How Solana stake account lockups work

Stake accounts usually come up when people talk about staking. They also carry a feature most people never touch: a lockup that stops withdrawals until a time you set. The rule is enforced by the Stake Program, a part of Solana itself, not by any website. SolLock builds on it, and this page explains what is actually in there.

A stake account is not a wallet

A wallet address holds Solana its owner can spend at any time. A stake account is a separate account, owned by the Stake Program, with a small record of its own: the balance, two authorities, a possible delegation to a validator, and an optional lockup.

The two authorities:

• The stake authority may delegate the balance to a validator, or deactivate it.
• The withdraw authority may take the Solana out, and may also replace the stake authority.

They can be two different addresses. On a SolLock lock both are the same wallet: yours, or the wallet of the person you give the lock to.

The three fields of a lockup

1. A Unix timestamp. The lock is in force until the network’s clock passes it.
2. An epoch number. The lock is also in force until the network reaches that epoch. SolLock sets it to 0, so only the date counts.
3. The custodian. One address whose signature lets a withdrawal through anyway, and may change the lockup itself.

As long as the timestamp or the epoch lies in the future, the lockup is in force.

What the network refuses while it is in force

• Withdrawing, unless the custodian signs.
• Changing the withdraw authority, unless the custodian signs. You cannot hand the lock to a fresh key and walk off with it.
• Changing the lockup. Only the custodian may move the date while the lock is in force. Once the date has passed, the withdraw authority may set a new one.

Some things stay allowed: delegating to a validator, deactivating, and splitting the account in two. None of them moves Solana out. A split account carries the same lockup, and two accounts can only be merged if their lockups match.

Why the custodian decides everything

Every rule above has the same exception: the custodian. A lock whose custodian is a normal wallet is only as firm as whoever holds that wallet. If a service keeps the custodian key, the service can unlock early. If you keep it, you can.

An irreversible lock needs a custodian that cannot sign at all. SolLock uses one fixed address, made with SHA-256 from a public text and chosen because it is not a point on the Ed25519 curve, so no private key for it can exist. The custodian page shows every step and lets you redo the calculation in your own browser.

Staked or not

A lockup needs no staking. A SolLock lock is not delegated to any validator, so it earns nothing, and on the unlock date there is no cooldown: you withdraw, and it is done.

Reading one on the blockchain

All of this is public. With the lock’s address, a block explorer shows the owner program, the authorities, the lockup fields and the balance. How to check a Solana lock on the blockchain walks through it field by field. For the protocol’s own wording, see Solana’s stake account reference.