State of Stake vol. 43

Paradigm

Published in

Paradigm

13 min readFeb 17, 2021

Paradigm’s biweekly update on Proof-of-Stake ecosystem, 5th February — 17th February

TL;DR

Ethereum 2.0 updates
Tezos Edo major upgrade
The Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge (AEB) is live
Cosmos Stargate tomorrow on February 18th
IRISnet Mainnet 1.0 upgrade is expected to happen on February 25th
Secret’s first AMM, SecretSwap, launches on mainnet today, on February 17th
Bluzelle to launch incentivised liquidity pool on Uniswap
Injective’s Equinox staking: public validator onboarding begins
COTI Staking 3.0 application is now open
Matic Network has rebranded to Polygon
The Graph is launching on Polygon
Synthetix raises $12 million
Oasis Network milestones
Celo introduced Valora
Binance joins ICON P-Rep
‘Top 10 Staking Networks launching in 2021’ by Staking Rewards
And more!

Global Market Overview

The current Staking Market Cap (valuation of all projects that have a staking mechanism) is now about $364.2 billion while two weeks ago it was $308.1 billion USD.

Over the last two weeks, POS Dominance decreased from 64.6% to 61.6%.

Now, the leading projects by locked in staking are Polkadot, Cardano, Avalanche, Algorand, Ethereum, Cosmos, Tezos, and Synthetix.

Current Value in Staking by Asset

Proof-of-Stake Networks’ Updates

Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum 2.0 is up and running smoothly! With more than 90,000 active validators and thousands more queued up and waiting to join the network, the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain is looking as healthy as ever.
What’s New in Eth2–13 February 2021: An editorial on how Ethereum will scale, Beacon Chain updates, tooling updates and more in this week’s eth2 update from Ben.
Eth2 Quick Update №22: Updates on the eth2 workshop, eth1+eth2 merge and sharding in this very quick update from Danny Ryan.
Advocates of EIP-1559 are rallying behind the proposal, which aims to address several recurring issues with the network, including congestion.
Latest Eth2 call. Notes from Ben and Alex, discussion of what goes in the first network upgrade.
1 million in staking community grants from Ethereum Foundation.
Adrian Sutton’s hard truths for Ethereum stakers.
Scaling Ethereum Announced: Scaling Ethereum is an online ETHGlobal hackathon dedicated to building the tooling and protocol to make scalability happen on Ethereum. The event will be held from April 9th to May 14th.
Latest ‘Week in Ethereum’:

Check out our recently-published ‘Defi in Ether’ — biweekly update on Ethereum DeFi ecosystem vol.24 full of news from the ecosystem: >$40B in DeFi, CME ETH futures are here, RenBridge 2 is live, Omen launching on xDai, 1inchExchange just did another 1INCH airdrop, UMA KPI options announced, MCDEX v3 soon, St. Louis Fed DeFi report, and more!

Polkadot

Polkadot Decoded has something for all members of the community, from the big picture to tech deep dives. Got something you want to share at the next Polkadot Decoded in May? See the submission criteria here.
Latest Polkadot Digest:

Avalanche

The Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge (AEB) is now live, enabling DeFi users to seamlessly move assets like WBTC, AAVE, UNI, and LINK between the two ecosystems, manage exposure to high fees, and build without limits.
Preliminary Analysis of the Invalid Minting Bug
Axelar Expanding its Cross-Chain Communication Network to Connect Avalanche with Other Avalanche (AVAX) Listed on Bitpanda
Copper integrates Avalanche to bolster institutional-grade storage and trading security for AVAX
Velox Brings Decentralized High Frequency Trading to Avalanche
Pangolin: A Community-Driven DEX for Avalanche and Ethereum Assets

Last week in AVAX:

Algorand

BRZ launches on Algorand blockchain: Transfero announces that BRZ — the Brazilian Real-backed stablecoin created by the company — is officially available on Algorand. With that, Algorand becomes the third blockchain that the Brazilian cryptocurrency is integrated with, helping to expand the use cases for BRZ across a broad range of payments and financial applications.
Stablecoin Use Accelerates on Algorand with Exchange Support that Provides Mainstream Community Access: Marking a major milestone for stablecoin accessibility, the Algorand Foundation is excited to see several leading exchanges announce their support for USDT and USDC, the two most widely used stablecoins, on Algorand.
Stablecoin Use Cases on Algorand: Here’s What’s Possible: As the leading scalable, secure, and fully decentralized blockchain network that provides instant transaction finality, Algorand’s innovative design has attracted many market-leading stablecoins, including the two market-leaders, USDT and USDC.
An Introduction to Stablecoins for Banks and Fintechs: Learn what stablecoins are, how they provide price-stability to the crypto markets, and why leading stablecoin issuers choose Algorand.
Smart Contracts in Finance: A Guide for Financial Institutions and Fintechs: Smart contracts are poised to play an essential part in the future of frictionless finance. Learn about smart contracts in finance in this guide.
Report: Issuing Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC): Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) could represent the most exciting innovation seen in central banking in many decades. Several economic & technology experts have come together to create this CBDC paper, in an effort to educate public leaders facing the reality of a new digital economy.

Tezos

Tezos Blockchain’s Fast Pace of Evolution Delivers New Features with ‘Edo’ Upgrade: Over the weekend, Tezos underwent a major upgrade: Edo. Two of the main additions are Sapling, a protocol enabling privacy-preserving transactions; and Tickets, which provide composable permissions to enable secure smart contract interactions.
Tezos Community Reward Winners — January 2021
Latest Tezos weekly:

Synthetix

Synthetix Bellatrix release now live: A bunch of improvements with this release including new crypto synths, shorting rewards and more.
Synthetix raises $12 million: Synthetix announced a $12 million dollar fundraise led by venture capital firms Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and IOSG. The funds purchased SNX tokens directly from the DAO treasury.
In line with SCCP-77, the s/iDEFI index will be reweighted with a new composition of assets. It will be launched this week.
How to short using Synthetix: As of the end of 2020, there is a new shorting mechanism live on Synthetix.

Cardano

Native tokens to bring new utility to life on Cardano: Users will soon be able to create their own on-chain tokens for transactions on Cardano
Cardano Foundation CEO says blockchain could prevent GME-type showdowns: Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, believes that a blockchain infrastructure for capital markets would make controversial top-down interventions unnecessary.
Our million-dollar baby: Project Catalyst: The next Catalyst funding round will be our most accessible and ambitious round of funding yet.
How can Cardano brings trust back into financial markets with blockchain?

Cosmos Network

IBC is coming: If everything goes according to plan, the Stargate upgrade will hit the Cosmos Hub tomorrow, on February 18th, 6AM UTC!
Demystifying Ethermint: What is Ethermint?
Setup your frontend application / NodeJS Application with Gaia v4.0.0: With Gaia v4.0.0 many things have changed for service applications.
ICF UX Working Group Meeting Recap
ICF Update — Feb 11th: EthDenver Interoperability Panel; WenChang launched by Bianjie on BSN; Confio begins work on TypeScript Relayer; UX Working Group Updates; and more!
HackAtom RU 2021 — buckle up Cosmonauts, we have no problems and are ready for takeoff!: HackAtom RU 2021 is awaiting your hacks! Register now at: https://hackatom-ru.devpost.com/
Latest ‘Today in Cosmos’:

Weekend in Cosmos:

Check out our latest biweekly update on Cosmos ecosystem vol. 41 covering the following topics: IBC is coming to Cosmos Hub in T-8 days, Tendermint Core’s 1.0 roadmap, Starport v0.14, ‘UniFi DAO Demo Day’ videos are here, Bluzelle mainnet launches, Matic becomes Polygon, Oracle & Mastercard team up, Regen to help Microsoft, BSC flipped Ethereum on daily transactions, THORChain multichain testnet is live, IRISnet mainnet 1.0 upgrade on Feb 25, and more!

Celo

cLabs, the team behind Celo, has announced the launch of Valora, a mobile peer-to-peer payments app.
Celo Camp is back: Applications for Batch 3 are now open
Building on Celo during your next Hackathon

IRIS Network

IRISnet Mainnet 1.0 Upgrade Announcement: IRISnet Mainnet 1.0 upgrade is expected to happen on February 25th
IRISnet Monthly Update: 2021.01 — Community & Technical Recap
The Tenth Implementation of the Community-centric Delegation Campaign & the Second One-year Token Burn Plan

Terra

January 2021 Community Update
Terra v.1.1.3 on Ledger has been publicly released:

Secret Network

SecretSwap Update: AMM Rewards + Governance Token: Secret’s first AMM, SecretSwap, launches on mainnet February 17th. Learn more about rewards, a new native bridged governance token, and other details.
Announcing the Secret Network Grant Program: Secret Network is growing fast — now you can grow with them. Come build Secret Apps, network improvements, and ecosystem tools, and receive grants for your efforts.
Get Secrets: Bridge Mining Extended, SushiSwap Rewards, and SecretSwap: Want to support blockchain privacy while earning rewards? The team announces new initiatives for participants in Secret DeFi on both Secret Network and Ethereum.
secretnodes.com Tax Reporting Feature: The secretnodes.com team has released a new tax reporting feature in beta, just in time for tax season! Learn more on the Secret Blog.
Secret Network Ecosystem Update: January 2021: January 2021 was a month of substantial growth for the Secret Ethereum Bridge ($40M TVL!) leading up to the launch of Secret DeFi — and much more.

Band Protocol

Bluzelle

Bluzelle to Launch Incentivised Liquidity Pool on Uniswap: 1 MILLION BLZ reward + trading fees to be earned, directly via Bluzelle’s staking page.
How Bluzelle Works with Polkadot

Kava Labs

HARD “Money Market Madness” Competition Tutorial: Learn how to earn $HARD and win $25,000

Kira Network

KIRA & Binance Smart Chain (BSC) Integration: Stake your BNB on KIRA Network or any token issued on the BSC and yield-farm at the same time.

Injective

Equinox Staking: Public Validator Onboarding Begins
Injective Partners with Marlin to Enable Unmatched Trading Speeds: The team has entered into a strategic partnership with Marlin in order to enable truly unparalleled trading speeds on their derivatives DEX.
Injective Becomes the First Cross-Chain DEX to Integrate with Huobi ECO Chain: Injective is integrating with Huobi Eco Chain to accelerate cross-chain derivatives adoption.
Injective is Partnering with Covalent to Bolster Our On-Chain Data Analytics
Clover Finance is Partnering with Injective to Enable Unparalleled Access to Polkadot-based Derivatives

Polygon (previously Matic)

Matic Network has rebranded to “Polygon — Ethereum’s Internet of Blockchains” and updated its mission statement, describing itself as “the first well-structured, easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development.”

Persistence

Community Newsletter #4 — January 2021

Akash Network

Akash DeCloud: Mainnet 2 Teaser

Oasis Network

StaFi

StaFi’s latest collaborations:

Near Protocol

xDai

xDai Weekly Recap — 12/02/2021 focuses on new projects and project updates on xDai, the latest on POSDAO staking, news & more.
Bridge Protocol is available on xDai
Unifty.io xDai ethereum NFT erc1155 bridge is live.

Elrond

Icon

-57% of the circulating supply remains staked vs. 54.8% at the June 2019

-Binance joins the ICX ecosystem as a P-Rep and adds staking service to exchange

-ICONFi launches earn support for stablecoin USDC, and quickly accumulates over $15 million in AUM

-ICONPLUS partners with Hashoshi to provide ongoing updates of the ICONProject

-ICONRepublic gets a redesign. Check out the sneak peek here.

-MyIconWallet will be the recommended wallet for the Community as ICON endorses ReliantNode

-NFT activity is picking up on ICX

-Monthly AMAs are still coming

IOST

COTI

Staking 3.0 Application is Now Open: The team announces the application opening for COTI’s Staking 3.0 program.
Crypto Volatility Index ($GOVI) — Roadmap

Zilliqa

Zilliqa Monthly Newsletter — January 2021

Orbs

Orbs Update February 2021

Filecoin

The Future of DeFi with Filecoin: The Ethereum DeFi ecosystem is interoperating with Filecoin to supercharge the future of DeFi.
Tracking 78 Days of the US Presidential Election on Filecoin: The Starling Framework and Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative launch a photo archive documenting November 2020 to January 2021.
The Future of DataDAOs: Filecoin’s role in expanding the potential of DAOs within the DeFi ecosystem and beyond.

Check out our brand new report on the IPFS ecosystem. Vol.1 covers: Brave Integrates IPFS, js-IPFS 0.54.0 release, January meetup, ETHDenver is here, The Clay testnet is live, Welcome Venus to the Filecoin mainnet, The Graph evaluates integrating additional L1 blockchains, The Space SDK library is out, 2 wave of Humanode Alpha tests, Unstoppable Domains’ IPFS Innovation Grant program, and more!

Second issue tomorrow!

The Graph

The Graph expands to Layer 2 Blockchains and Brings Indexed Open Data to Polygon: The Graph expands to L2 side chains and adds Indexing and Querying Support for Polygon, formerly Matic Network, who have over 200k users and 90 applications.

Upcoming Events

Mar 5 — Financial Cryptography DeFi academic workshop
Mar 23th-24th, 2021 — TOKEN2049
Apr 9 — May 14 — ETHGlobal’s Scaling Ethereum hackathon
May 14 — papers due for WoSCA 2021
Jul 20–22 — EthCC4 (Paris)

Major upcoming events by CryptoDIffer:

MISC

Top 10 Staking Networks launching in 2021 by Staking Rewards.
Three of the stakefish team members⁠ — Protocol Specialist DanielHwang, Head of Strategy & Operations JK, and Founder Chun Wang⁠ — gave talks during the ETHDenver event.