State of Stake is a series of curated news, research, updates, and events in the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem. Stay informed with the biggest PoS networks and all things Staking. This is our 21st report and we are happy to release it in collaboration with Staking Rewards! Staking Rewards provides trusted access to all passive income opportunities with regard to digital assets. They are curating knowledge and data to build a healthy staking and DeFi ecosystem. Staking Rewards’ core focus are Proof-of-Stake Protocols which enable passive returns through staking. They also cover Masternode Coins, Dividend Tokens and Lending Protocols.
In this update, we examine the period from 16th May — 30th May with a general overview of the market, highlighted research in the space, news on all launched staking networks, updates on all the upcoming PoS networks, the latest developments from staking infrastructure providers and a handful of staking-related events.
Global Market Overview
- The average reward rate had a small peak on 29th May, reaching a high of 16,82.
Current Value in Staking by Asset
- Tezos, EOS, Algorand, and Cosmos are absolute leaders ranged by current value in staking.
- Staking Overview by CryptoDiffer
Think & Stake
- New Proof of Stake Whitepaper by Proof of Stake Alliance
They prepared this whitepaper in order to provide a description of the various ways in which the blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, is already influencing the world economy; give an overview of the PoW and PoS protocols as well as a description of the staking-related services associated with PoS networks; and to set forth an appropriate tax treatment for compensation earned by token holders on the PoS networks. Read this all-encompassing industry deep-dive and get acquainted with the main PoS concepts.
- Liquid Staking Research Report Draft v4 was prepared by Chorus One with contributions from the Liquid Staking Working Group and supported through funding by the Interchain Foundation. They are progressing on the report and will finalize it very soon.
- Our Network: Issue #23 covering Chainlink by ChainLinkGod and CryptoSponge
Zooming out and looking at the distribution of LINK payments paid to each active Chainlink node since mainnet launch in May 2019 gives some interesting information on the evolution of the Chainlink network. The first observation is that the network has been continually decentralizing over time. First only beginning with three nodes (Chainlink team, LinkPool, and Fiews), the network has since grown to over 30 active nodes, a 10x increase in decentralization.
The overall percentage of LINK payments paid to the Chainlink core team’s node has also drastically lowered over time. Initially beginning at 33.33% of the total daily payments, it has since lowered to only 1.34%. Additionally payments have become more variable in the last third of the chart due to the transition to a deviation based schedule. Additionally, notice how each node is paid differently, this is due to the fact that not every Chainlink node is not equal in quality and thus do not serve the same amount of oracle networks.
- Messari states: Coinbase has earned almost $900k from its 25% fee since making $XTZ rewards available to US customers
What’s more, the underlying concern for tezos is that the increased demand for exchange-based staking services will give these entities too much control over the supply and governance decisions. Coinbase, alongside Kraken and Binance, have already amassed a significant share of XTZ supply. See post.
As the next step, Coinbase launches staking rewards for customers in the UK, France, Spain and The Netherlands.
The Future of Staking Podcast Series focuses on what is expected to see grow as important products and new ideas circulating in the Proof of Stake ecosystem in 2020 and beyond. Last time they chatted with Doug Petkanics and Yondon Fu of Livepeer about recent changes in Livepeer’s governance model. Livepeer’s mission is to “build the world’s open video infrastructure” by offering highly scalable, low cost, and decentralized video transcoding via peer to peer infrastructure built on the Ethereum blockchain.
- DApps and Blockchains in the Cosmos Ecosystem by Gisele Schout of Stakin
Cosmos Ecosystem is taking things a step further, aiming to be the first “Internet of Blockchains.” And now, a couple of years later, many different blockchains and DApps are happily building upon the system. In this article, she is taking you through the many blockchains and DApps that are built on the Cosmos Ecosystem.
In this episode, Felix is joined by Jordan Bibla. CEO and Co-Founder of Lunie, to discuss the crypto wallet and staking ecosystems. The episode begins going into the background of Lunie and the products the team has built (web and mobile apps, as well as a browser extension). Felix and Jordan explore UX difficulties in staking networks, how newly launching networks should go about building communities, protocol governance, and insights from developing one of the most used wallets focused on staking. The second part of the episode dives into Lunie’s upcoming freemium notification feature and Jordan shares his views on the most important developments in the blockchain ecosystem.
Live Networks Updates
Web3 Foundation launched the initial version of Polkadot, a sharded protocol that allows decentralized blockchain networks to operate together, seamlessly and at scale. Polkadot gives peer-to-peer applications, organizations, businesses, economies — entire digital societies — the agency required to form, grow, govern themselves, and interact without the need for the centralized institutions. Polkadot’s highly-anticipated release follows three years of development work. The launch builds on the success of Kusama canary network release in 2019. During the initial phase, Web3 Foundation will retain superuser control of the network via a “Sudo module.” This period will allow the Foundation and Parity Technologies to execute critical logic and security audits and calibrate final aspects of the network. Independent teams of security auditors will continue working to identify and rectify any vulnerabilities.
- It’s official: Celo Mainnet is here — Celo Gold transfers enabled via on-chain governance
Release Candidate 1 that was launched on Earth Day, April 22, is officially Mainnet! Two and a half years in the making, this milestone enables Celo Gold transfers — solidifying the value of the Celo network. It was made possible because of the commitment, passion, expertise, and engagement of over 100 independent validators around the world. Watch more in Celo official video! Anticipated next steps for the Celo Platform include: bringing off-chain prices for Celo Gold on-chain through a series of Oracles, Celo Dollars going live, and finally, Mainnet release of the Celo Wallet. By the way, Celo is now officially listed on Staking Rewards!
- An Overview of Governance on Celo by Felix Lutsch of Chorus One
Celo is an open platform seeking to give access to decentralized financial tools to anyone with a mobile phone. Part of that vision is a sophisticated on-chain governance process that decentralizes power over protocol features and parameters, including Celo’s stablecoin stability mechanism. The article above provides an overview of the currently implemented governance mechanism that was already used to activate transfers and staking rewards on the network.
THETA.tv, the next-generation esports video platform powered by Theta blockchain, has finalized a commercial licensing agreement with MGM Studios for rights to stream classic movies from MGM’s venerable film library throughout the summer of 2020. This partnership enables THETA.tv users throughout North America to ‘stay-at-home’ this June and July and enjoy a series of ‘MGM Movie Night’ events .As always, these MGM movies on THETA.tv are powered by Theta’s innovative blockchain, which lets users earn TFUEL rewards for sharing their video stream with others in the network, peer-to-peer, decentralized.
Google is teaming up with Theta Labs in a move meant to help the video delivery network onboard users through Google Cloud. Google will become the protocol’s fifth external validator node. (Here’s the node producing blocks on the chain). Theta Labs is staking 5 million THETA tokens (worth about $2.4 million at a press-time price of $0.48 each) for Google on the network.
BTG Pactual announced that it has officially issued its ReitBZ token on the Tezos blockchain, successfully executing on the firm’s July announcement that it would use Tezos for future digital asset offerings. This is the first non-Ethereum issuance of the Brazilian real estate-backed token, a major validation of the Tezos protocol’s suitability for high-value digital asset applications.
French startup Digycode has added Tezos to its assortment of crypto prepaid vouchers. Users can buy the vouchers in over 10,000 retail shops across France. Customers still need to undergo KYC procedures to redeem their crypto.
- Tezos public node infrastructure was a huge success this week — Tezos Giga Node served:
- 14 000 000+ requests (2 mil per day on average);
- 1700+ unique connections;
- 150 GiB in traffic volumes;
- with 97.67 ms response time on average
In an announcement on May 19, Bitcoin Suisse — which custodies over $1 billion in assets — revealed it was going live with XTZ delegation and custody support using its Bitcoin Suisse Vault, which completed an ISAE 3402 audit by PwC last fall. Bitcoin Suisses has supported XTZ staking services for its clients since July 2018, though not yet using its PwC-audited high-security vault. The broker says that increasing numbers of institutional and professional investors are coming to consider the benefits of crypto assets and crypto financial products, including the possibilities of staking.
Bayer China revealed in an interview Thursday it had chosen VeChain as a tech provider for a new blockchain-powered solution that will allow the firm — a branch of Bayer — to track clinical drugs across the supply chain. Known as “CSecure,” the system loads a batch number relating to a specific drug onto the blockchain. VeChain won the right to work with Bayer China in a competition back in 2019, after it proposed the company consider implementing a blockchain-based supply chain solution.
IOST and TokenPocket officially published the wallet guide “From Zero to One/Beginner to IOST wallet”, also known as “IOST Wallet Whitepaper”, to help all users to get started with IOST wallet and to understand all aspects of the IOST mainnet accounts.
- Weekly ICON Network statistics were shared:
Since the end of Phase 1 of Game of Zones, GoZ team has been busy crunching the performance data. Early on in this process, it became clear that naming a single winner for Phase 1a and Phase 1b would be a herculean task, and that this format would not allow them to recognize all of the teams who delivered an outstanding performance in spite of an immensely challenging, unstable environment. In this post they announced an increase in the prize pool for Phase 1*, and named the winners for both Phase 1a and Phase 1b of Game of Zones.
[Network]
- Effective rewards rate is 8.92% (know the difference between inflation & rewards)
- May 27 reported inflation bottomed out at 7.00%, but it’s effectively 6.41% (why?)
- May 27 Community Pool balance: ~365.7k ATOM (increasing by 27k ATOM per month)
- Gov Prop25 passed (Proposal for 25k ATOM for CosmWasm smart contracts)
- Gov Prop26 needs 37% for quorum (Proposal for 10k ATOM in exchange for CYB tokens)
- validator voting power is fairly stable (decentralizing slightly)
[Staking & Community Pool]
- Daily Cosmos Outpost, May 28 — Inflation 7.0% Bonded 70.5%
Coinbase Custody clients now have the ability to use their Cosmos assets to earn rewards through staking without having to put their funds at risk.
With its mature tooling and existing integration with the Cosmos ecosystem and SDK, the CosmWasm smart contracting platform will open the doors for a substantially increased development environment for the Terra blockchain. In step with adoption milestones made in the payments realm, Terra will now have the functional capacity to support general-purpose smart contracts that can be run on multiple chains through Cosmos’ IBC protocol. This partnership and integration present an enormous step forward for the exciting plethora of applications that can now be built on Terra.
NEAR’s MainNet recently launched into its first phase, called “POA” (see full roadmap). This means that a small handful of validating nodes are currently being run by the core team. In order to progress to the next phase, “MainNet: Restricted”, the operation of the network will be handed off to a large group of node operators called validators. The goal of Stake Wars: Episode II is to onboard those validators, test the stability of the system and begin introducing some of the unique aspects of NEAR’s delegation system in preparation for the next phase of MainNet itself. This post discusses the unique features of validation and delegation on NEAR, show how Stake Wars: Episode II will work and describe the rewards for successful participation.
Centrifuge Chain is an open and permissionless Proof-of-Stake blockchain built on Substrate. This is the starting point for originating real-world assets. It enables users to bring their assets on-chain as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). NFTs are easily bridged to Ethereum from day one. The chain is powered by the Radial token, which empowers its holder with governance and provides the incentive for validators to operate it. They are proud to launch with over 10 validators securing the chain. Learn more in the article above.
RenVM is an sMPC based decentralized custodian that fluidly mints and burns digital assets 1:1 on Ethereum as ERC20s. This means you can now use real BTC, BCH, and ZEC in any DeFi app.
On May 15, the first release of tBTC went live. On the morning of May 18, the Keep team decided to trigger the 10-day pause of deposits allowed by the TBTC System contract. The team took this action after identifying a significant issue in the redemption flow of deposit contracts that could put signer bonds at risk. No depositor funds were ever at risk, and all funds are safe.
Security is a continuous process, but immutable smart contracts are deployed once. Thus, they decided to shift to a release candidate strategy. Release candidates are versions of software that a development team believes are “ready for prime time”- but may or may not be final, based on wider user feedback. Release candidates progress from 0, to 1, to 2, onward- until a candidate is deemed final and upgraded to the stable release. The use of designated release candidates has a long precedent in open-source software, and was recently demonstrated successfully in the cryptocurrency space by the Celo team. The initial tBTC release, which they now call rc.0, was found to have a vulnerability — leading to the pause of new deposits. For the foreseeable future, the dApp built atop rc.1 will remain in alpha.
Upcoming Networks Updates
A shortlist of upcoming events and important development milestones you should know about. PoS networks make up the majority!
- ICO Analytics also reported 10 most anticipated Proof of Stake networks based on the number of independent staking providers ready to support the launch of staking. The data is from the publicly available lists from staking providers websites. 35 staking providers were analyzed.
Acala — had closed recently private sale round with the participation of Polychain Capital, SNZ Holding and Hashkey. 7% of the total supply reserved for IEO.
Plasm Network will distribute 85% of total supply during several LockDrop activities.
Phala Network just started its StakeDrop event and will be distributing 9% of total supply to the public through StakeDrop and 70% through mining activities.
Centrifuge PoS blockchain is expected to lunch during this quarter without any details on public coin distribution.
Substrate based (Polkadot ecosystem) tokens pumping before the preliminary release of Polkadot. DOT tokens will not be transferable at launch but holders will be able to initiate the first validator election.
Band Protocol is officially launching the public Mainnet of BandChain Phase 0 (Wenchang) at 2:00 PM UTC on June 10th, 2020. The Genesis Ceremony will enable token transactions and staking.
The upcoming mainnet launch of BandChain is the second iteration of Band Protocol — a cross-chain data oracle platform that aggregates and connects real-world data/APIs to smart contracts in real-time.
- Add support for cross-program invocations that allow on-chain programs to issue synchronous processed instructions to other programs.
- Optimistic confirmation
- Add support for program signing with program derived addresses
The $40b market cap multinational IT corporation will be running a validator node on the Matic mainnet, helping to ensure a secure and robust platform for the growing ecosystem of DApps.
Charles Hoskinson revealed Cardano’s next mainnet iteration, the long-awaited Shelley, could launch as soon as Jul. 29. Shelley will introduce the project’s proposed PoS consensus layer. The upgrade also marks a notable step forward on the path towards decentralization as the current mainnet operated as a federated network managed primarily by the Cardano Foundation. The full rollout of Shelley could take a month to reach completion. Cardano plans to release a Shelley mainnet candidate chain around Jun. 23 before releasing the code to mainnet on the Jun. 30 target date. The official hard fork that will activate Shelley’s changes could arrive on Jul. 29, which would give network participants enough time to upgrade their nodes and wallets. According to the roadmap, Cardano will begin paying out staking rewards around Aug. 18.
- Ocean Protocol has released V2 of its protocol. With the v2 Compute-to-Data release, Ocean Protocol provides a means to exchange data while preserving privacy. According to the roadmap, staking will be available in Q3 2020.
Staking Provider Updates
The most widespread assets among staking providers are Cosmos, IRIS, Kava, and Tezos. Staking fee ranges from 0 to 50%. 0% fee provided by the Staking platform for staking Cosmos and Icon. While the highest fee (50%) is taken by InfStones for staking Aion. Data was taken from Staking Rewards. Digital assets exchanges were not added to the list.
Launching with 7 initial partners, this program highlights the professional-grade node infrastructure providers whose endpoints they will be utilizing to power Lunie network integrations. All of the following providers are also validators on the networks they support and also have a track-record of being reliable and highly engaged members of the staking community. Among those are: Stake.fish, Figment Networks, Forbole, Cryptium Labs, P2P Validator, Chainflow, and Staking Facilities.
Considering the fact that the Tezos has changed dramatically in the past year, Everstake team decided to roll out some new changes that many community members will find useful. They create the second baker in order to improve the security measures, while allowing their members who staked with them to have better risk management on their XTZ portfolios. Furthermore, by deploying an additional baker they can increase the stability of the service by two-fold and contribute to the network decentralization. Besides, infrastructure changes users who choose new Everstake baker will have an opportunity to decrease their fees from 8% to 5% by redelegating their Tezos tokens from the old address to the new one.
- Everstake Weekly Update Recap (May 18, 2020) & (May 25, 2020) — In this weekly recap they cover the most important news related to the major Proof-of-Stake blockchain networks, so have some time to discover something new for yourself.
- Staking Economy #39: Governance Gating by Chorus One
Staking Economy is written by Felix Lutsch from Chorus One with assistance from Chris Remus, operator of the Chainflow validators. This time, they highlighted permissioned smart contracts for the Cosmos Hub, Blockdaemon Node-as-a-Service $5.5m Raise, Harmony Staking, Matic Mainnet roadmap, and delegation explainer, and a lot more! Check the link above for more industry news!
When a user deposits into the Rocket Pool network, they will instantly receive the rETH token which represents a tokenised staking deposit and the rewards it gains over time in the Rocket Pool network.
This token does not need to be locked within the network to gain rewards and it can be traded, sold or held as the user desires, all from the moment they deposit ETH for staking. This token can instantly be used in DeFi apps and allows DEXs, wallets the ability to offer instant staking services.
Importantly, this token also provides Rocket Pool users with liquidity over Phases 0 and 1 of the ETH2 rollout, in which any staking deposit is locked. When smart contracts are natively enabled on ETH2 during Phase 2, a smart contract will be deployed that will allow users with the rETH token to burn it for ETH.
PoS Round-Up is Stake.fish focused biweekly report on the major news in and around the Proof of Stake ecosystem. With mainnet releases of the NEAR and Celo networks and the long-awaited launch of the Polkadot network, it’s been an exciting few weeks for the Proof of Stake ecosystem!
- Seeking Yield by Staked — This is the sixty-sixth issue of Seeking Yield by Staked, a weekly update about the most interesting things happening in crypto-asset staking and lending.
- Stakin Bi-Weekly Newsletter Vol. 3 highlighting major industry news.
Upcoming Staking Events
- 11th May — 31st August 2020 — Code with Us online series by Cosmos
- 2nd June 2020 — Cosmos Unchained: Cosmos vs Tezos. In this live meetup join Chjango Unchained, Sunny Aggarwal, Arthur Breitman and Kathleen Breitman to discuss the differences between Cosmos and Tezos.
- 4th June 2020 — Virtual AMA with Charlie Smith of Reserve Protocol
- 4th June 2020 — AVA Labs AMA Session, Staking Hub Telegram
- 4th June 2020 — Chainlink Amsterdam Virtual Meetup
- 10th June 2020 — Aave and Chainlink Developer Meetup
- 14th June 2020 — Cardano UnConference Online June 2020
- 17th June 2020 — Cardano Shelley Upcoming Release Virtual Meetup
- TBA — Liquid Staking Working Group Call. Join their Telegram not to miss the announcement.
Citadel Updates
Citadel is a multi-asset non-custodial platform for the management and storage of crypto assets established by Paradigm Fund. One of the main functions of the service is participating in the PoS consensus. The platform allows you to delegate crypto assets, analyze market conditions and transaction status, as well as create several cryptocurrency wallets using a single seed phrase. Moreover, the software part is configured so that all private keys are stored encrypted on your device. Currently, the Citadel project is under development.
According to the last biweekly update:
The Citadel project is under development. The team is operating extremely hard on the major releases as a very significant milestone is about to happen. Ledger integration for ICON and ERC20 tokens coming soon as well as the launch of the stable version of Citadel 1.0! The good news is, the Citadel team was replenished with a quality assurance specialist to improve the quality of the product.
We never cease to wonder at the progress the team has made in recent days! According to the recent Citadel development report, the service works much faster and more stable than before. The initial task of fully deploying the system on a single server without intermediaries has been completed. As for additional back-end tasks, transactions can now be filtered by the types “Sent“, “Received“ and “Transaction error“. As for front-end tasks, algorithms for many wallets, import and export for Tezos, ICON, IOST, and Ethereum (Orbs) have been improved. Tezos was integrated. A fancy panel loader was made. The settings page was modified. In analytics, you can now quickly see the QR code of the wallet. The list of nodes for staking was grouped into categories, the ability to collapse charts was added.
As for the social side, The Citadel team regularly attends community events. Last week, they were at Liquid Staking Working Group call, on IBC ecosystem working group call and the Ethereal Virtual Summit. Also, these weeks, the Citadel team presented roadmap paper for ICON, one of the largest blockchain networks, which decentralized network allows independent blockchains with different governances to transact with one another without intermediaries.
- Citadel development team has deployed a node on Ethereum 2.0 — A first step towards integrating Ethereum into Citadel application.
- Paradigm Citadel P-Rep: ICON ROADMAP 2019–2021
Learn more about Citadel:
- Check the recent biweekly updates on PoS Networks, created by Paradigm Fund:
- Check the Staking Rewards Journal and subscribe to their Newsletter to stay informed!
