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 30th 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 27th August – 3rd 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 a staking mechanism) is now about $44.4 billion USD, while a week ago it was nearly 43,4 billion. Constant growth!
PoS Dominance decreased a bit since our last update and now holds a point of nearly 26%. The average reward reached 17,8%.
Polkadot remains the first position in top-5! Now, the leading projects by locked in staking are Polkadot, Tezos, Cardano, EOS, and Algorand. Cosmos is currently positioned on the 7th place, right after the recently released Band Protocol. This is especially interesting since Band Protocol is built using the Cosmos SDK!
Current Value in Staking by Asset
Think & Stake
Minting Mechanism for Proof of Stake Blockchains by Dominic Deuber, Nico Döttling, Bernardo Magri, Giulio Malavolta, and Sri Aravinda Krishnan Thyagarajan
In this work, they initiate the study of minting mechanisms in cryptocurrencies as a primitive on its own right, and as a first step to a solution to mitigate coin hoarding in PoS currencies they propose a novel minting mechanism based on waiting-time first-price auctions. The main technical tool is a protocol to run an auction over any blockchain. Moreover, the protocol is the first to securely implement an auction without requiring a semi-trusted party, i.e., where every miner in the network is a potential bidder. The approach is generically applicable and they show that it is incentive-compatible with the underlying blockchain, i.e., the best strategy for a player is to behave honestly. Their proof-of-concept implementation shows that the system is efficient and scales to tens of thousands of bidders.
TontineCoin: Murder-Based Proof-of-Stake by Chris Pollett, Thomas H. Austin, Katerina Potika, Justin Rietz
Proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies avoid many of the computational and environmental costs associated with proof-of-work protocols. However, they must address the nothing-at-stake problem, where a validator might attempt to sign off on competing blocks, with the hopes of earning coins regardless of which block becomes accepted as part of the blockchain. Cryptocurrencies such as Tendermint resolve this challenge by requiring validators to bond coins, which can be seized from a validator that is caught signing two competing blocks. Nevertheless, as the number of validators increases, it becomes more and more infeasible to effectively monitor all validators. In this work, they incentivize proper block monitoring by allowing validators to form tontines. Tontines are financial agreements where payouts to each member increase as the number of members decreases. In their system, a tontine is a group of validators that monitor each other’s behavior, “murdering” any cheating tontine members to seize their stake. As the number of validators in a tontine is smaller than the number of validators in the currency as a whole, members can effectively police each other. They propose two methods whereby a Tendermint-like currency can be extended to allow for the creation of tontines: a pure proof-of-stake model, and a hybrid proof-of-stake/proof-of-work model. They describe snitch mechanisms for both the inter- and intra-tontine setting, argue the incentive mechanisms increase monitoring, and describe how it handles a variety of possible attacks.
Live Networks Updates
IRISnet Launched DeFi and Interchain Testnet Bifrost
Based on the latest version of the Cosmos SDK, irishub has made significant updates, undergoing functionality developments and crucial upgrades. The Bifrost testnet will test unique and innovative DeFi functions, including NFT, Record, Oracle etc. At the same time, Bifrost will test the integration of the new version of the Cosmos SDK and test the multi-Hub collaboration as well as existing IRIS Hub functions such as CoinSwap through the IBC protocol.
This Phase-0 is intended for:
- Testing wallets, exchanges and block explorers against the legacy Amino REST interface
- Giving node operators and validators an opportunity to test their integrations against a work in progress version
Tezos Litigation: JUDGEMENT DAY
On August 27, 2020 the Honorable Judge Seeborg approved the Final Settlement Order for the Tezos class-action lawsuit. It has been a long tumultuous journey, almost 3 years worth of litigation (by unscrupulous/unsavory people that needlessly slowed the project and caused irreparable harm), and on, August, 27, 2020, the litigation has come to an end. Many people have been waiting for this day. No more legal clouds hanging over the project. The project moves on. Sign, sealed, and delivered.
The Elrond Mainnet Token Swap Begins on Binance, And The New Economic Model Is Set In Motion
The Elrond mainnet has been launched, and a great number of partners are already working to integrate and build on it. Maiar has been unveiled, and is currently going through a rapid iteration cycle. The new Elrond economic model is now ready to start an accelerated and sustained growth period. Starting with the 3rd of September they will officially begin the swap from ERD to eGLD. eGLD will be the native currency of the Elrond economy, and all ERD tokens will gradually be swapped to eGLD tokens. The eGLD ticker is an abbreviation for eGold, denoting the simplest, and most intuitively powerful metaphor of what the Elrond currency aims to become. Starting now, they will use eGold and eGLD interchangeably, to refer to the native Elrond currency.
A staking 2.0 console will be added to the wallet before the next staking cycle starting on October 1st, 2020. As the year progresses, they’ll be adding more features, such as an iOS/Android native apps, Multi-Asset support, Optimized Fiat On-Ramp, 1-click payments, DeFi, and Virtual Debit Card.
Terra Core will change in two major ways over the next two upgrades.
- With Columbus-4, Terra Core will become more expressive with the addition of CosmWasm smart contracts → cosmwasm.com
- With Columbus-5, it will become more interoperable with the addition of the Shuttle bridge module to create a message bus with multiple other blockchains. More details on Shuttle and Columbus-5 will be released in a later roadmap update as timelines and development progress become available.
For the Build a Blockchain category:
For the Open Hack category:
For more winners, check this thread.
Stargate-1 public testnet is live
This testnet is intended for:
- Testing wallets, exchanges and block explorers against the legacy Amino REST interface
- Giving node operators and validators an opportunity to test their integrations against a work in progress version
- Playing with new Stargate features including IBC but real testing of IBC will wait on Akash updating the Relayer and possibly a future testnet.
As part of the recently announced Q2–2020 cycle, the Interchain Foundation has funded cdot’s proposal to develop an IBC Substrate pallet. This work represents a significant step in bridging Polkadot and Kusama with Cosmos chains, enabling secure exchange of assets and data between ecosystems. The IBC Substrate pallet will also enable developers to create their own Substrate-based blockchains with IBC capabilities. A newly formed Substrate IBC Working Group aims to coordinate the efforts of cdot, Chorus One and Informal Systems, all of whom are working on components essential to Polkadot/Cosmos bridging efforts.
Daily Cosmos Outpost – Inflation 7.0% Bonded 71.2%
DELEGATIONS:
- Delegate: 334,435
- Redelegate: 223,761
- Undelegate: 460,015
REWARDS: 13,058
UP-101 UniFi DAO Live: Team Live Introduction on Peggy on CosmosHub
Watch a live chat with the Peggy Team about Peggy featuring Justin & Deborah (Althea), Zaki (Iqlusion) & Taariq (Promise) discuss the coming Peggy module for CosmosHub. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTiK_8v2uUg&feature=youtu.be
StakerDAO August 2020 Retrospective
After committing to building on Algorand through Proposal 006 in July, and sharing that they have teamed up with Borderless Capital to do so, the community gave StakerDAO a very warm welcome across social media. In August, the Ops team released Proposal 007 with an offer to build wALGO (Wrapped Algorand. Wrapped Algorand (wALGO) is a fully collateralized synthetic representation of ALGO.
Learn more in the article above.
Band Protocol Ecosystem Overview
Upcoming Networks Updates
Major upcoming events by CryptoDIffer
A list of upcoming events and important development milestones you should know about – a version by ICO Analytics
Stats of StakingDrop : Over $200M Bonded, Mainnet is Coming
More than $205M worth of staked assets have been bonded across 1767 addresses. In fact, 20% of the staking amounts were new staked assets and 40% are NEW staking addresses. This yet again shows that StaFi doesn’t only make staking liquid and enables new DeFi products — but also increase security of PoS networks!
- Average Staking rate of projects in StakingDrop have been incresased by 0.25%
- Average value per account is $116K
- Average dropped FIS for each account is 1130
- FIS distribution for StakingDrop was over-subscribed by 7x
The Secret is Out: Announcing the Secret Contracts Mainnet
The most exciting Secret milestone to date: the introduction of privacy-preserving secret contracts to the Secret Network mainnet. The proposal to introduce secret contracts to mainnet will be made on September 8th, 2020. If passed by the community, the secret contracts network upgrade would take place on September 15th, 2020. This proposed upgrade would make Secret Network the first layer-one blockchain to enable general purpose private computation across a distributed system of nodes equipped with secure enclaves. For the first time, developers will be able to build and deploy “secret” smart contracts that can utilize encrypted inputs, outputs, and state. At the same time, they’re building connections to Ethereum, Cosmos Hub, and other networks, intending to bring the capacity for “programmable privacy” to the entire blockchain universe.
Secret Staking Derivatives: Liquidity Meets Privacy
The encrypted nature of secret contracts (see above) allows to create both privacy-preserving and front-running resistant solutions. To that end, they have created dxSCRT – a unique staking derivative token on the Secret Network, which will be available on the public testnet in the coming weeks, as well as on mainnet with the launch of secret contracts.
What can dxSCRT mean for Secret Network? Right now, the unbonding time for Secret Network is 21 days. That means you need to choose between locking your SCRT for 21 days or missing out on block rewards entirely. Now there is going to be another option – deposit SCRT into a secret contract and receive dxSCRT, which is a secret token. In this case, dxSCRT represents your funds, staked by the secret contract, earning staking rewards over time. In addition, dxSCRT can also be exchanged at any time for SCRT. Learn more in the article!
Binance Launches Smart Contract-Enabled Blockchain, Adds Staking for Its Coin
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said it launched the mainnet of its smart contract-enabled blockchain and is introducing staking for its native Binance (BNB) token. In a press statement emailed to CoinDesk, the crypto exchange said it hopes to foster the development of decentralized apps (dApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) products by adding these features.
The new blockchain will use a “Proof-of-Staked” Authority (PoSA) consensus mechanism, which Binance claims will allow the validators to receive rewards for their work on the chain without sacrificing transaction speed.
The bZx token holders can immediately stake their token via the Staking Portal
Each trade made, loan originated, and debt serviced generates fees.
Three fees to be aware of:
- Origination fee: 0.09%
- Trading fee: 0.15%
- Interest fee: 10% of interest paid
Staking Portal is accessible via the link.
Staking Providers Update
Crypto.com Exchange Presents Stake-to-Take
- Retail users can now earn up to 0.10% in taker fees when they trade on the Exchange. Additional trading discounts in the form of rebates increases with CRO amount staked, and fees must be paid in CRO to be eligible.
- Minimum staking requirement has been reduced by 50% to 5,000 CRO for both individual and institutional customers to be eligible for additional trading discounts.
Monthly Update (Aug 20) by Chorus One
Relevant news on Polkadot, Terra, Secret Network, Cosmos, Solana, and others!
PoS Round-Up by Stake.fish – Ethermint Released for Cosmos, Price Oracles Come to Tezos
PoS Round-Up is a focused biweekly report on the major news in and around the Proof of Stake ecosystem, including Cosmos, Ethereum, Tezos, NEAR and a lot more!
Got ETH? Time to prepare for Ethereum 2.0 by JK of Stake.fish
You have some idea about Ethereum 2.0 (if not – check their previous blog post). You know Phase 0, the launch of the Beacon Chain, is coming soon. You know it’s a groundbreaking upgrade. You know you’ll be able to stake. But, why should you stake in the first place? Are there any risks associated with staking? What do you need to do as an ETH holder to get prepared? This article will explore these questions today and help point you in the right direction as you start contemplating what to do with your ETH.
Seeking Yield by Staked – Issue 76 by Staked.us
This is the seventy-sixth issue of Seeking Yield by Staked, a weekly update about the most interesting things happening in crypto-asset staking and lending. Learn more about tracking ETH 2.0, Sunny King Q&A, Cardano Staking Webinar, Kyber Rewards Claiming and Reporting Launch, Current Staking and Lending Yields, & More.
How To Stake Solana With Solflare Wallet and Ledger Nano by Stakin
Last time they took a look at staking Solana SOL with the Solflare wallet by using the Keystore. In this article, they’re bringing you step-by-step through staking SOL with the Solflare Wallet by using the Ledger Nano.
Bi-Weekly Newsletter Vol. 10 by Stakin
A recap of past event of PoS news and updates:
- Stakin Has Become a Validator for Polkadot!
- Binance Lists Terra (LUNA)
- ICON Jeju Island MyID
- Serum x Solana Collaboration
- Prediction Market DApp on NEAR
- Coinbase Custody Now Supports Solana
Cosmos Stargate Upgrade review: what’s new by Everstake
Recently, the Cosmos blockchain network released a major update to Stargate, which is aimed at increasing transaction throughput, cross-chain cryptocurrency transfers, speeding up and simplifying the development of the user interface, and more. In today’s review, they talk about what’s new came after the Stargate update and why this update is so important for the Cosmos ecosystem.
Guides by Everstake
Upcoming Staking Events
- 9th September 2020 – Cardano Staking Webinar
- 10th September 2020 – Cosmos Stargate AMA
- 11th September 2020 — TezTalks Live #11
- 14th September 2020 – Building a Scalable Private DeFi Platform – Oasis and Figment Networks
- 21st September 2020 — TezTalks Radio #10 — Carlo Van Driesten from ENVITED Group
- 29th September 2020 — TezTalks Live #12 — Andrew Paulicek on Domains
- 2nd-30th October 2020 — EthOnline hackathon
- 6th–7th November 2020— 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: