# Staking Members of an Agora DAO need to stake their tokens to the DAO in order to gain governance power in on-chain Agora governance actions. A user's power in an on-chain [Proposal](/clarity-v1/key-distinctions/polls-vs-proposals.md#proposals) vote is calculated by the amount of [Governance Tokens](/dao-fundamentals/agora-overview.md#governance-token) they have staked to that DAO. ### What happens to my tokens when I stake them on Clarity? When you [create a stake](/clarity-v1/participating-in-a-dao/staking/creating-and-editing-stakes.md#creating-a-new-stake) on Clarity, your tokens are sent to a validator which is generated and published on-chain at the time of your DAOs creation. When funds are sent to a DAOs validator to create a stake, information about the wallet that sent the funds is encoded on-chain so that only the stake's creator can redeem those tokens. ### Can I unstake my tokens at any time? Yes! The requirements to be able to remove funds from a stake are that: 1. You are using the wallet that created that stake. 2. Your stake has [no locks](/clarity-v1/participating-in-a-dao/staking/removing-stake-locks.md) on it. ### Why do I need to send my tokens to a validator to vote? By holding governance tokens in a validator, Agora is able to verify the exact vote results at any given time with 100% accuracy . Without the funds being held in a validator, Governance Tokens could potentially be sent around and used to double vote. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.clarity.vote/clarity-v1/participating-in-a-dao/staking.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.