We recently ran a poll on X to learn more about some of the pain points of the Sceptre community and, to our surprise, the Sceptre for Flare 14.5 days cooldown period was, by far, a huge dealbreaker when it comes to staking on Sceptre.
Some of the comments to the poll also revealed that there are some misunderstandings regarding the cooldown period so, in this blog post, we are going to cover why this 14.5 days cooldown period exists, compare it to other networks, and explain how you can circumvent it (and the consequences of doing it).
Why is there a 14.5 days cooldown period in place?
Cooldown periods (or unstaking wait times) are the norm when it comes to proof of stake blockchains. Staking is essential for the health and security of a network. When people stake together, they all contribute to its stability. That's why responsible withdrawal practices are so important to ensure the smooth operation of the entire ecosystem. Many value higher unstaking times because it signals stability, even at the expense of some flexibility.
Cooldown periods vary across blockchains, ranging from minutes to weeks. Most protocols pause rewards during this time, although there are exceptions, like Sceptre on Flare, where your rewards keep accumulating, even during the cooldown period.
Sceptre isn’t its own blockchain; in the case of Flare, we stake our users’ FLR and wFLR on the Flare Network P-Chain, which distributes rewards at the end of each staking period. Each staking period on the network lasts for 2 weeks, hence the 14-and-a-half-day unstaking cooldown period in place. This is a network policy related to the way Flare’s P-Chain works and we at Sceptre have no power to change that. The remaining half day, however, is a policy put in place by us - its purpose is to give us enough time to ensure that your funds are available when you claim them from the C-chain.
How does Flare’s cooldown period compare to other networks?
Cooldown periods vary wildly across networks, as you can see in this table that collects some of the largest proof of stake blockchains:
Network | Cooldown / Unstaking wait period (days) |
Mina (MINA) | Immediately (source) |
Cardano (ADA) | Immediately (source) |
Sui (SUI) | Immediately (source) |
Casper (CSPR) | ~14 hours (source) |
Solana (SOL) | Up to 3 days (source) |
NEAR Protocol (NEAR) | Up to 3 days (source) |
Polygon (POL) | 3-4 days (source) |
Binance (BNB) | 7 days (source) |
Kusama (KSM) | 7 days (source) |
Tezos (XTZ) | 10 days (source) |
MultiversX (EGLD) | 10 days (source) |
Ethereum (ETH) | ~13 days (source) |
Sonic (S) | 14 days (source) |
Avalanche (AVAX) | 14 days (source) |
Osmo (OSMO) | 14 days (source) |
Flare (FLR) | 14 days |
Cosmos (ATOM) | 21 days (source) |
Injective (INJ) | 21 days (source) |
Sei (SEI) | 21 days (source) |
Kava (KAVA | 21 days (source) |
Celestia (TIA) | 21 days (source) |
Dymension (DYM) | 21 days (source) |
Akash Network (AKT) | 21 days (source) |
Zeta Chain (ZETA) | 21 days (source) |
Fetch.ai (FET) | 21 days (source) |
Cronos (CRO) | 28 days (source) |
Polkadot (DOT) | 28 days (source) |
Aptos (APT) | Up to 30 days (source) |
dYdX (DYDX) | 30 days (source) |
How to circumvent Sceptre for Flare’s 14.5 days cooldown period
If you can’t wait the 14.5 days unstaking period required on Sceptre, you can always swap your sFLR for a token of your choice. Currently, there are a couple of protocols that allow you to do it
Blazeswap - Blazeswap lets you use sFLR on liquidity pools but also gives you the ability to swap it for a wide range of tokens that you can use on other protocols on the Flare Network. The list obviously includes FLR, but also Joule (Kinetic), Enosys USDT and Enosys ETH, Bridged Tether USD and USDC (Stargate), among others.
SparkDEX - The other protocol where you can immediately swap your sFLR for another token instead of waiting the 14.5 days unstaking period on Sceptre is SparkDEX. SparkDEX has a wide integration with Flare with plenty of uses for sFLR, including swapping. The list of tokens you can swap sFLR for on SparkDEX can be as large as the one on Blazeswap, but there are several tokens you can only find on either one or the other. Some of the tokens that you can only find on SparkDEXinclude Cyclo’s cysFLR, WETH or flrETH (Kinetic), among others.
Enosys - Finally, you can swap your sFLR on Enosys, the first DEX on Flare. Enosys has fewer tokens available than Blazeswap or SparkDEX, but you can still find FLR here.
What are the downsides of circumventing the 14.5 days cooldown period?
As expected, the ability to circumvent the cooldown period comes with a couple of downsides, otherwise we would be able to offer the ability to immediately unstake on Sceptre:
You may lose some rewards and FlareDrops - the first downside is that, depending on when you swap your sFLR for FLR, you may miss part or even the totality of the next rewards and FlareDrop distribution. As you probably know, Flare calculates the amount of rewards you’ll receive based on 3 random snapshots of your wallet taken during a 23-day period. This means that if you swapped your sFLR for wFLR on a DEX and only held the wFLR for a portion of this period, you will only get the proportional rewards (which can be as low as 0 if no snapshots were taken).
The protocols’ exchange rate - another potential downside of going directly to a DEX is that you will be subject to that protocol’s exchange rate. sFLR’s exchange rate on Sceptre increases every time rewards and FlareDrops are added to the pool. It’s public and not subject to market volatility. If the sFLR is in your wallet, you can simply connect to see how much wFLR you can get by unstaking. On a DEX, you are subject to the forces of the market and may get a lower or a higher exchange rate than the one on Sceptre, which results in less or more wFLR than what you could get by unstaking.
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