Redeeming takes 21 days

This is the page worth reading before you redeem, because the redemption flow has four stages, and the app deliberately cannot tell you your exact payout until the third one.

That is not a missing feature. It is the honest answer, and this page explains why.

The short version

1. You redeem — your vATOM is burned immediately, and you get a claim ticket.
2. Your request waits with others in a batch, then the batch is processed — this is when the 21-day unbonding clock actually starts.
3. When the ATOM arrives, the batch is finalized — only now is your exact payout known.
4. You claim — the ATOM lands in your wallet.

Stages 2, 3 and 4 all require someone to send a transaction. Stages 2 and 3 are permissionless: anyone can trigger them, including you.

The stages in detail

  ┌──────────────┐
  │   1. REDEEM  │  your vATOM is burned now
  └──────┬───────┘  amount owed is recorded at today's rate
         │
         │  waiting for the batch to fill or age
         ▼
  ┌──────────────┐
  │  2. PROCESS  │  ← the 21-day clock starts HERE, not at step 1
  └──────┬───────┘    one undelegation per validator
         │
         │  ~21 days, set by the Cosmos Hub
         ▼
  ┌──────────────┐
  │ 3. FINALIZE  │  ← your exact payout becomes known HERE
  └──────┬───────┘    contract measures what actually arrived
         │
         ▼
  ┌──────────────┐
  │   4. CLAIM   │  ATOM lands in your wallet
  └──────────────┘

Stage 1 — Redeem

Your vATOM is burned immediately, and the ATOM you are owed is recorded at the exchange rate at that moment. From here on you are no longer earning staking rewards; you hold a claim on a fixed number of ATOM, not a share of a growing pool.

Your request joins the currently open batch.

Stage 2 — Process

Requests are grouped into batches rather than each triggering its own unbonding. This is forced by the Cosmos Hub: it permits at most 7 simultaneous unbonding entries per validator pair, and the contract is a single delegator. Without batching, the eighth person to redeem in a period would be unable to.

A batch is processed once it is old enough or full. Processing sends one undelegation per validator.

The unbonding clock starts here, not when you redeemed. If you redeem just after a batch was processed, your request waits for the next batch to fill before its clock even begins. Your total wait is therefore up to the batch window plus the unbonding period.

The contract does not guess when the ATOM will be ready — it reads the completion time the staking module itself returns, and takes the latest one across all the validators involved.

Stage 3 — Finalize

This is the stage people do not expect, and the reason the app says "not yet known".

When the unbonding completes, the contract looks at how much ATOM actually arrived and compares it to what the batch was owed:

slashing effect = ATOM that actually arrived ÷ ATOM the batch was owed

Normally that is exactly 1.0 and everyone is paid in full. But a validator can be slashed during the 21 days your ATOM is unbonding, and slashing applies to funds that are still unbonding, not just funds that are staked. If that happens, less ATOM comes back than was owed, and the shortfall is shared across everyone in that batch, proportionally.

This is precisely why the app cannot promise you a number earlier. Until the ATOM is back and counted, the honest answer is we do not know yet — so that is what it says. A UI that displayed the requested amount as a guaranteed payout would be misleading you in exactly the case that matters most.

Finalizing is permissionless, and mandatory — no claim can be paid from a batch that has not been finalized.

Stage 4 — Claim

Your payout is transferred to your wallet. Either the address that redeemed or the nominated receiver can claim it.

What you will see in the app

Stage	Claimable at	Your payout	Claim button
Requested, batch still open	not yet known	not yet known	disabled
Unbonding	a real date	not yet known	disabled
Matured, awaiting finalize	date has passed	not yet known	disabled
Finalized	date has passed	exact amount	enabled
Claimed	—	what you were paid	done

Matured but the button is still disabled?

Your batch has finished unbonding but nobody has finalized it yet. Anyone can — including you. This is the single most common cause of "my ATOM is ready but I cannot claim it".

Provisional timings

Occasionally a batch's maturity is marked as a forecast rather than a chain-reported fact. This means the chain did not return a completion time when the batch was processed, so the contract fell back to estimating it.

If you see this, treat any date shown as approximate. Such a batch cannot be settled by the ordinary permissionless path — it requires a governed settlement where the credited amount is stated explicitly, precisely because a forecast cannot distinguish "slashed" from "has not arrived yet".

On a chain that reports completion times normally — which the Hub does — you should never see this. A run of them means something changed at the chain level and operators should investigate.

Common questions

Can I cancel a redemption? No. The vATOM is burned at stage 1 and cannot be un-burned.

Can I speed it up? Not the unbonding period — that is the Hub's, and applies to all staking. You can make sure the batch is processed and finalized promptly, since both are permissionless and neither happens without someone sending a transaction.

Do I earn rewards while unbonding? No. Unbonding ATOM does not earn. Your claim is for a fixed amount, fixed at redemption.

Can I be slashed after I have redeemed? Yes — until the unbonding completes. This is Cosmos Hub behaviour, not a vATOM decision.

What if I redeem everything? Fine. A full exit is paid the whole pool.

See also

• Stake, redeem, claim — the click-by-click walkthrough
• Keeping it running
• Risks