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. Now weekly! This is our 29th report that 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 20th August – 27th August 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 current Staking Market Cap (valuation of all projects that have staking mechanism) is now about 43,4 billion USD, while a week ago it was nearly 39,7 billion.
Source: stakingrewards.com
PoS Dominance is at its rise, almost reaching a point of 27%. Average reward is currently about 15,3%.
Source: stakingrewards.com
Polkadot surpassed Tezos, Algorand, EOS and Cardano by locked in staking! Previously, the leading projects were Tezos, EOS, Algorand, Cardano and Polkadot accordingly.
Current Value in Staking by Asset
10 most anticipated PoS networks based on the number of independent staking providers ready to support the launch by ICO Analytics
The data is from the publicly available lists on staking providers websites. 40 staking providers were analyzed. PoS networks with not listed coins were analyzed.
Think & Stake
Offline staking allows users to stake their cryptocurrency in an offline wallet and earn staking rewards for doing so. An offline wallet is also known as a hardware wallet or a cold storage wallet, meaning it is not connected to the internet. Staking rewards offer users an opportunity to earn interest on their cryptocurrencies. They don’t necessarily have to operate a validating node under the proof-of-stake consensus model, as will be the case with Ethereum 2.0 staking. It is possible to stake offline against another individual who does operate a node and still earn the rewards. Offline staking operates differently compared to established delegated staking models, which usually require the holder to delegate their cryptocurrency to a select group of validators. Anyone can become a “Super Staker” and stake for their friends without touching their coins. For those that choose to run a super staking node, offline staking presents another unique opportunity: The ability to crowdsource delegations and earn a fee paid directly from the block reward. Learn more with Cointelegraph’s article above!
The Challenge of Taxing Proof-of-Stake
Alongside an overall increase in regulatory attention on crypto generally, PoS protocols are an area of much debate. One question highlighted by a recent letter from several Congresspeople to the IRS is taxes. Specifically, the letter voiced worries about overtaxing staking rewards. Unfortunately, the IRS is really treading in new territory, so it’s not a surprise that they have yet to put together comprehensive guidance on staking rewards. The argument that the recent letter to the IRS depends on is this: If you stake tokens most networks reward you with tokens. Tax authorities like the IRS might be tempted to regard these rewards as income, as if those rewards were returns on a stock investment. That, however, assumes a lot about the stability of token prices on a PoS network, especially given that staking itself limits liquidity, so the staker is not able to respond to short-term price movements. Check more via the link.
Live Networks Updates
IOST Partners RAMP DeFi to Unlock Liquid Capital From Your Staked IOST
At the initial stage, the IOST foundation shall support RAMP in terms of the technical development of smart contracts powering the staking, minting, and liquidation functions, and ensure that these smart contracts are secure for use by the IOST community. With RAMP DeFi’s innovative approach, IOST users can now leverage from the RAMP DEFI platform to unlock liquid capital from staked IOST without giving up their attractive IOST staking rewards.
The Baking Sheet – Issue #25 by Tezos Commons
It delivers news & updates from across the Tezos Ecosystem. This issue features an article “Inspecting Tezos decentralization: 200+ public nodes, 1000+ in total’’; QR Capital – Brazil’s largest crypto hedge fund launching a new Legal Receivables and Precatory Bonds digital asset exchange on the Tezos blockchain and a lot more.
Daily Cosmos Outpost – Inflation 7.0% Bonded 70.2%
DELEGATIONS:
- Delegate: 1,181,025
- Redelegate: 427,044
- Undelegate: 2,291,460
REWARDS: 35,014
Picking Validators to Nominate (Stake) in Polkadot by Bill Laboon, W3F Technical education lead
Upcoming Networks Updates
Major upcoming events by CryptoDIffer
Ethermint v0.1.0 has been released
A scalable, high-throughput PoS blockchain, fully compatible and interoperable with Ethereum. Built with Cosmos SDK and Tendermint is now out.
Medalla Testnet Problems ‘Will Not Delay ETH 2.0’ Says Prysmatic Labs
Prysmatic Labs calls the Medalla testnet incident a “learning experience” and says the launch of ETH 2.0 can proceed as planned. Medalla — the final multi client testnet before ETH 2.0’s phase 0 launch — came to a shuddering halt on August 14 when a bug took most of the testnet’s validators offline. The incident saw one of the testnet’s six servers report the time and date as being one day into the future, which the system responded to by averaging out the discrepancy — resulting in the time kept by each of the servers being wrong by four hours.
As a consequence, “validators incorrectly proposed blocks and attestations for future slots,” Prysmatic’s official incident report said. The bug affected everyone using the Prysm client, which the majority were. In a new blog entry, Jordan said the result of the bug was “carnage, with over 3000 slashing events… and all our internal validators slashed.” While he described the failure as “the best thing to happen to a testnet” as the incident would have been catastrophic on mainnet with real money at stake, proponents of competing networks have gleefully seized on the failure.
Guide: Becoming a Validator on the Eth2 Testnet
A step by step guide on how to become an Eth2 validator on the Medalla testnet. It covers recommended hardware, choosing & Installing Your Client, setting up an Eth1 Node, using the Eth2 Launch Pad, bonus content and resources.
- The new SKALE launch will commence on September 3rd at 12:00pm EDT and conclude 48hrs later on September 5th at 12:00pm EDT
- All eligible purchasers will be able to purchase up to $1,153 of SKL tokens at a fixed price of $0.03 per token
- The available token supply has been increased by 40% from 125M to 175M SKL
- If there are leftover tokens after the first round the remaining tokens will be allocated to a small number of eligible larger purchasers that have undergone more stringent KYC
- The second round, if required, will take place from September 10th at 12:00pm EDT until September 11th at 12:00pm EDT
- The first epoch will commence on October 1st and tokens will be distributed to all purchasers to enable staking via the Activate interface ahead of time
- The Proof of Use period has been shortened from 90 to 60 days
StaFi Token Metrics: FIS Raise and Token Distribution
In less than a month, the community managed to grow to over 150 validators and complete most of the incentivized testnet tasks. They are now on the final sprint — Staking Competition. Next to that, they had StakingDrop with over $150,000,000 worth of tokens bonded from some of the biggest blockchain communities.
And more on financial token-metrics:
Sharing Secrets Ep 0 – What is a Secret? in a video by Secret Foundation
Sharing Secrets – a new series from the Secret Foundation – explores the biggest secrets of the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Featuring everything from interviews, to monologues, to special guests, to technical explainers, to surprises, and beyond. The Secret Foundation is a key organization in the Secret Network ecosystem. It is dedicated to building, researching, and scaling adoption of open-source, privacy-centric technologies and networks. Its guiding values are Usability, Sustainability, Impact, and Empowerment.
NuCypher WorkLock Participation Details
- WorkLock escrow period: September 1, 00:00 UTC – September 28, 23:59 UTC
- Cancellation window: September 29, 00:00 UTC – September 30, 23:59 UTC
- Minimum escrow of $2,000 USD in ETH (unless participating via CoinList). The exact minimum escrow in ETH terms will be frozen at the time of contract deployment.
- 22.5% of initial supply; 225M NU
- NU stake locked for 6 months (starting at mainnet launch, not from when you escrow)
- Time to recover escrowed ETH: <= 6 months (from network launch)
- Mainnet launch expected in October
Phase Three of Orion’s Orbit Test Net is now live
Over the last two months, the Orion development team, led by Lead Blockchain Engineer Simon Kruse from Bounty0x, have been working on rewriting the trading terminal based on feedback from beta testing. The team has now fixed most bugs raised in the beta testing program, and integrated improvements from the community feedback. The third phase of the terminal is now live, with a key focus on UI overhaul and a prioritization on mobile support. Orion’s native ORN token has been added to the terminal.
Zoom Protocol Mining, Governance, and Reward
Zoom protocol is developed as a community-driven project which will be managed, governed, and further developed by the community. ZOM will be the ERC-20 token issued by Zoom Protocol and will be used for governance, staking as well as rewards for liquidity mining. 80% of ether fees generated will be distributed to ZOM stakers (“vote” holders)in ETH as per the ratio of “vote” holding pattern. 20% of the daily mining allocation of ZOM tokens will be distributed to ZOM stakers. Holding a certain amount of “vote” will enable users to participate in Exclusive pools ( Zoom picked exclusive project public sale/discount sale).
Staking Providers Update
Binance Launches DeFi Staking With Cryptos Kava and Dai
Binance’s DeFi staking program was announced with DAI, the stablecoin generated by loans on MakerDAO. The Binance initiative aims to tap into this year’s booming DeFi market by offering the ability for users earn staking rewards (akin to interest) on select digital assets. Recently, Binance added KAVA as the second asset to its staking product. Kava is a DeFi platform backed by Binance, Huobi and OKEx with a native token by the same name.
Bison Trails’ New Software Could Make Slashing Penalties a Thing of the Past
Bison Trails, a Blockchain infrastructure-as-a-service provider, has created double-signing protection software, or DSP, which aims to address the slashing penalties associated with double signing messages. According to the company, many digital asset holders consider slashing penalties to be one of the “main risks” of Blockchain participation, as they make it more difficult for the network to reach consensus. Speaking with Cointelegraph, Aaron Henshaw, CTO and co-founder of Bison Trails, stated that such penalties could be dangerous for anyone participating with their stake in a network as “it represents a place where token holders and validators can actually lose existing funds, not just miss out on future rewards.” Henshaw claims that the software is first being offered to users participating in the Kuzama and Tezos networks. Polkadot, Cosmos, and Celo support will then follow.
Frontier Wallet Composability: Building A Native DeFi App on Mobile
TxLink is a Middleware which connects Mobile Wallets to Frontier such that users can access Native DeFi, Staking and Track Protocol Positions without having to import Private keys/ Seed Phrases.
Four prominent reasons for building this:
1. Building Native DeFi App.
2. Enabling Users to connect existing Wallets on Mobile.
3. Removing Platform Dependency for users.
4. Simplifying Multiple Wallet management.
Staking Economy #43: Staking Academy
Staking Econony is a twice-monthly recap of news and observations focused on Proof-of-Stake networks. This time, they highlighted the release of the Staking Academy, Polkadot Parachains and Transfers, Cosmos Peggy Bridge and GaiaFlex Testnet, NEAR Sale and Rainbow Bridge and a lot more!
Coinbase Custody Now Supports Solana (SOL)
Coinbase Custody is an institutional-grade qualified custodian and fiduciary under New York State Banking Law. This partnership closely aligns with our mission to bring speed and security to decentralized finance. Now, in addition to TrustWallet and SolFlare, investors have the option to store their SOL in Coinbase Custody’s offline cold storage system.
An Introduction To Harmony Protocol by Stakin team
In this article, they’re taking a precise look at Harmony’s goals, governance, and consensus.
Launch of Serum (SRM) Staking Service by BitMax
Upcoming Staking Events
- 27th August, 2020 – Tezos on Cha-Cha-Chats: with Jun Kim, Strategy & Operations at Stake.fish
- 27th August, 2020 — TezTalks Live #10 — Payzos
- 28th August, 2020 – Oasis Labs AMA with Chorus One
- 28th–29th, August 2020 — Chainlink’s Smart Contract Virtual Summit
- 2nd-30th, October 2020 — EthOnline hackathon
- 6th–7th, November — virtual Trufflecon
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:
Let’s start with the development news. These weeks were for fair full of diligent work and worthy contributions. As part of the latest dev update, the Citadel team has shared what they’ve been working on at this stage. First and foremost, they set up the infrastructure for working with the Cosmos Network, and currently testing transactions. The team added ability to choose the size of the commission for the transaction as well as integration of KT addresses for Tezos. As for frontend tasks, the team updated interface for navigation menu, stake, adding address to analytics and import via Ledger, Trezor; automatic update of transactions and balances were added; import of an existing address is now available immediately after authorization. Currently, the Citadel developers actively work with the feedback they are getting from the first Citadel.One users. They push out builds on a regular basis to satisfy all the needs of the Citadel community. On top of that, we welcome you to test Citadel.One beta out as much as possible and give the team feedback so that the team could make your experience much better!
The Citadel.One team has recently published an interview with Liam Young, Co-founder of StaFi Protocol. The discussion touched upon Liam’s personal background and the way to crypto as well as some hot questions on the project itself. Citadel.One Wallet Guide is now out. Forby, Dmitriy Shekhovtsov, Citadel.One Lead Analyst, wrote three comprehensive staking guides for Citadel.One users: on Tezos (XTZ), IOST (IOST), and Icon (ICX). Check out the links in our report below.
As for the social side, the Citadel.One team attended ‘FutureProof: A Technical Summit’ and ‘Cosmos Unchained: Ethermint vs. Avalanche’ live meetup with Billy Rennekamp (Interchain Foundation), Zaki Manian (Iqlusion), and Emin Gun Sirer (Ava) discussed the differences between Cosmos’ Ethermint and Ava’s Avalanche; additionally, they participated in 12th CosmWasm biweekly community call. The team presented the freshly released Citadel public beta to NEOPLY/EOSeoul team. Citadel.One Founders talked about possible collaborations with the Polkadot team, had a collaboration call with the block42 team, and a call with the Staking Facilities team. Finally yet importantly, most of the team answered all the community questions associated with the release and just chatted for fun during the third community gathering in the Citadel Telegram chat.
- Citadel overview: ICON
- Citadel overview: IOST
- Citadel overview: Tezos
- Citadel.one Staking guide: Tezos (XTZ)
- Citadel.one Staking guide: Icon (ICX)
- Citadel.one Staking guide: IOST
Learn more about Citadel:
- Citadel Telegram chat
- Citadel Twitter page
- Citadel Facebook
- Citadel Reddit
- Citadel Medium
- Citadel Instagram
- Check the recent biweekly updates on PoS Networks, created by Paradigm Fund: