There are two ways to stake IO: suppliers lock tokens against their own GPUs to activate them for block rewards, and everyone else can co-stake, contributing IO to someone else's device in exchange for a negotiated share of its rewards. io.net introduced supplier staking in August 2024 and opened the co-staking marketplace in February 2025, which turned staking from a hardware-owner obligation into something any token holder can participate in.
Unlike validator staking on proof-of-stake chains, IO staking secures economic honesty on a compute network. The stake is collateral that a device and its owner have skin in the game, and rewards flow from the same 300 million token emissions pool that pays hardware suppliers.
Two Ways to Stake IO
Supplier Staking
Every device on the network needs a stake before it earns anything: a base of 200 IO per chip, scaled up by the earning multiplier assigned to each GPU or CPU model, per io.net's staking documentation. Higher-end hardware carries higher requirements, which is deliberate. An H100 earning premium rewards should have premium collateral behind it. Devices must also pass a 12-hour onboarding stress test and maintain at least five hours of daily uptime to stay reward-eligible.
Co-Staking for Token Holders
Co-staking lets a supplier split that requirement with outside token holders. The supplier configures an offer, choosing how much of the stake to open up and what percentage of block rewards to share, and co-stakers fill it, as described in io.net's co-staking announcement. Suppliers onboard expensive hardware with less capital locked, and holders earn hardware rewards without owning hardware.
How to Co-Stake, Step by Step
- Acquire IO and hold it in a Solana wallet or your io.net account balance.
- Open the Co-Staking Marketplace from the io.net dashboard.
- Filter offers by GPU model, required stake, reward share percentage, and device reliability score (0 to 100).
- Check projected weekly earnings, which the marketplace estimates from the device's trailing seven days of rewards.
- Commit your stake to the offer and confirm the transaction.
- Track accruals in the dashboard, where block rewards land hourly in proportion to your share.
The reliability score deserves the most attention in that list. A device that drops offline stops earning for everyone staked to it, so a slightly lower reward share on a 95-plus reliability machine usually beats a generous split on a flaky one.
What Stakers Actually Earn
Rewards come from the emissions schedule covered in our IO tokenomics breakdown: hourly payouts drawn from a disinflationary 20-year pool, weighted by device class, uptime, and total stake. There is no fixed APY, because your return depends on the device you back, the share its owner offers, and where the network is on its declining emissions curve.
Two implications follow. Early participation earns more per staked token than later participation, since the emission rate steps down monthly. And rewards arrive denominated in IO, so your realized return moves with IO's price between earning and selling. A high nominal yield on a falling token can still be a net loss, which is the arithmetic every DePIN staker eventually learns.
Against simple holding, co-staking earns its keep only if the reward stream outpaces what the 14-day exit delay costs you in flexibility. A rough way to frame it: estimate the weekly IO a given offer projects, annualize it against your stake, then ask whether that percentage justifies being two weeks slower to react to a market break. In quiet markets the answer is often yes. In fast ones, liquid tokens have a value of their own.
The Risks Nobody Puts in the Banner
Unstaking takes 14 days, and tokens in cooldown earn nothing, so co-staked IO is illiquid precisely when you might most want to exit. Your rewards also depend on someone else's operational discipline: a supplier who lets a device fail verification takes your earning power down with theirs. And the whole arrangement runs on io.net's platform contracts and dashboard, adding a layer of platform risk on top of ordinary token volatility.
None of this is unique to io.net, and the model compares reasonably well with supplier economics elsewhere in DePIN compute, something our io.net vs Render comparison covers from the hardware owner's side. It simply means co-staking is a yield position with counterparty texture, and worth sizing like one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I stake IO without a GPU?
Yes. The co-staking marketplace exists exactly for this: you contribute IO toward a supplier's device stake and receive the share of its hourly block rewards the supplier offered. You never operate hardware, though your returns depend on that device staying online and verified.
What is the minimum stake for io.net devices?
The base requirement is 200 IO per chip, adjusted upward by each hardware model's earning multiplier, so premium GPUs require larger stakes. Co-stakers can participate with whatever portion of a device's requirement the supplier has opened to the marketplace.
How long does IO unstaking take?
Unstaking triggers a 14-day cooldown during which the tokens earn no rewards and cannot be moved. Factor that lockup into position sizing, especially if you are staking through a volatile stretch of the market.
Staking as the Network's Trust Layer
IO staking does double duty: it collateralizes honest hardware and it distributes the network's emissions to the people underwriting that hardware. Co-staking widened the second function to anyone holding the token, which quietly matters for supply, since staked IO is float that cannot hit the order book.
For traders, the decision reduces to whether hourly emissions on a declining curve beat the flexibility of liquid tokens. There is no universal answer, only a portfolio-fit one.
You can build a position by buying IO on the spot market, trade the token's swings with IO perpetual futures, or study more token mechanics in Crypto in a Minute.