't expose (the old eth_sign method that could do this has been deprecated and disabled for safety reasons). The only supported paths today are a Ledger hardware wallet's Avalanche app (signing in-app over WebUSB) or the flare-stake-tool command-line tool, which can also drive a Ledger or use a raw key. Delegate's guided flow walks you through whichever path fits your setup, with every parameter prefilled.
What does 'binding' my address mean, and why is it required?: Your P-chain stake needs to be linked back to a C-chain address for reward attribution — that link is called binding, done once via the AddressBinder contract's registerPublicKey. Skipping it means your stake still locks funds and secures the network, but you won't be credited with the resulting rewards. Delegate detects an unbound address automatically and walks you through registering before any transfer.
What happens if my funds get stuck mid-transfer between chains?: Moving funds between the C-chain and P-chain is really two transactions: an export from the source chain and an import to the destination chain. If the import doesn't go through for any reason, your funds aren't lost — they're sitting exported, waiting to be imported. flare-stake-tool's "Import Funds" option is built exactly for this: it finds and completes an interrupted transfer without you needing to re-export (which would risk creating orphaned or duplicate funds).
Are FlareDrops still a thing?: No — the FlareDrops distribution program ended on 2026-01-30. Delegate doesn't show any FlareDrop UI; the only rewards you'll see here are FTSO delegation rewards (WNAT) and validator staking rewards (MIRROR), both claimed the same way through the RewardManager contract.