Theta Hackathon Profile: Runner Up winner SmartStake

The next in our Theta Hackathon profile series is SmartStake, the ultimate NFT staking solution, unmatched in speed, security, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.

SmartStake was born from a desire to provide the Theta community with a staking platform that overcomes the shortcomings in currently available staking solutions. SmartStake’s design elegantly addresses all these issues by using three simple principles:

1) Instead of staking individual NFTs, with SmartStake you stake wallets. All NFTs from the staked collection in the staked wallet(s) automatically generate rewards.

2) Rewards are calculated off-chain, allowing the rewards logic to be changed quickly and easily as needed. A greater range of data can be used in the reward calculations. And rewards can also be calculated far more frequently than on-chain methods, at no cost.

3) Claiming rewards is likewise done on a per-wallet basis. This is the only on-chain transaction in the process. The transaction cost is minimal and does not increase with the number of NFTs staked. Furthermore, by linking wallets one transaction can claim rewards for all linked wallets at once. Again, at no extra cost.

SmartStake was built by the team behind Theta Rarity, a company that provides a variety of NFT related services to community members and creators in the Theta blockchain space. Theta Rarity already provides functionality for user accounts, user authentication and wallet linking. The staking pages build on this functionality by allowing users to stake any of their linked wallets. This has the added benefit of allowing the staking of NFTs in wallets the user doesn’t have direct control over, such as ThetaDrop wallets linked with ThetaPass.

Theta Rarity also runs a guardian node which tracks all NFT movements, so we know where every NFT is at any moment. This makes it relatively straightforward to calculate the rewards for each wallet based on the NFTs in that wallet at any moment. In the current implementation, rewards are accumulated once per hour, though this can easily be changed depending on the requirements of individual collections.

Going forward, SmartStake plans to add an API integration to the staking functionality that will allow creators to integrate SmartStake on their own websites without having to build their own staking infrastructure. The flexibility of the rewards algorithm will ensure that any required functionality could be supported, and creators can focus their efforts on the user experience instead.

Congrats on the win and thank you for your submission!