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 31st 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 3rd September – 10th September 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

      Source: stakingrewards.com

      The current Staking Market Cap (valuation of all projects that have a staking mechanism) is now about $36.8 billion USD, while a week ago it was nearly 44.4 billion. 

      Source: stakingrewards.com

      PoS Dominance decreased a bit since our last update and has a point of nearly 24,4% which is 1,6% lower compared to the week before. The average reward almost reached 18,7%.

      Source: stakingrewards.com

      Polkadot remains the first position in top-5! Now, the leading projects by locked in staking are Polkadot, Tezos, EOS, Cardano, and Algorand. Cosmos is currently rated 6th, replacing the Band Protocol. TRON is top-7. 

      Current Value in Staking by Asset

      Source: stakingrewards.com

      Think & Stake

      Robust Proof of Stake: A New Consensus Protocol for Sustainable Blockchain Systems by Aiya Li, Xianhua Wei, Zhou He

      In the digital economy era, the development of a distributed robust economy system has become increasingly important. The blockchain technology can be used to build such a system, but current mainstream consensus protocols are vulnerable to attack, making blockchain systems unsustainable. This paper proposes a new Robust Proof of Stake (RPoS) consensus protocol, which uses the amount of coins to select miners and limits the maximum value of the coin age to effectively avoid coin age accumulation attack and Nothing-at-Stake (N@S) attack. Under a comparison framework, the authors show that the RPoS equals or outperforms Proof of Work (PoW) protocol and Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol in three dimensions: energy consumption, robustness, and transaction processing speed. To compare the three consensus protocols in terms of trade efficiency, they built an agent-based model and find that RPoS protocol has greater or similar trade request-satisfied ratio than PoW and PoS. Hence, they suggest that RPoS is very suitable for building a robust digital economy distributed system.

      A survey by Chris Remus


      Live Networks Updates

      Stafi Mainnet is live

      FIS holders can now stake $FIS, earn staking rewards (current ARP is 2.5%~10%) while providing security to the network. It is NOT recommended to transfer FIS Token at the beginning, due to the fact that the mainnet may not be fully stable just yet. Node operators can register as validators: 60 seats are open, the numbers will increase from 60 ~ 120 within a few days.Calling all FIS holders to nominate the community validators, including StakingDrop participants, Sitara winners, early supporters, and everyone else! It will help increase the security of Mainnet. Learn more in the article “Mainnet for Staking Derivatives, Coming to Launch”.

      Meta Transactions On Tezos

      Biconomy has recently proven on Ethereum how meta transactions can increase the number of users, increase user retention and overall, make the transaction and application seamless. Tezos will be one of the first Layer 1 chains they will be supporting with the relayer infrastructure which enables meta transactions. They will be building this infrastructure on Tezos as it will cut deployment time for developers building new apps and ease the user experience for new users interacting on a Tezos based application.

      IRIS Bifrost-0 Testnet

      As the current version is still in rapid development, incentived and rewarded tasks will not be released in this phase. This phase is intended for:

      1. Testing wallets, exchanges and block explorers against the legacy Amino REST interface
      2. Giving node operators and validators an opportunity to test their integrations against a work in progress version

      Overview of Polkadot Ecosystem V2020.09

      Cosmos Stargate-2 testnet is live

      This release fixes issues with Legacy Amino that were discovered in stargate-1. The team believes that this version is now good to test for exchanges and wallets.

      This testnet is intended for:

      1. Testing wallets, exchanges and block explorers against the legacy Amino REST interface
      2. Giving node operators and validators an opportunity to test their integrations against a work in progress version
      3. Playing with new Stargate features including IBC but real testing of IBC will wait on Akash updating the Relayer and possibly a future testnet.

      Cosmos Network Partners with Persistence One to launch ‘HackAtom India: Build the Cosmos’

      ‘HackAtom India: Build the Cosmos’ is the first virtual Cosmos Hackathon to give developers in India a chance to begin their journeys into the Cosmos ecosystem. HackAtom is the annual flagship Hackathon hosted by Cosmos. The aim of HackAtom is to encourage developers in the Blockchain ecosystem to build blockchains and applications using Cosmos’ technology stack.

      HackAtom India calls for developers in India to build DeFi projects, interoperable applications, and Developer tools using Cosmos’ technology stack and modules such as Ethermint, Cosmwasm, IBC protocol and many more.

      Daily Cosmos Outpost – Inflation 7.0% Bonded 70.8%

      DELEGATIONS:

      1. Delegate: 193,564
      2. Redelegate: 59,750
      3. Undelegate: 60,061

      REWARDS: 17,161

      V Systems Weekly Report — 1st Week of September 2020

      In this weekly report (1st week of September 2020): The V-Cloud service is getting ready to release, providing organisations with an extremely easy way of integrating with the VSYS Blockchain. VSYS has been Listed on Korean exchange CoinOne. Please read the full report above.

      PoS Token Bridge is Now Live on Matic Mainnet! Faster Deposits & Withdrawals are Enabled

      The PoS (Proof-of-Stake) token bridge is now live on the Matic mainnet for deposits and withdrawals from Ethereum to Matic and vice versa. DApps can now use the robust validator-run token bridge to move ERC20, ERC721 and ERC1155 tokens from Ethereum to Matic and from Matic to Ethereum. Deposits from Ethereum to Matic take ~7-8 minutes to complete and withdrawals take ~30 minutes. This is a vast improvement from the previous deposit & withdrawal mechanism.


      Upcoming Networks Updates

      Major upcoming events by CryptoDIffer

      eth2 quick update no. 15 

      1. Medalla chugging along smoothly
      2. Client diversity is a must
      3. eth1+eth2 (Phase 1.5 aka The Merge) end-to-end demo
      4. Testing and audits continue with the  Phase 0 launch approaching

      Secret Network Ecosystem Update: August 2020

      As they prepare to launch Secret Contracts on mainnet, here is an update on the Secret Games testnet, Keplr wallet support for Secret Tokens, WIP applications, new videos, and community projects. Learn more in the article above! 

      Tether to bring USDt to the Solana Network

      USDt is the largest stablecoin by market capitalization and is one of the most widely used stablecoins in the DeFi sector. The top three most popular DeFi projects have USDt deposits totaling more than $863 million alone. Tether and USDt are critical pieces of infrastructure for any successful blockchain project and have been one of the most important elements for cross-platform settlement. This strategic initiative is a significant step for Solana and will be instrumental in advancing the network. After the technical integration is complete, USDt holders will be able to exchange tethers at speeds greater than 50,000 transactions per second — often for less than $0.00001 per transaction — using the Solana network. Both are step-function improvements to the status quo. Speed and costs are two of the largest barriers holding back DeFi today. This new initiative will open up an entirely new design space and use cases for stablecoins within the DeFi ecosystem.

      Decentralized Commodities Trading Platform, Mettalex, Announces First Distribution of MTLX Tokens to FET Holders

      Mettalex, a decentralized crypto and commodities derivatives trading platform powered by Fetch.ai, announced today the initial distribution of the platform’s MTLX tokens to FET holders as it prepares to go live. Starting September 3, the first one million MTLX tokens will be allocated to FET holders over the next 21 days in anticipation of the launch of new staking and liquidity pools in the coming weeks.

      Validators in KIRA Network will earn 50% of network fees

      50 % is a fixed rate to ensure they can operate regardless of market conditions and the network does not fall into death spiral. Becoming a validator allows you to charge commission from other people staking their coins to your node.


      Staking Providers Update

      #44: All Gas No Brakes

      This newsletter is supported by Chorus One, a provider of staking services in decentralized networks. This time they cover effects of ETH gas prices on node operators, NuCypher worklock, Coda Snapps, Tezos Harbinger and Delphi, Ethermint, and more. 

      Pool-X Will Support SUN Genesis Mining

      Pool-X will be supporting the SUN Genesis mining activity, where users can stake TRX on the platform to participate. The product for this activity is “TRX-Staking-For-SUN”. During the activity period, all KuCoin users can go to the ‘Staking’ page of the Pool-X website and participate using TRX on their Pool-X account.

      Introducing Launchpool, a Secure Way to Farm New Assets – Farm Launchpool’s First Project, Bella Protocol (BEL) By Staking BNB, BUSD or ARPA Tokens

      Binance is excited to release Launchpool, a new product where users will be able to acquire new token rewards in return for staking BNB, BUSD and other tokens. The first project to be hosted on Launchpool is Bella Protocol (BEL). Users will be able to stake their BNB, BUSD or ARPA tokens into three separate pools to farm BEL tokens over 30 days, starting from 9th September.

      Binance will offer $USDT staking with up to 60% APR

      As part of recently launched DeFi staking program Binance opened BNB and USDT Staking on 3rd Sptember. BNB is used for Kava staking with an APR of up to 25%, USDT is used in Curve staking with an APR of up to 60%.

      Seeking Yield by Staked – Issue 77 

      This is the seventy-seventh issue of Seeking Yield by Staked, a weekly update about the most interesting things happening in crypto asset staking and lending. Learn more on Tracking ETH 2.0, NuCypher WorkLock and Cardano Webinar. 

      Introduction To Desmos Network by Stakin Team

      Over 5.19 billion people use mobile phones globally, with user numbers increasing with hundreds of millions a year. And as we know, since Facebook scandals are happening almost yearly, all these Social Media networks gather our information to sell and use however they see fit. In this article, they’re giving an introduction to a blockchain network that wants to change this and create a decentralized social media network, in which you are in charge of your data.

      How To Stake Band Protocol ($BAND) with Atomic Wallet by Stakin Team

      Stakin team brings this step-by-step staking guide on Band Protocol’s $BAND with Atomic Wallet. 

      How to stake Qtum (QTUM) with Qtum Web Wallet: a simple guide for beginners by Everstake

      Since August 28, the Qtum blockchain platform has released an update that allows users to stake QTUM tokens using the main wallets from the project developers. The new feature is called Offline Staking and allows you to earn rewards as a Superstaker or delegate. In contrast to the usual staking, users do not delegate coins, but addresses only (UTXOs). Tokens do not leave users’ wallets. In this review, Everstake team will tell you how to Stake Qtum tokens using the Qtum web wallet.

      Deeper dive into Ethereum 2.0: Part 1 by Stake.fish

      After the Beginner’s guide to Ethereum 2.0 Stake.fish decided to go deeper and presented advanced sections that go into detail on how exactly Proof of Stake works and how some of the staking numbers are calculated. There are plenty of links to the relevant source materials, so you can start your own journey down the rabbit hole!


      Upcoming Staking Events


      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

      GitHub + GitLab metrics

      First and foremost, the Citadel.One team is ready to complete Cosmos integration. They also added changing the size of the commission for transactions, and automatic updating of the stake list of nodes for all networks. Good news is, users now can add comments for transactions. As for frontend tasks, transfers and stake for KT addresses in Tezos were added, as well as sending IOST with memo. Moreover, the team updated interface for basic user scenarios: adding wallets, staking, optimizing data display without page refresh. At this stage, the Citadel.One developers resolutely work with the feedback they are getting from the 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 strongly finer! much better

      According to Kaspersky’s Cryptocurrency Report, in 2019 the percentage of people who “fully understand how cryptocurrencies work” was around 10%. In 2020 with the rise of new tendencies such as DeFi and PoS, popularity of cryptocurrencies has almost doubled. In light of these events, the Citadel.one team decided to start ‘Crypto 101’ series — their weekly digest about blockchain and cryptocurrencies for those who haven’t entered this brave new world yet. So, what is so attractive and at the same time deterring in cryptocurrencies? What are the risks and benefits? In these articles, the team tries to dispel all users’ doubts and fears about the crypto world and shows how to benefit from it. They talk about how to invest in crypto, describe several approaches to investing that include purchasing and just holding crypto, mining, and staking, and more. Check out the links to the articles in our report below.

      Previously, Dmitriy Shekhovtsov, Citadel.One Lead Analyst, wrote three comprehensive staking guides for all of you, Citadel.One users: on Tezos (XTZ), IOST (IOST), and Icon (ICX). As for the social side, the Citadel.One team attended. If you haven’t read them yet, it is the right time to check them out!

      Learn more about Citadel:

      1. Citadel Telegram chat
      2. Citadel Twitter page
      3. Citadel Facebook
      4. Citadel Reddit
      5. Citadel Medium
      6. Citadel Instagram
      • Check the recent biweekly updates on PoS Networks, created by Paradigm Fund:
      1. Tezos
      2. Orbs
      3. Cosmos
      4. Theta
      5. ICON
      6. IOST
      7. Ethereum
      8. Cardano
      9. Polkadot
      10. Chainlink
      11. Algorand
      12. Vechain

      About The Author

      Rina Spasenkova

      is the CMO, and blockchain analyst at Citadel.one. Being in crypto since the age of 17, she mainly focused on the topics related to PoS systems of passive yield, smart contracts, and social construction of cryptocurrency