How to Create a Staking Pool on Arc

A staking pool pays holders to lock tokens for a period. Done well it reduces circulating supply and rewards the people who stay; done badly it manufactures sell pressure and calls it a yield. The design decisions matter more than the deployment.

Works on Arc testnet today; mainnet September 16, 2026.

What a staking pool is

Users deposit a token into a contract. The contract accrues rewards to them over time, drawn from a reward pot you fund up front. At the end of the period — or on withdrawal, depending on the design — they claim principal and rewards.

Two common variants:

• Single-asset staking. Users stake your token and earn your token. Simple, and the default for most launches.
• LP staking. Users stake DEX LP tokens and earn your token. This rewards people for providing liquidity rather than just holding, which is usually the more valuable behaviour. Note it does not replace a liquidity lock on your own pool position.

Designing the pool before you deploy it

Where do rewards come from? They come from supply you have already allocated. If your tokenomics has no rewards allocation, a staking pool is either dilution or a raid on the treasury. Decide the number first and publish it.

How long does it run? A pool with a defined end date and a known total reward pot is honest. A pool advertising an APR with no stated duration is advertising a number that can be silently reduced.

What is the actual APR? Rewards divided by expected staked amount, annualised. Model it at low, expected and high participation. A headline rate that only exists because nobody has staked yet is not a rate.

What is the lock behaviour? Flexible staking lets users leave anytime, which is friendly but does little for supply. Fixed-term staking reduces float meaningfully but strands users who need to exit. Tiered terms with higher rewards for longer commitments split the difference.

Creating a staking pool on Arc

Team Finance's staking pool tool is non-custodial, live since 2020, and part of the same suite as its locks, vesting and distribution tools — over $2.7 billion secured across 40,000+ projects on 26 chains.

1. Connect to Arc and fund the wallet with USDC for gas. Testnet transactions average about $0.004 and gas is denominated in USDC. Network setup.
2. Open the staking pool tool and select Arc.
3. Set the staking token — your token contract, or the LP token for an LP pool.
4. Set the reward token and total reward amount. Usually your own token, funded from the rewards allocation.
5. Set the duration and any lock term.
6. Fund the reward pot. The contract needs the rewards transferred in; an unfunded pool that displays an APR is the most common self-inflicted trust failure in this category.
7. Deploy, then verify on the explorer that the reward balance and parameters read the way you published them. How to read Arcscan.

[SCREENSHOT: Team Finance staking pool configuration with Arc selected, showing reward token and duration]

Why Arc suits staking programmes

Staking is transaction-heavy: stake, claim, restake, withdraw, repeated across the whole participant base. On chains with volatile and material gas costs, small holders are priced out of claiming, and the programme quietly becomes a whales-only product.

On Arc, gas is USDC and testnet transactions have averaged about $0.004. A user claiming weekly spends cents a year. That changes who your staking programme is actually for. More on the fee model.

Mistakes worth avoiding

• Rewards funded from unlocked team supply. Buyers will notice, and it converts your alignment story into a distribution story.
• APR advertised without duration or pot size. State all three or none.
• No plan for the end of the programme. Decide in advance whether it renews, tapers or ends, and say so.
• Staking as a substitute for locks and vesting. It is not. Buyers still expect locked liquidity and a vested team allocation.

Test it before mainnet

Public mainnet opens September 16, 2026 and Circle has not published mainnet parameters. Deploy a pool on the public testnet — chain ID 5042002, faucet at faucet.circle.com — and run a full cycle yourself: stake, wait, claim, withdraw. Reward maths errors are invisible until someone claims. Testnet guide.