Hi there,
Thanks to the rebound in cryptocurrency USD prices, the global staked value of cryptocurrency grew 10.96% in the past week. The main reasons cited for the past week’s growth were a rebound in global risk assets, intensification of the Ukrainian war (pushing deficits and commodities higher), and the successful merging of the Kiln testnet onto Ethereum 2.0’s Beacon Chain (a major milestone in Ethereum’s Proof of Stake upgrade, scheduled to take effect this June, which is expected to increase ETH’s staking rewards by 2-3x over the current 4.5% staking yield).
On a coin-specific basis, Avalanche saw by far the biggest inflows headed into the Avalanche Summit, where investors expect to see some of the most exciting new AVAX projects debut. The largest outflow, interestingly, was Terra (LUNA). Because the Terra stablecoin (UST) — the key driver of LUNA’s price — has seen very strong inflows recently, we believe the LUNA un-staking was not related to Terra outflows, but rather the sale of staked LUNA to either build up the Luna Foundation Guard currency reserve, or rotate into other Terra-native tokens such as Anchor (ANC) and Astroport (ASTRO).
Starting with this newsletter we are excited to partner with a former hedge fund portfolio manager, who turned full-time crypto and just joined the Staking Rewards team. He can be found writing online as Recovering TradFi Chad. We’re going to meaningfully upgrade the newsletter’s content over the next several weeks, doing deep-dives into major industry catalysts such as the ETH Merge.
Our goal is to shed light on how those catalysts may affect supply, demand, and staking yields for major crypto-assets, and use quantitative research to help our readers make better-informed crypto investing decisions.
Stay tuned for a significant upgrade of newsletter content over the next several weeks!
Meanwhile make sure to check out the latest news in the staking industry as below.
All the best,
Mirko & Recovering TradFi Chad
Staking News
Paradigm and a16z back Ethereum scaling startup Optimism at $1.65B valuation
Ethereum scaling solution Optimism has raised $150 million in a Series B funding round co-led by top crypto investors Paradigm and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) at a $1.65 billion valuation. The funding will largely go toward hiring, according to a Medium post from the company. Read Techcrunch Article
More than 2M ETH already burned
As a result of EIP-1559, over $6 billion worth of ETH has already been burned. Implemented in the London hard fork, EIP-1559 was just one of several updates made to the network. Alongside the London Hard Fork, Ethereum is also inching towards its most comprehensive upgrade yet, the shift to Ethereum 2.0.
Bitcoin miners do not sell
According to Arcane Research, most public bitcoin miners are eager to keep as much bitcoin as they can. Why do they pursue this balance sheet strategy, and which miners hodl the most bitcoin? Read Twitter Thread
Instagram is launching NFTs, Mark Zuckerberg confirms at SXSW
Instagram will integrate NFTs into the platform, but it’s unclear what this looks like in the near term. The news confirms previous reports and speculations that Meta is moving closer to its proposed ‘metaverse’ goal. Read The Block Article
Taiwan’s largest crypto exchange eyes $400 million valuation and potential IPO
MaiCoin is reportedly raising a Series C funding round that could value it at $400 million. A report by Bloomberg on Friday indicated that the company is considering joining fellow exchange Coinbase in going public on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the US within two years. Read The Block Article
The launch of ApeCoin DAO – Flowing Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem
It was announced members of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection would be getting their very own cryptocurrency. ApeCoin is explicitly linked to these famously pricey non-fungible tokens, and holders can stake them in the ApeCoin DAO to earn staking rewards. Read Decrypt News
Aave V3 Heads to Ethereum Layer 2, Fantom, Avalanche
Aave launched its V3 update last week. The upgrade will initially be deployed on Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Harmony with Ethereum to follow in the future. Read Cryptobriefing Article
Staking Assets
Nansen Adds Terra for On-Chain Analytics as Home of LUNA Grows as DeFi Hub
Popular wallet profiler and analytics platform Nansen announced on Thursday that it has expanded its coverage to Terra, now the sixth blockchain the service analyzes. Read Coindesk Article
Cøsmos Network: Theta upgrade is live on the testnet
The Cosmos Hub v7-Theta upgrade is coming this April. As per the Cosmos Hub roadmap, this release includes Cosmos SDK v0.45.1, the exciting new Interchain Account Module, an upgraded Gravity DEX, IBC v3.0.0, and many performance improvements. Read Medium Article
Juno Network DAO Voted to Revoke a Whale’s Tokens
Last week, Juno Network, a Cosmos-based blockchain, was faced with a rather controversial decision. The Governance Proposal 16 to dramatically shrink one whale’s JUNO holdings passed, adding more nuance to the power of a DAO. Read Decrypt Article
Anchor Protocol is now live on Avalanche – 1 year after launch on Terra
One of the largest DeFi protocols, Anchor Protocol, has expanded to Avalanche. Now it will be possible for users to deposit their UST there and get the 19.3% yield. In addition, sAVAX can soon be deposited as collateral. Read Twitter Thread
Staking Providers
Liquid Staking is Booming
Juan Pellicer provides an overview of the current state of liquid staking and its yield opportunities. He also elaborates on Osmosis’ superfluid concept. Read Medium Article
stETH reserve size on Aave now exceeds $1 billion
Lido Finance’s stETH is now the fourth most supplied asset on Aave. In just a few weeks, over $1 billion in liquid staked ETH has been deposited.See on Aave
Lido’s stETH has a 25% share of all staked ETH and 87% of staking derivatives Lido continues to represent the largest share of staked ETH. They are on track to control 50%+ of all staked ETH. But does this dominance also pose a problem? Read Twitter Thread
What’s new on Staking Rewards?
👀 New Staking Rewards Research Tutorial
An in-depth look into Voyager Digital, the world’s first publicly traded crypto-asset broker
✅ Team behind @investvoyager
✅ How to earn up to 12% on your Crypto
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🚀 New Integration for Comdex is now live
Comdex is a decentralized synthetics protocol built on the Cosmos SDK.
💰 Reward Rate: 41.5%
💪 Participating: 67.09 %
📊 Staked Value: $115.4m
Check out Comdex asset profile
🎥 New Staking Mondays Episode
We welcome Federico Kunze Küllmer, Co-Founder of Evmos $EVMOS to the show📺
Watch the full episode here! For all Staking Monday’s episodes, watch on YouTube and listen on Spotify. Make sure to subscribe to keep up to date on the latest trends in the staking industry.
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