Staking & Fee Sharing: Turning Real EV Charging Volume into Yield
In ChargeCoin, staking is not about speculative farming. It is a way to share protocol fees that come from real drivers charging real cars, at real stations. Here’s how the model works from whitepaper to live deployment.
Why Staking Exists in ChargeCoin
In many DeFi projects, staking is a purely financial loop: tokens beget more tokens without a clear connection to the real world. ChargeCoin takes a different path.
As described in the whitepaper, staking exists to secure the protocol, align long-term participants and share a portion of EV charging fees with them . No “infinite APY”, no confusing mechanics — just a clear relationship: more kWh flowing through the network, more sustainable rewards over time.
Three Sources of Real Economic Flow
Every charging session that passes through ChargeCoin creates a small, transparent fee that is split between multiple parties according to the design in the tokenomics section of the whitepaper:
- Protocol fee (0.1%) – a tiny transaction fee on each payment, lower than traditional card processors.
- Station owner share – the majority of revenue, paid out instantly or near-instantly.
- Staker pool allocation – a defined share of protocol revenue routed to staking contracts.
The outcome: rewards are not minted from thin air, but from real-world EV usage.
How Staking Works at a High Level
While the implementation details live in the smart contract layer, the user experience is kept intentionally simple:
- Users lock CHG in a staking contract for a chosen period.
- In return, they receive a claim on a portion of protocol fees.
- Rewards are claimable in regular intervals, on-chain and auditable.
Fee Routing Logic
The fee routing logic defined in the whitepaper ensures that every unit of value has a traceable path:
- A small share of each session fee is diverted to the staking pool address.
- The rest goes to the relevant station owner / CPO and operational treasury, as configured in the protocol parameters.
- Governance can adjust these ratios in the future, within predefined limits, to remain competitive and sustainable.
Aligning Drivers, Operators and Token Holders
The design goal is alignment, not extraction. That means:
- Drivers get low fees and clear prices, not “hidden” staking overhead.
- Station owners see direct benefits from routing volume through ChargeCoin (analytics, settlement, optional loyalty programs).
- Token stakers are rewarded for supporting the network that makes all of this possible.
Risk, Lock-ups and Transparency
Staking, by design, introduces lock-ups and smart contract risk. The whitepaper explicitly highlights:
- Lock-up periods are clearly communicated in the UI and docs.
- Smart contracts are open-source and designed to be auditable.
- No guarantees of fixed yield are made — rewards depend on real charging volume and governance decisions.
How This Connects to the Rest of the Ecosystem
Staking and fee sharing are not an isolated product. They connect deeply with:
- ChargeCoin Wallet – the primary interface where many users will first encounter the option to stake.
- Station Owner Dashboard – where CPOs can see how much of their volume contributes to protocol revenues and, indirectly, to staker rewards.
- Data & carbon layer – which ensures that the underlying volume is verifiable and not wash-traded.
What’s Next for Staking (Roadmap)
In the roadmap section of the whitepaper, several future steps are outlined:
- Launch of initial staking pools alongside early CPO integrations.
- Iteration on fee routing percentages based on live market feedback.
- Potential expansion into “impact-weighted” pools, where staking is linked to carbon savings or specific regions.
Each of these evolutions keeps the core principle intact: staking should always map back to real energy being delivered to real EVs.
