There are five ways to earn on X1 with XNT: stake it natively with a validator, stake it through a liquid staking pool, provide liquidity on XDEX, stake your liquidity in an XDEX farm, or run a validator yourself. They pay in different things (XNT, trading fees, or Core XP points), they lock your money differently, and they carry different risks. This guide compares all five with numbers read on November 12, 2026, and shows how to start each one.
- Native staking: about 6.8% a year gross, roughly 6.1% after a typical 10% validator commission. Paid in XNT. Locked while staked, 2 to 3 days to withdraw.
- Liquid staking: rXNT earned about 7.0% and pXNT about 4.5% a year in our last measurement. Paid in XNT through the token's rising value. You keep a token you can move or sell.
- Providing liquidity: paid in trading fees. The XNT/USDC.X pool earned the equivalent of 48% a year on the last day's volume, but daily fee rates swing widely and you carry impermanent loss.
- XDEX farms: pay Core XP points on top of LP fees, from 7% to 111% "XP APR" today. XP is not a token; X1 Core converts it to XNT from a funded rewards vault.
- Running a validator: commission on delegated stake, but you need at least 20,000 XNT of self-stake to receive Foundation delegation.
Why staking is the baseline
XNT is inflationary: the network issues about 6.6% a year in new XNT, paid to stake (see XNT tokenomics). If you hold XNT and do nothing, your share of the supply shrinks by roughly that much every year. Staking is how you keep your share. Everything else on this list is a way to try to earn more than staking, in exchange for more risk.
1. Native staking with a validator
Native staking means delegating your XNT to a validator you choose. Your XNT stays in a stake account that you control; the validator cannot move it. Each epoch (about 22 hours) the validator earns inflation rewards for its stake, keeps its commission, and the rest is added to your stake automatically.
What it pays. The validator share of inflation is 6.28% of total supply a year, and 92.6% of supply is staked, so the gross reward works out to about 6.8% a year. Most X1 validators charge 10% commission (the Foundation's delegation program caps commission at 10%), which leaves about 6.1% for you. A validator that misses votes earns less, so its delegators do too. XDEX's Valistake page displays an estimate of 8% to 11%; our figure comes from the network's own inflation rate, so check a validator's recent rewards before you choose.
How to start. Use the staking screen in X1 Wallet, or XDEX Valistake: pick a validator, enter an amount (the minimum is 0.01 XNT, plus about 0.002 XNT that stays in the account as rent), and sign. Stake activates at the next epoch. To get out, unstake; XDEX states withdrawal opens after 2 to 3 days. Staking through Valistake also earns Core XP.
Choosing a validator. Look at commission, vote performance and skip rate on X1 validators or the community dashboard x1val.online. Spreading stake to smaller, well-run validators helps the network: in our September measurement, just 4 validators held more than 20% of all stake.
2. Liquid staking: pXNT and rXNT
A liquid staking pool stakes your XNT across many validators and gives you a token back. The token's value in XNT rises every epoch as rewards come in, and because it is an ordinary token you can still send it, trade it or use it as liquidity.
| pXNT (official pool) | rXNT (Ripper Pool) | |
|---|---|---|
| Yield, latest measured epoch | ≈4.5% a year | ≈7.0% a year |
| Fee on rewards | 4% | 5% |
| Deposit / withdraw fee | 0.1% / 0.1% | 0% / 0.2% |
| Validators | 240 | 65 |
| Size | ≈341M XNT | ≈10.7M XNT |
Yields and pool figures are from our October 30 on-chain measurement; the gap between the two comes mostly from how much XNT each pool keeps unstaked in reserve. The full mechanism, the risks and step-by-step instructions are in How liquid staking works on X1.
Choose liquid staking if you want staking yield without picking a validator, or you want to keep a token you can use. Choose native staking if you want no pool fee and full control over which validator secures your stake.
3. Providing liquidity on XDEX
XDEX, X1's main exchange, is an automated market maker: every trade swaps against a pool of two tokens, and the pool's liquidity providers (LPs) earn the trading fee. You deposit equal values of both tokens, for example XNT and USDC.X, and receive LP tokens that represent your share.
What it pays. Trading fees, in the pool's two tokens, in proportion to your share of the pool. Today's figures for the biggest pools, from XDEX:
| Pool | Liquidity | Fee yield, last 24h, annualised |
|---|---|---|
| XNT / USDC.X | $8,852 | 48.0% |
| XNT / XNM | $1,940 | 41.0% |
| XNT / X1NU | $2,243 | 25.2% |
| XNT / THEO | $2,941 | 10.9% |
| XNT / PEPE | $2,884 | 8.3% |
| XNT / BRAINS | $5,864 | 4.3% |
| XNT / DGN | $3,572 | 3.5% |
Read those as one day's snapshot, not a rate. They are one day of fees multiplied by 365, and X1's pools are small enough that a single active trader or bot can double or halve a pool's volume from one day to the next.
The risk: impermanent loss. A pool always holds equal values of both tokens, so when one token's price moves, the pool sells the winner and buys the loser. Compared with simply holding the two tokens, an LP position is worth 5.7% less if one token doubles or halves against the other, and 20% less if it moves 4x. Fees have to beat that for LPing to pay. In an XNT/USDC.X pool, you are also fully exposed to XNT's price on half your deposit.
How to start. On XDEX, open Liquidity, pick a pool, deposit both tokens and sign. Prefer pools that trade every day; a pool with no volume pays nothing.
4. XDEX farms: LP plus Core XP
XDEX Farming lets you stake your LP tokens to earn XP points on top of the trading fees. Four farms are live, all paired with XNT:
| Farm | XP APR | Depth boost | Liquidity |
|---|---|---|---|
| XNT / USDC.X | 110.85% | 2.24x | $8.9K |
| XNT / PEPE | 70.16% | 1.00x | $2.9K |
| XNT / XNM | 32.46% | 1.00x | $1.9K |
| XNT / DGN | 7.41% | 1.00x | $3.6K |
The important word is XP. These rates are paid in Core XP, not in XNT. Core (core.x1.xyz) is X1's activity points system: it records swaps, bridging, staking, LP and token launches, and its own description says XP "redeems for XNT" each epoch, with the conversion "based on funding available in the rewards vault". XP is soul-bound: it cannot be bought, sold or transferred. So an XP APR tells you how fast you earn points, not how many XNT you will receive. That depends on how much XNT goes into the vault and how many people share it.
The Depth Boost multiplies XP for the pool X1 most wants to deepen; XNT/USDC.X, the pool that sets XNT's dollar price, carries 2.24x. Our farming launch story covers the design.
How to start. Add liquidity to one of the four pools, then go to XDEX Farming, choose the farm and stake your LP tokens. You keep earning the pool's trading fees, and you carry the same impermanent loss.
5. Running a validator
Validators earn commission on everything staked with them, plus block fees. On X1 they do not pay for votes, which is what makes small validators viable (see X1's zero-cost votes). The catch is stake. To receive delegation from the Foundation's program, a validator needs at least 20,000 XNT of self-stake since October 27, and must meet the program's commission, performance and version criteria. At that floor, a 10%-commission validator makes roughly 6,000 XNT a year, which may not cover a bare-metal server at today's XNT price. It is a commitment, not a passive yield. Start with How to run an X1 validator and the delegation program guide.
Side by side
| Method | Paid in | Typical return | Main risk | Exit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native staking | XNT | ≈6.1% after commission | Validator underperforms | 2 to 3 days |
| Liquid staking | XNT (token value rises) | ≈4.5% (pXNT) to 7.0% (rXNT) | Pool and contract risk; thin token markets | Redeem, or sell the token |
| Liquidity provider | Trading fees | Varies daily with volume | Impermanent loss, XNT price | Withdraw any time |
| XDEX farm | Fees + Core XP | Fees, plus XP at 7% to 111% XP APR | As LP; XP value not fixed | Unstake LP, then withdraw |
| Validator | Commission + fees | Depends on delegation | Hardware cost, 20,000 XNT floor | Unstake self-stake |
A common setup is to stake most of your XNT, natively or as rXNT or pXNT, and put a smaller amount you are comfortable seeing move into liquidity or a farm. Keep a little XNT unstaked for gas.
Frequently asked questions
What is the staking APY on X1?
About 6.8% a year gross, from the network's 6.6% inflation spread over the 92.6% of XNT that is staked. After a typical 10% validator commission, a delegator receives about 6.1%.
Is liquid staking better than native staking on X1?
It depends on what you want. Liquid staking gives you a token you can still use and spreads stake across many validators, for a 4% to 5% fee on rewards. Native staking has no pool fee and lets you choose the validator.
Are XDEX farm APRs paid in XNT?
No. Farms pay Core XP points. Core converts XP to XNT each epoch based on the funding in its rewards vault, so the XNT value of XP is not fixed.
How long does it take to unstake XNT?
Native stake becomes withdrawable after a cooldown that XDEX gives as 2 to 3 days. Liquid staking tokens can be redeemed through the pool or sold on XDEX.
Can I lose money providing liquidity on XDEX?
Yes. If the two tokens' prices move apart, impermanent loss can exceed the fees you earn: 5.7% versus holding if one token doubles or halves, 20% if it moves 4x. You are also exposed to the price of both tokens.