Ray

Ray tutorial is an Educational Resource for RAY Staking Deposits and Reward Claims

Ray tutorial is a practical sequence for depositing the Solana SPL token RAY into Raydium's single-asset staking contract, tracking the resulting on-chain position and claiming emitted RAY rewards. The workflow requires a Solana wallet, the canonical RAY asset and enough SOL for transaction fees. Yield isn't fixed; the interface derives it from the reward schedule and total deposited RAY.

2026-07-24 Updated on

This guide stays inside that deposit-to-claim path. It explains costs early, then covers balance changes, confirmation, partial withdrawals and the farm ledger that calculates pending rewards for the same connected address.

It is a step-by-step RAY staking procedure for depositing tokens into Raydium and claiming on-chain rewards, with yields subject to protocol emissions.

Depositing RAY Through the Single-Asset Staking Panel

The single-asset Raydium staking panel deposits RAY directly into a farm vault, so the decisive first check is that both the input and reward asset read RAY.

The panel exposes Available RAY, Staked RAY, an APR and Pending rewards in one place. Connect Phantom, Solflare or Backpack on Solana, then open Raydium's staking view and expand the RAY position. Compare the asset with the canonical mint, 4k3Dyjzvzp8eMZWUXbBCjEvwSkkk59S5iCNLY3QrkX6R, before entering an amount. This mint is a Solana public-key identifier, not a ticker substitute; matching it removes ambiguity when a wallet contains several assets with similar labels. A Ledger hardware wallet can authorize through a supported wallet connector while the connected address remains the account owner.

Use the panel in this order:

1. Connect the wallet that owns the RAY token account.
2. Confirm Solana and the RAY mint before selecting the stake.
3. Expand the RAY staking position and enter the deposit amount.
4. Review the SOL debit, instructions and destination accounts.
5. Approve the transaction and wait for the Staked balance to refresh.

SOL Fees, Account Creation and the First Deposit

The first RAY deposit costs a Solana transaction fee and may also fund new on-chain accounts, making the wallet's SOL balance the deciding condition.

A Solana transaction charges a base fee of 5,000 lamports for each required signature, before any optional prioritization fee. One SOL contains 1,000,000,000 lamports. The optional priority fee uses micro-lamports per compute unit: 1,000,000 micro-lamports equal one lamport, and its charge is the ceiling of the compute-unit price times the compute-unit limit divided by 1,000,000. A first interaction may also create a per-wallet farm ledger and fund its rent-exempt balance. That account funding isn't a Raydium percentage, even when the wallet groups it with the transaction fee inside one SOL debit.

The first deposit therefore has the widest SOL requirement; later claims commonly reuse the accounts already created.

How Much SOL Should Stay in the Wallet?

A wallet should retain enough SOL for the deposit, a later claim and a withdrawal; three separate submissions represent the most useful operating reserve. The exact debit is quote-specific because the priority fee and account creation change by transaction. Read the wallet's final SOL debit before signing, then retain fee capacity for one correction or resubmission. RAY itself doesn't pay Solana transaction fees.

Reading Available, Staked and Pending RAY Balances

Raydium's three balance fields decide whether staking succeeded: Available RAY stays in the wallet, Staked RAY sits in the vault and Pending RAY remains claimable.

Underneath that, RAY uses 6 decimal places, so one whole RAY equals 1,000,000 base units and the smallest representable amount is 0.000001 RAY. A wallet or interface may hide trailing digits, while the SPL Token account preserves them. After a deposit, Available falls by the submitted amount and Staked rises by that amount. A separate Pending figure grows from emissions. If the interface refreshes slowly, the confirmed token-account changes and farm ledger settle the question. Those three movements create clear before-and-after proof.

Fixed Parameters for RAY Staking Transactions

The fixed parameters below govern every RAY staking deposit and claim, while the live APR and optional priority fee sit outside this durable transaction layer.

Solana caps a transaction at 1,232 bytes, uses 64-byte Ed25519 signatures and accepts a recent blockhash for 150 slots. Raydium also has three farm program generations: v3, v5 and v6. The interface handles that program choice for a normal RAY staking action.

Use these rows to interpret a failed preview or an expired submission. They don't predict the reward rate, because the active emission stream and total deposited RAY set that live figure.

Submitting a Clean On-Chain Deposit

A clean RAY deposit requires one deliberate sequence: select the amount, inspect the Solana transaction and wait for confirmed state before touching the controls again.

Confirm the Asset and Amount

Start with Available RAY and enter a positive amount no greater than that balance. A true v6 Deposit must exceed 0 base units, while the Raydium interface supplies the correct instruction for older farm versions. Preserve the SOL reserve separately. The amount shown in the wallet should match the amount entered after applying RAY's 6-decimal precision.

Read the Transaction Preview

The preview should identify the connected address as signer, debit its RAY SPL Token account and invoke the farm program. A first deposit may include account creation for the stake ledger. There's no swap in this route, so a staking deposit has no slippage setting or price-impact calculation. The meaningful values are the RAY debit, the SOL cost and the program destination.

Sign Once and Wait for Confirmation

Approve the prepared transaction once, then keep its signature while the network processes it. Solana executes every instruction atomically: the token transfer and ledger update land together, or neither state change remains. If the 150-slot blockhash window expires, build a fresh transaction instead of reusing the old message. Once confirmed, refresh Raydium and compare Available RAY with Staked RAY. That sequence ends with one traceable signature and one updated staked balance.

How Are RAY Rewards Calculated?

In that setup, RAY staking rewards equal the wallet's proportional share of scheduled RAY emissions, with the displayed APR changing when emissions or total staked RAY changes (more on this in Ray walkthrough ).

Seen from the other side, Raydium annualizes one year as 365 days, or 31,536,000 seconds, then applies the configured RAY-per-second stream to that period and divides by total staked RAY. Because the stake and reward share the same token, their price cancels from the token-denominated ratio. The rate still moves: a larger total stake spreads the same emission stream across more RAY, while a changed schedule alters the numerator. Pending rewards use elapsed time and your share during that interval, not the APR shown at the moment you claim.

APR expresses a simple annualized rate and doesn't include compounding. Raydium doesn't automatically fold pending RAY into principal. Claiming and redepositing therefore creates two transactions, two state updates and a compounding cadence chosen by the wallet owner.

Claiming Rewards Without Moving Principal

A RAY reward claim settles pending rewards into the wallet's RAY token account while leaving the deposited principal and its future accrual position unchanged.

Choose the Claim-Only Action

Use the claim control beside Pending rewards when the goal is to move earned RAY without reducing Staked RAY. The interface sends one wallet transaction and selects the underlying settlement path. Farm v6 exposes an explicit Harvest instruction; farm v3 and v5 settle a claim with an amount of 0 behind the SDK abstraction. In either route, principal stays recorded in the farm ledger.

Read the Post-Claim State

After confirmation, Available RAY rises by the transferred reward and Pending RAY drops to the newly accrued remainder. It may already show a small nonzero balance because the next interval begins after settlement. Staked RAY stays unchanged. The program also replaces the prior reward snapshot with the current reward-per-share value, establishing the starting point for the next claim.

Adding claimed RAY back to principal requires another deposit and wallet signature. The extra action lets the holder choose between liquid rewards and a fee-paying manual compounding cadence.

Confirming Deposit and Claim Results On-Chain

A successful RAY transaction has two matching records: the Raydium balance update and a Solana signature whose account changes show the corresponding token movement.

Open the signature in Solscan or Solana Explorer and inspect its status, signer, program invocation and pre-transaction and post-transaction token balances. A deposit shows RAY leaving the signer's token account and entering the staking vault, alongside the farm-ledger update. A claim shows RAY moving from a reward vault to the signer's RAY token account. If the signature is confirmed while Raydium still shows older values, reconnect the same address or refresh its account data before creating another transaction.

Matching both records prevents a stale interface from becoming the final source of position truth.

Unstaking and Partial Withdrawals

A RAY withdrawal returns any amount up to the deposited balance from the farm vault, after the program first settles rewards associated with that stake.

Reduce the Stake

Choose the withdrawal control, enter an amount no greater than Staked RAY and review the destination token account. A partial withdrawal lowers the deposited balance and total farm stake by the same base-unit amount. The remaining RAY stays in the ledger with a refreshed reward snapshot, so its future share begins from the state recorded in that transaction.

Close the Position

A full withdrawal returns the entire deposited RAY balance and settles pending rewards during the same farm interaction. The instruction doesn't create a separate unbonding queue; the principal reaches the wallet when the Solana transaction lands. After confirmation, the interface should show 0 Staked RAY for that position, while Available RAY reflects the returned principal and settled reward.

Reward Accounting Beneath the Raydium Interface

On the operational side, Raydium's reward ledger decides every claim by combining the wallet's deposited amount with a reward-per-share counter and subtracting the snapshot from its previous interaction.

Each wallet has one ledger per farm, holding its deposited amount and reward-debt snapshot. Farm state holds total stake, emission schedules, counters and token vaults, while a Program Derived Address controls those vaults. Farm v6 stores up to 5 reward streams, while v5 supports 2 and v3 supports 1. Its emission rate uses Q64.64 fixed-point arithmetic, so integrations divide the stored value by 2^64. Deposit, Withdraw and Harvest refresh the counter lazily when a transaction touches the farm; no second-by-second transaction is required.

Underneath that, Raydium SDK v2 reads the account owner and dispatches the instruction that matches v3, v5 or v6. SPL Token handles the RAY transfers, while Token-2022 support belongs to v6 for compatible staking and reward mints. This separation explains why a display may refresh after the chain has already settled. A Ray tutorial becomes much easier to audit when every click maps to a specific token movement and a predictable ledger transition.

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