There are a lot of places where you can stake your Cosmos ATOM tokens, but these are the three best places I have found to stake your ATOMS. The three platforms which allow staking ATOMs that I decided to go with are: Cosmostation, pStake, and Binance.
Cosmostation is a validator, and is perhaps the most popular place for people to stake their ATOMs. The rewards for staking your ATOMS on Cosmostation are around 8% and 10% APR. Cosmostation is a validator and this means staking your ATOMs on it helps secure the Cosmos network.
Staking ATOMs on Cosmostation is not free and stakers will have to pay a fee of 8.9%. There is a 22 day lockup period on your ATOMs if you decide to stake them on Cosmostation. Once your tokens are locked into a staking platform you cannot withdraw them until the staking period is over.
pStake is a decentralized liquid staking platform which is relatively new, but it has already gained a lot of popularity among the Cosmos community. pStake offers around 8% APR to those who stake their Cosmos tokens on the DApp. My favorite aspect of pStake is that it is a liquid staking platform, which means it allows you to mint synthetic tokens that represent your staked tokens. These synthetic tokens can be used in DeFi whilst you earn rewards on your staked tokens.
pStake will charge stakers a service fee, and if the stakers choose to mint synthetic tokens to represent their staked tokens they will be charged a minting fee. Right now, however, pStake has kept their service and minting fees at 0% to promote adoption for the DApp. pStake has a bonding time of upto 24 days.
Binance is the largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange, and it allows users to stake a few cryptocurrencies with ATOM tokens being one of the tokens you can stake there. Staking your ATOMs on Binance will give you 6% to 9% APR in staking rewards.
Staking your ATOMs on Binance does come with a fee, and the fee is 2.5%. Staking on Binance also has lengthy lockup periods, even the minimum lockup period is one month. Staking on Binance isn’t my first choice since it's a centralized exchange, but it is the largest exchange.
