Putting your cryptocurrency to earn passive income is an awesome way to boost your digital assets. This is achieved through a process called staking, which is becoming more and more popular in blockchain ecosystems, with Solana being no exception.

However, there may come a time when you decide to unstake your Solana (SOL). If that time is now and you’re unsure of how to proceed, I will walk you through the process in this tutorial.

How to Unstake Solana

When you initially stake your SOL, it gets locked up in a validator. But how do you get your SOL withdrawn back into your wallet? The process is surprisingly straightforward:

Step 1: Start by clicking on the stake account.

Step 2: From there, click the Unstake button.

Step 3: A message should appear that says SOL Unstaked.

At this point, your staked SOL is currently deactivating and will continue to do so until the end of the epoch.

Understanding Epochs and Staking Rewards

You may be wondering what an epoch is and when it will come to an end. We can use Solanabeach, a tool that provides a visualization of this cycle, to see when an epoch is about to finish.

An epoch in Solana approximately lasts 2.5 days, but the beauty of this blockchain is that you can stake or unstake your SOL at any stage during this time block.

Heads-up: If you unstake your SOL, you’ll need to wait until this epoch ends before you can officially withdraw it.

Your unstaked SOL will change from Deactivating to Inactive at the beginning of the next epoch, and it will stop accruing staking rewards.

Effectively Withdrawing Your SOL

Once the epoch shifts over and your SOL is shown as Inactive, it’s time to withdraw it. Despite what you may expect, the SOL you unstaked won’t automatically move into your Solana balance. An explicit action is required for this process:

Step 1: Click on your Solana.

Step 2: Visit the Your Stake section and identify which stake is Inactive.

Step 3: Lastly, click the withdraw stake button and close.

Voila! You now have your SOL back in your wallet, complete with the rent and any rewards you earned from the previous epoch.

Just a quick reminder, withdrawing your stake is always a two-part process: Step 1: Deactivate the stake.
Step 2: Withdraw the stake in the next epoch.

Exploring Liquid Staking Tokens

In the future, we will dive deeper into different options to make the most out of staking. This includes exploring different tokens that allow you to earn staking rewards, yet still utilize your tokens for other purposes. Examples of these are JitoSOL, MarinadeSOL (mSOL), and SolBlaze (bSOL).

Stay tuned for the next post and get ready to take your staking strategies a step further. The topic for our next tutorial will be navigating through the Solana Block Explorer: Solscan.

Stay curious and see you in the next post!

Disclaimer: This is a helpful blog. Follow me on my socials but remember this is NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. I won Royale 2, and I am making this content as a community member because it is great to learn crypto, playing on Solana is fun, and it is easy to onboard friends into the space with a game like this.
My opinions are my own, research more if you wish, and if you decide to degen, that is your decision!

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