# Claim & Stake Penalties

Projects can tie airdrop distributions to staking behavior — requiring or incentivizing recipients to stake their claimed tokens. Penalties apply when users claim without staking, encouraging long-term token alignment over immediate selling.

## How it works

When claim & stake penalties are enabled, claiming tokens without staking them results in a reduced payout. The penalty can be a flat rate or tiered based on how long the user stakes.

**Example: flat penalty**

```
Full allocation:        1,000 tokens
Claiming without stake: 700 tokens  (30% penalty)
Penalty burned/returned: 300 tokens
```

**Example: tiered by staking period**

| Staking period | Penalty | User receives |
| -------------- | ------- | ------------- |
| No stake       | 50%     | 500 / 1,000   |
| 30 days        | 25%     | 750 / 1,000   |
| 90 days        | 10%     | 900 / 1,000   |
| 180 days       | 0%      | 1,000 / 1,000 |

## Configuration

Penalty settings are defined at deployment time in the Airdrop Distributor contract:

* **Penalty rate** — percentage deducted when claiming without staking
* **Staking contract** — the address where tokens must be staked
* **Staking tiers** — optional time-based tiers with decreasing penalty rates
* **Penalty destination** — burned, returned to treasury, or redistributed

{% hint style="info" %}
Penalties are enforced by the smart contract — they cannot be bypassed by the user once the contract is deployed.
{% endhint %}

## Use cases

* Align token recipients with long-term protocol success
* Reduce immediate sell pressure after TGE
* Reward committed community members with a higher effective allocation