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Liquid staking is a modern alternative to regular staking on NEAR that solves the problem of delayed withdrawing. In regular staking, you can’t immediately withdraw funds from a staking pool - first, you need to request an unstake and then wait for 4 epochs (roughly 24-28 hours) before your funds become available for withdrawal. The liquid staking contract addresses this limitation by providing a flexible approach that keeps your assets liquid.
Looking to delegate NEAR Tokens to a liquid staking provider? Check out Metapool or Rhea Finance.

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Staking Pool

The liquid staking contract implements a staking pool interface. From a developer’s perspective, interacting with a liquid staking contract feels almost identical to working with a regular staking pool. You can call familiar methods like deposit_and_stake, unstake, and withdraw, and they follow the same lifecycle - the only difference is that your stake is represented by a liquid token instead of being locked inside a single pool. Behind the scenes, the contract delegates tokens across multiple validators, usually selected from the top-performing ones on the network. These validators are actively maintained and closely monitored, which makes them far less likely to experience downtime or performance issues.
Since your stake is spread across several validators, the average reward rate will typically be slightly lower than if you delegated directly to a single, high-performing validator. However, you gain better security against validator outages and the ability to exchange your liquid token back to NEAR at any time without waiting through the unstaking delay.

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Liquid Staking Providers

Below are the major liquid staking providers on NEAR:
ProviderTestnet AccountMainnet Account
Metapoolmeta-v2.pool.testnetmeta-pool.near
Rhea Finance-lst.rhealab.near
Linearlinear-protocol.testnetlinear-protocol.near

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Using Liquid Staking

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Deposit and Stake Tokens

To stake your NEAR and receive the liquid token, run: 
near contract call-function as-transaction <account-id> deposit_and_stake json-args '{}' prepaid-gas '30.0 Tgas' attached-deposit '10 NEAR'
From that point, your tokens begin generating rewards through the underlying validators.

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Unstake

When ready, request unstake with the following command. You’ll need to wait the standard delay of 4 epochs (24-28 hours) for funds to become available for withdrawal: 
near contract call-function as-transaction <account-id> unstake_all json-args '{}' prepaid-gas '30.0 Tgas' attached-deposit '0 NEAR'
If you need your NEAR immediately, you don’t have to wait 4 epochs - you can simply swap your liquid tokens for NEAR on a DEX like Rhea Finance.

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Withdraw

After 4 epochs have passed, run the following command to withdraw NEAR tokens: 
near contract call-function as-transaction <account-id> withdraw_all json-args '{}' prepaid-gas '30.0 Tgas' attached-deposit '0 NEAR'
At this point, your liquid tokens will be burned, and you’ll receive the equivalent amount of NEAR based on the current exchange rate.

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Benefits of Liquid Staking

Instant Liquidity

Trade your staked tokens on DEXs without waiting for the unstaking period.

Validator Diversification

Your stake is automatically distributed across multiple top-performing validators.

DeFi Integration

Use your liquid staking tokens in other DeFi protocols while still earning staking rewards.

Lower Risk

Reduced risk of slashing or downtime from any single validator.

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Additional Resources

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