Holding Rewards
If you are already earning tokens through Engagement, the next goal would be Holding Rewards. You can receive free bonus MINDS tokens just for holding your current tokens in a crypto wallet.
Last updated
| 03/30/25 |
Objective
Connect your crypto wallet to your Minds account and transfer your off-chain tokens into your wallet to receive Holding Rewards.
Concept
Tokens are the signature cryptocurrency of Minds. As such, Minds does what it can to increase their regard. One way to do that is to get people to POSSESS these tokens. It’s one thing if you have site credits relegated to a back page that you never visit. But if the tokens actually reside on a wallet you own, you will be more conscientious of them. You will have put in a non-zero amount of effort to keep them, and you will have actual custody of them, instead of leaving them on a third-party website.
And what better incentive to hold your own tokens then to get paid for it? That’s right, every wallet connected to Minds will receive free tokens if they already have tokens in that wallet. Free tokens? How much better of a deal do you want?
Let me explain the difference between off-chain tokens and on-chain tokens. To put it simply, off-chain tokens are held for you by the Minds website. On-chain tokens are tokens that have been taken off the Minds website and placed into your personal wallet.
Actually, the names for these two types of tokens are slightly misleading. It’s not that the tokens themselves are off-chain. All cryptocurrency is on a blockchain somewhere; otherwise, it wouldn’t be crypto. Off-chain tokens are just tokens that are being processed with off-chain transactions within the Minds servers. They never leave the servers, so they just use a much simpler protocol that is fast and free for users.
However, the fact that they are off-chain highlights the fact that they ARE on the server, and they have not been given to you yet. It is the common sentiment among crytpo proponents that you don’t have any crypto until take custody of it in a wallet you control. As long as your tokens remain off-chain and on the Minds servers, they might as well be IOUs.
Requirements
- A Minds User Account
- Unique Phone Number
- MINDS tokens
- A Minds-compatible Web3 crypto wallet
- Base Chain Ethereum (ETH) in that Web3 wallet
- Minds+ Subscription (Not strictly required, but strongly advised)
First, you have to be registered on Minds with a user account. You should have a username and the ability to post. Second, you need to have some off-chain tokens already. You can check to see how many off-chain tokens you have on the Wallet page of your Minds account. Note, the Wallet page will also tell you how many on-chain tokens you have. But if you already have on-chain tokens, you can use those to receive Holding Rewards.
Somewhere along this process, you are going to need to verify a phone number. This is to ensure you are a unique user and not a spammer or a bot. According to the Minds website, the phone number will be encrypted and never associated with your Minds account. Ostensibly, it can’t be used to identify you. I can’t comment on the veracity of this; I don’t work for Minds. I trusted them enough to complete verify. I’ve only had to verify via phone once while using Minds, and it was for this.
You are going to need a Minds-compatible Web3 wallet. While that may sound complicated, I can just give you the list of the ones that will work:
- MetaMask
- Coinbase Wallet
- Any Wallet supported by Wallet Connect
I have used both MetaMask and Coinbase wallets, and they are not overly complicated. I cannot offer details on other Wallet Connect wallets, however.
I plan on writing my own guide on creating your personal Web3 wallet in the near future.
Decide which Web3 wallet you want and create it.
Now that you have a Minds-compatible wallet, you’ll have to put some Ethereum (ETH) in it. (Getting ETH is not within the purview of this guide, but will be discussed in a future guide.) ETH will cover the “gas fee” that is required to transfer your tokens from the Minds website and into your wallet.
Specifically, you will need ETH that has been bridged to Base Chain. It used to be the case that the gas fee for transferring tokens was exorbitantly high. However, Base Chain ETH has much cheaper fees (only around a few cents.)
In point of fact, Minds exclusively deals in Base Chain crypto now, so you will need Base Chain ETH to transfer your tokens. See the link in the Requirements list for the guide.
Guide For Desktop Web Browser
You must be logged in to your Minds account on your web browser.
Have your Web3 wallet on hand. If your wallet is on an app on your phone, have it open and unlocked. If your wallet is on your browser as a browser extension, unlock it now. Note that you must remember to open and unlock your wallet if it’s on a browser extension. Unlike using a phone app, there may not be an immediately obvious requirement to open a browser extension wallet. If it’s not unlocked, there could be no notification. Minds will not find any wallet available to connect to and nothing will happen.
Go to the Wallet page of your Minds account. You can find the link to it on the left sidebar of a Minds page.
This page shows you all about your tokens: how many you have, how many you are earning, etc. You will connect your Web3 wallet to your Minds account here. Under the Tokens tab, click the Connect Wallet button towards the top of the page.
This will open a pop-up window listing the Web3 wallets that are compatible with Minds. Click the wallet you are using. If you have a browser extension wallet, the website will detect it and attempt to connect to it. If your wallet is not a browser extension or if the site didn’t detect your wallet, it will display a QR code. Scan the QR code with your phone wallet app.
If you are using a browser extension wallet, but have not unlocked it, the extension will prompt you to unlock it with your password.
Your wallet will now prompt you to “sign” the request. This is basically giving permission to the Minds website to connect to your wallet. This is for the purpose of mirroring your ETH and token wallet balances on your Minds Wallet page, and for depositing tokens into your Web3 wallet. You must sign the request within a certain amount of time, or the connection will timeout and you’ll just have to hit Connect Wallet again.
Certain browsers may give you a warning notice that the Minds website is trying to connect to your wallet. This is a precaution against random websites trying to access your wallet without your awareness. However, we are initiating this interaction, so this is not an unwarranted connection. Just ignore or bypass any warnings in order to proceed. If your browser does not allow you to connect your wallet to Minds, you will have to use a different browser.
Now that your wallet is connected to your Minds account, you will notice two differences on your Minds account Wallet page. Your Web3 wallet ETH balance will be reflected on the top of the page. And the page will also show you the ETH address from your Web3 wallet. If you see these differences, you’ll know you are on the right track and we can proceed. Note that only Base Chain ETH will be recognized.
Either during this next step or the last, Minds is going to request verification from a unique phone number. It’s the standard text message verification if I remember correctly. Input your phone number into the Minds prompt, after which they will send a code via text message. Enter this code into the next prompt that follows and you should be all set. If you are using a landline instead of a cell phone, there’s probably an option for a voice message instead of a text message.
Now that your wallet is connected, you will enable rewards. On the same Wallet page, under the Tokens tab, under the Rewards tab, click Join Rewards. You will only have to enable rewards once. Even if you disconnect your wallet and connect a different wallet, rewards will still be enabled for your account. The permission is tied to your Minds account and not associated with the Web3 wallet or Ethereum address connected to your account. Once enabled, it’s enabled for good.
Don’t worry about performing the previous steps out of order. If you click Join Rewards first, you will still connect a wallet eventually. Both steps are prerequisites and they will naturally be presented to you during the process.
At the bottom part of the Wallet page, there will be chart of your earnings from three possible sources: Engagement, Holding, and Liquidity. If you are using this guide, you should already have some Engagement earnings, but no Holding earnings.
Next to Holding, there is a link that says Transfer. Click it and two pop-up windows will appear. First, you must verify your Transfer request. Go to your e-mail and get the six digit code that Minds sends you. Enter that code into the verification pop-up window. Once that is done, choose how many tokens you want to transfer into your Web3 wallet on the Transfer On-chain window.
The Amount form will automatically be filled with total number of off-chain tokens you have. So leaving the form with the default number will result in transferring ALL of your tokens into your wallet. This is not BAD, per se, but there are some edge cases where you may not want to do this. If you have some upcoming token auto-payments (monthly Minds memberships or ongoing monthly donations), you may want to hold back a few tokens so they will be available. Once you officially make a Transfer request, the tokens are removed from your account and it takes a few days for them to reappear in your wallet. If you have payments during that time, they will be interrupted.
Or you may just want to reserve some tokens for boosting posts or tipping users while you are waiting for your token Transfer to complete. This will all depend on your personal token usage, but I think it would always be a good idea to leave at least 10 tokens with your Minds account instead of Transferring them. That way you have them if you want to use them.
Even if you have plenty of tokens on-chain, it is still good to have off-chain tokens anyway. Like stated previously, off-chain tokens are easily transacted. You don’t have to pay any fees when using them for boosts and tips. If all you have are on-chain tokens to spend, you may get transaction fees, which are going to cost you some ETH from your Web3 wallet.
After you have decided how many off-chain tokens you want to Transfer to your Web3 wallet, hit the Transfer button. This will send the request to your Web3 wallet, which will quote a gas fee for you. If you followed the requirements above, you should have Base Chain ETH to cover the gas fee.
Accept the gas fee. Your wallet will then prompt you to sign the transaction. This is the final step to complete the Transfer request.
Once finished, Minds will deduct the tokens from your user account and begin the process of Transferring them to your wallet. This will probably take three days, but it could take up to a week. I do not know the reason for this delay, I am not familiar with crypto technology at this level. I’m assuming it has something to do with converting the tokens from off-chain transactions to on-chain transactions. It may also require the direct intervention of Minds staff to complete the transfer. I’ve transferred tokens multiple times; you just have to wait for them to arrive.
After this, there’s nothing more you actively have to do. Your on- tokens will arrive in several days. Tokens that are transferred to your Web3 wallet will always be Base Chain tokens. That’s good, because only Base Chain tokens will count towards Holding Rewards. You’ll know they are Base Chain tokens because they’ll have a little Base Chain marker in the corner of the MINDS token symbol.
These Base Chain tokens in your Web3 wallet will begin earning you Holding Rewards: as long as you previously enabled rewards, and your Web3 wallet is currently connected to your Minds account. Your on-chain tokens must be in your Web3 wallet for a full day before your first reward deposit. A day on the Minds servers begins at 12 noon UTC, so it will be 24 hours after that.
The Holding Rewards themselves are off-chain tokens that are sent to your Minds account. Although they aren’t on-chain and do not factor into additional rewards, you can transfer them on-chain just like you did in this guide. In this way, you could stack your tokens and earn compound interest, as it were.
Workaround #1
Notice with the criteria above—there’s no explicit requirement that you must transfer the tokens into your wallet to receive the rewards. If you are able to get tokens into your Web3 wallet by another means, they will still net you Holding Rewards.
Theoretically, another user could send tokens from their wallet directly to yours. This would bypass the requirement for a Minds+ account, because you wouldn’t need to Transfer your tokens at all. As long as you have rewards enabled and your wallet is connected, these tokens would give you rewards as well.
Depending on your specific case, I could help you with a one-time token transaction directly to your wallet. Please read the comments for more details. You can contact me there.
Workaround #2
Another way to get tokens into your wallet is to convert Base Chain ETH into on-chain tokens. You would have needed ETH to get this far anyway. If you have some extra, you can skip the Transfer step altogether.
Later, I will provide further articles to explain this process better.
You will need to go to an off-chain crypto marketplace site. Uniswap, the site that handles Minds transactions directly, is perfectly fine for our uses.
Go to Uniswap. Connect your Web3 wallet with your ETH on it. This is just like connecting your wallet to Minds; and in fact, you can be connected to both at the same time. Find the Swap option on the page. A window will pop up. Choose ETH for the first cryptocurrency. This is the crypto you will be giving up. Choose MINDS for the second cryptocurrency. This is the crypto you will be receiving. Select how much ETH you want to Swap. The window should inform you of how many tokens you will get in the swap.
There will be a fee, but it will be very minimal. This is an off-chain transaction, so it’s going to be very simple and fast. It won’t require a lot of computing power or fees to complete.
Hit Swap and you’ll receive your tokens directly.
You could practically fund all of your Holding Rewards this way. If you plan on never transferring your rewards tokens into your wallet, this would be a perfectly viable option. However, if you ever want to transfer your tokens out, you’re going to need a bit of Base Chain ETH. So be conscientious of that before you swap all of your ETH for tokens.
Rewards
Quoted from the Minds website directly:
“Your holding contribution will be measured by the number of MINDS held in your wallet relative to the total number of MINDS being held in all user wallets that are connected to the network.
A time-weighted multiplier will be applied to this percent contribution to incentivize holding assets for longer periods of time. The maximum multiplier you can receive is 3X for holding your MINDS on-chain for over 365 days.
Ex) User A holds 1,000 tokens in their wallet. There are 100,000 tokens stored across all user wallets. Therefore, user A holds 1% of the circulating on chain supply and will earn 1% of the holding rewards.”
Rewards Stats
Because your rewards are relative to the total number of tokens connected to the network, they may change over time. If more users opt for Holding Rewards, your rewards will decrease. Conversely, if people spend or otherwise remove their tokens from the network, your rewards will increase. As of the latest update to this guide,
| 7900 On-chain tokens (~$124) |
with a 3x multiplier would earn you:
| ~1000 tokens per year, |
| taking ~7.9 years to make back your initial 7900 token investment. |
| After which point you would receive 1000 free tokens per year. |
Pros
If you already have tokens, you can start getting free tokens just by moving them to a Web3 wallet. Since you can earn tokens initially just through engagement, TECHNICALLY you could invest in Holding Rewards for free.
Cons
You will need ETH, and you will need to bridge ETH onto Base Chain in order to Transfer tokens. You will need to bridge any previously gained on-chain tokens onto Base Chain for them to count towards Holding Rewards. While not difficult, it is one additional step.