How to Stake AQUA and Earn Rewards (2026)

What you need first

To stake AQUA you need three things: a Stellar-compatible wallet (Freighter, LOBSTR, or WalletConnect), the AQUA you want to stake, and a small amount of XLM to cover network fees and your account's minimum reserve. That's it — no bridging, no wrapping, no gas token to top up.

If you're new to Stellar, XLM is the network's native asset. Every Stellar account holds a tiny XLM reserve and pays a base fee of 0.00001 XLM per transaction, so a few XLM is more than enough to stake, claim, and unstake many times over. New to the token itself? Start with What Is the AQUA Token?

Stake AQUA in 5 steps

Staking AQUA on WhaleHub is a five-step flow: connect your wallet, choose an amount and lock duration, confirm the transaction, receive BLUB 1:1, and later claim your accumulated rewards. Each on-chain action confirms in about five seconds.

1. Connect your Stellar wallet. Open the WhaleHub app and connect Freighter, LOBSTR, or WalletConnect. Confirm you hold AQUA plus a little XLM.
2. Choose amount and lock duration. Enter how much AQUA to stake and select a lock term. A longer lock earns a higher reward multiplier.
3. Confirm the transaction. Review the summary and sign in your wallet. It finalizes in ~5 seconds for a fraction of a cent.
4. Receive BLUB. For every 1 AQUA locked, 1.0 BLUB is minted to your staking balance as a liquid receipt. Your position immediately starts earning a share of harvested rewards.
5. Claim your rewards. Rewards accrue continuously and compound automatically. Claim your accumulated BLUB from the app, mindful of the 7-day cooldown between claims.

What happens under the hood

When you stake, 90% of your AQUA stays in the WhaleHub staking contract queued for ICE governance locking, and 10% goes toward liquidity-pool deposits. For every 1 AQUA locked, 1.0 BLUB is minted to you and 0.1 BLUB to the protocol for pool liquidity. Your AQUA joins a pooled position that votes and compounds at whale scale.

This is the core idea behind WhaleHub — often called "Convex for Stellar." Alone, a small AQUA holder has negligible voting weight in Aquarius and pays real friction to claim and re-stake. Pooled together, thousands of stakers wield whale-tier ICE, direct emissions to the highest-yielding market, and split the rewards. Here's the split at a glance:

From there, the backend harvests Aquarius rewards and bribes roughly every 30 minutes, swaps them to BLUB, and distributes them to stakers proportionally — while reinvesting a portion into more ICE voting power. See ICE Voting & Bribes for how those votes turn into yield.

Lock duration and reward multipliers

WhaleHub rewards longer commitments. The longer you lock your AQUA, the higher your reward multiplier, because a longer lock gives the protocol more durable ICE voting power to earn with. Shorter locks stay flexible but earn at a lower rate. You choose the trade-off that suits you when you stake.

There's no single "right" term — it depends on your horizon. If you're confident you won't need the AQUA for a while, a longer lock compounds harder. If you value flexibility, a shorter lock still earns. Either way, rewards are paid in BLUB, whose value floats with the market via the Aquarius BLUB-AQUA pool.

Claiming and unstaking

You can claim accumulated BLUB rewards from the app, subject to a 7-day cooldown between claims. Your rewards keep compounding between claims, so there's no penalty for waiting. When your lock term ends, you can unstake your AQUA; auto-compounding vaults, by contrast, can be withdrawn on their own terms.

A practical rhythm for most stakers is to let rewards compound and claim periodically rather than constantly — the 7-day cooldown is designed for exactly that. Because Stellar fees are negligible, claiming isn't something you have to ration to save on gas; the cooldown, not cost, is the limiting factor.

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That's the whole loop: stake AQUA, get BLUB, earn a share of pooled Aquarius rewards, and let it compound. The manual alternative — locking for ICE yourself, tracking the best market each epoch, voting every cycle, and re-staking rewards by hand — is exactly the work WhaleHub automates.