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. This is our 26th 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 25th July – 6th 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

Source: stakingrewards.com

The Staking Market Cap almost reached 32 billion USD, which is nearly 8% of the Global Market Cap.

Source: stakingrewards.comSource: stakingrewards.com

Freshly released Cardano is now Top-5 Asset by locked in staking, replacing Cosmos. Now the leaders are Tezos, EOS, Polkadot, Algorand and Cardano respectively. To recall, last time the leading asset placement was following: Tezos, EOS, Algorand, Polkadot, and Cosmos.

Current Value in Staking by Assset

Source: stakingrewards.com

Listing and Staking events on CEXs during the past 30 days by CryptoDiffer

Think & Stake

Congress to IRS: Proof-Of-Stake block rewards should not be taxed as income

New letter asks for sensible policy that better reflects the nature of token creation via staking, and its logic applies to proof-of-work as well.

This is another in a series of letters from Congress that are the direct result of poor policy making from the IRS in the realm of cryptocurrencies. While the IRS seems willing to devote tremendous effort to enforcement actions and privacy-violating investigations, little effort has been spent by the IRS to actually develop and announce clear policy that would make it easy for cryptocurrency users to comply. This letter about proof-of-stake is not an aberration, it deals with yet another area of muddled tax policy that should have been cleared up years ago. The issue addressed in the letter is not unique to proof of stake awards. Any block reward from a permissionless cryptocurrency network, whether it is created through proof-of-work mining, proof-of-stake validating, or some other mechanism, is most accurately described as the creation of value through one’s own capital and labor rather than the receipt of value from an employer. The network allows users to create wealth from their own resources, it does not pay people for their labor. Why is this the more sensible characterization? Creators of block rewards literally do not get paid by anyone. Who is the employer when you are working for the bitcoin network? Just as truly permissionless decentralized networks lack third party promoters upon whom users rely in the context of securities law, they also lack discernible employers and employees in the context of income tax law. To be clear, that does not mean that block rewards can or should be tax free, simply that they should be taxed like crops, minerals, livestock, artwork, and assembly line widgets: they should be taxed when they are sold, not when they are created.

2020 Is Becoming the Year of Staking With Some Major Achievements

The use of staking will become more widespread this year on the protocol level with Ethereum 2.0’s expected arrival, along with the continued development of Cardano, Tezos and Algorand, ultimately changing the landscape of the future networks and blockchains. On the other side of the protocols is the mad rush for the hyper gains from decentralized finance projects that utilize high yield farming from loans, which will further the adoption of these staking protocols. Read more in an article by Cointelegraph.

Chorus One initiated the Substrate IBC Working Group that seeks to coordinate different initatives to connect the Polkadot and Cosmos ecosystems

It was announced in a recent Monthly Update by Chorus.One, and highlighted by Sorawit Suriyakarn in a post on Twitter.

Proof-of-Stake Chains Team Up to Prove DeFi Is Bigger Than Ethereum

Anchor, the new decentralized finance (DeFi) platform from Terra, Cosmos, Web3 Foundation and Solana, is being designed to launch with a governance-token reward. Version 1 is going live in October, according to a Terra co-founder.

Anchor is a two-pronged platform for PoS token holders. The system offers savings accounts and a lending platform – the bread and butter that made DeFi on Ethereum a multibillion-dollar enterprise.

“We’ve been looking at ways in order to earn passive income on our users, for unused balances in unused assets,” Do Kwon, a co-founder of Terra and the startup built atop it, Chai, told CoinDesk in a phone call.

Also read an interview with Do Kwon by Staking Rewards.

Live Networks Updates

Medalla, Ethereum Phase 0 multiclient testnet, is live

Medalla is a platform for testing the updated Ethereum 2.0 network features. With its help, validators will participate in staking throughout all the main stages of ETH 2.0 development, receiving real rewards for voting and adding new blocks in GöETH tokens. The Medalla test network is created and maintained by Ethereum developers. The correct number of peers joined the tesnet to consider it workable, according to a tweet from the Ethereum Foundation’s Hudson Jameson. As reported by CoinDesk, Medalla was one of many Eth 2.0 testnets over 2019 and 2020. Unlike the other testnets, however, Medalla was public – meaning network validators were not centrally coordinated by developer teams. Over 20,000 validators have joined the network with some 650,000 ether (ETH) staked, according to the Beaconcha.in block explorer. (Each testnet uses its own tokens not equivalent to real ETH.) Medalla was joined by five clients including Prysmatic Labs’ Prysm, ChainSafe’s Lodestar, PegaSys’ Teku, Status’ Nimbus and Sigma Prime’s Lighthouse. Eth 2.0 encapsulates years of research to switch the current Proof-of-Work (PoW) Ethereum network to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. The expected launch later this year will be phase 0 of a multiyear overhaul. The week before the eth2 research team joined forces with ConsenSys and DeepWork Studio to release the eth2 validator launchpad, which guides users through the process of setting up an eth2 validator. If you want to run a validator on Medalla and help clear the way for the eth2 mainnet, get yourself some Görli testnet ether and get started!

For more info on Ethereum’s long way, read A Birthday Look: 5 Years of Ethereum Network Updates, Delays and Changes.

Shelley is delivered

This transition represents a major shift into a state of Cardano that will be defined by decentralization and staking, ahead of the next milestone of smart contract capabilities. The new Shelley mainnet introduces Cardano’s proposed Proof-of-Stake (PoS) layer, which allows users to contribute to the transaction validation process either directly (by operating a stake pool) or indirectly (via delegation) in exchange for staking rewards. The first rewards distribution will occur on Aug. 18. Shelley is just the second step in a series of upgrades first proposed by the project. The next phase, called Goguen, will introduce smart contract functionality. Lead Cardano developer IOHK anticipates launching Goguen before the end of the year. Subsequent upgrades Voltaire and Basho intend to unlock the project’s proposed on-chain governance system and Hydra scaling system, respectively.

Source: Messari.com

Elrond Mainnet Launched After Testnet Hits 260,000 Transactions per Second

High performance blockchain project Elrond launched its Mainnet on July 30, along with a new DeFi app, staking and a raft of new features. Its ERD token has been on fire this month in the lead-up to the long awaited launch. The launch follows successful testnet results with more than 1,500 nodes in 29 countries, and 50 shards, running at extremely high speeds with a peak of more than 260,000 transactions per second. Elrond aims to achieve global scalability for money moving markets. An estimated 40,000 users have already signed up for the waiting list for the new mobile and web app called “Maiar” that will be integrated into DeFi protocols with a wallet, staking and lending features.

Pocket Mainnet Rollout on July 28th

Stages:

28th July – Mainnet went live. DAO seeded. Onboarding bootstrap nodes. The node bootstrap partners participating are Rivet, Chainflow, Stakin, Everstake, Simply VC, and Tuku Dev. During this phase, POKT will not be released to the rest of the genesis file participants until each of the bootstrap partners are fully operational. No key applications will be online during this phase so there is minimal risk of losing out on any potential rewards.
3rd August – “Growing the seed” DAO phase. At this phase in the Pocket DAO, the voting set started to be expanded by a champion system. Meaning that trusted voters (champions) vouch for other potential participants to become voters.
Coming soon – The Pocket Dashboard and Gateway will go live soon. The Pocket Dashboard can be used as an interface for nodes and applications to manage their accounts staking and unstaking. It is important to note that the Dashboard only has POKT management and acquisition capabilities at this time. It does not have the functionality for spinning up a Pocket Node without the use of a CLI.
1st October – At this point, the doors will open up for different ways to get deeply involved in the direction of Pocket Network. The DAO voter set will no longer have a cap, and anyone can participate in governance so long as the requirements set out in the Pocket DAO constitution are met. At this milestone, Pocket will also be releasing a gamified community experience where individuals can earn points, prizes, roles, and more by participating in the ecosystem in meaningful ways.

NYSE listed $40bn Indian tech icon Infosys Consltшng now running a Matic validator node

Next DApp partner validator to onboard.
Contributing resources to secure the Matic mainnet.
Part of Matic’s enterprise focus & Infosys’ expansion into the public blockchain space.

Stargate – a new era for Cosmos

The biggest event in the ecosystem since the launch of the Cosmos Hub. Stargate is a set of upgrades that complete the original roadmap laid out in the Cosmos Whitepaper. For the first time ever, Cosmos blockchains will be able to connect with each other using the first standardized protocol for inter-blockchain communication (IBC).

Check the official website above for more!

Daily Cosmos Outpost Aug 05 UTC Inflation 7.0% Bonded 70.8%

DELEGATIONS:

Delegate: 755,337
Redelegate: 20,433
Undelegate: 527,356

REWARDS: 38,676

Polkadot Vote Results are in

After two weeks of voting, the results are clear: the community vastly favours a New DOT denomination which is defined as 10,000,000,000 Planck or, put alternatively, a “stock-split” of the original, old DOT by one hundred. Specifically, of the 2.86 million DOT that cast a vote, 2.47 million DOT (that’s 86%) voted in favour of this split. Only around 120 thousand (that’s 4%) voted to keep the old denomination. Various reasons were given for each option, but the one that seemed to find the most attentive ears regarding the winning option seemed to be that it would result in a much more ergonomic DOT value. Given that the only named denomination which is lower than DOT is the Planck (and which is useless for any practical matters), then it does indeed seem reasonable to take a somewhat finer main denomination.

Upcoming Networks Updates

A short list of upcoming events and important development milestones you should know about

A version of Major upcoming events in August according to CryptoDiffer

Bluzelle March to Mainnet

Get ready for 8 August! They are breaking the mainnet launch into two phases. This is a whole new chain with a new chain ID. The reason for a soft mainnet is they want a smooth transition to the newest version of Tendermint+Cosmos. As you recall, they worked with the Cosmos team earlier this month on a major bug that was discovered. Before going to Phase 2: Production Mainnet, they must ensure that the chain (BluzelleNet) is secure and stable. A major highlight in Phase 1 is the ability to stake BLZ and start earning rewards. Delegators and validators who join will earn real tokens for helping to secure the network during this transition to Phase 2. Phase 2 will launch September 8.

Introducing Aavenomics

This release will add AAVE Staking that will be secured specifically by Safety Module, staking mechanism for AAVE tokens to act as insurance against Shortfall Events. Stakers earn AAVE as Safety Incentives along with percentages of protocol fees. Check key takeaways below!

Announcing Mission Control: The Graph’s Incentivized Testnet

The launch of the Mission Control, The Graph’s incentivized testnet. Mission Control is a competition where Indexers can operate nodes, complete missions and contribute to improving The Graph Network ahead of mainnet launch. Over 15 node operators, including Figment, Staking Facilities, Certus One, Staked, Chorus One and Bloq, have already entered the mission control center by pre-registering for the testnet.

The Graph has been running a hosted service in production since January 2019, processing queries for dApps on Ethereum and IPFS like Synthetix, Uniswap, Aave, Gnosis, Aragon and more. With over 1,700 Subgraphs deployed, The Graph has become a core primitive for decentralized application development.

Overview of Band Protocol including Investors, Integrations & Partnerships + Staking info, Wallets & Industry Leading Validators

BandChain GuanYu Testnet#2: Update & How to Join as a Validator

After the initial release of testnet#1, they are upgrading to testnet#2 after two weeks of testing. In the article above you can find a report on some issues and mitigation that they are preparing in the testnet#2 and the newly planned testnet#3.

StaFi StakingDrop: All Stakers Unite

Stafi Protocol is built with the aim to empower the liquidity of staking assets — like Cosmos, Tezos, Polkadot, and others — while enhancing staking rates and making PoS networks safer. In order to encourage the usage of Stafi, they will be rolling out a unique campaign named StakingDrop. It’s easy to get involved as long as you stake assets in the designated projects they will be announcing. Prepare for the $FIS stakedrop mining-farming!

Staking Providers Update

Top staking providers by the number of assets featured

Facilitating the Creation and Use of Staking Derivatives by Stafi & Frontier

Stafi and Frontier, a DeFi wallet solution reached a strategic cooperation. In the future, Frontier will integrate Stafi Staking Contracts, enabling users to obtain staking derivatives (rToken) more conveniently. Meanwhile, Frontier will also provide more choices of Staking on the strength of Stafi, including Non-custody Staking and Derivatives Staking.

Monthly Update by Chorus One The – Graph, Secret Network, Microtick, Substrate IBC Working Group, and other network updates

Check out the recent news and updates from Chorus One, Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana, and KAVA.

Research Review and everything you need to know about staking Harmony by Staking Rewards

Harmony has upgraded its mainnet on 19.05.2020 to support staking. The network has introduced the Effective Proof of Stake (ePoS) Consensus Algorithm. This article will explain and review the mechanics, economics, and dynamics that come along with ePoS. Authors look precisely at the aligned incentive of stakeholders. Furthermore, they provide tips for token holders on how to get the most out of a Harmony $ONE investment while staking.

[PoS Round-Up] Ethereum’s Medalla Testnet Launches, Cardano Releases Shelley Mainnet by Stake.fish

PoS Round-Up is the focused biweekly report on the major news in and around the Proof of Stake ecosystem.

Stake and participate in DeFi with Keysians and Ankr

With talk about yield farming, liquidity mining, and various other DeFi use cases, Ankr has been looking for ways for its users to start generating an extra stream of income on staked assets.

With ETH surging to new local highs the last few days off of ETH 2.0 and DeFi buzz, it is no surprise that their latest client, Keysians, is a project pivoted to capture market share in DeFi.

The main issue that comes with staking is that funds typically need to be locked up. With Keysians, it’s possible to finally have your cake and eat it too! Users are able to reap the rewards of staked tokens but also trading if they so desire.

Bitfinex will list Elrond for trading & staking services

Deposits for the mainnet ERD token will be enabled on the 17th of August. Bitfinex will also support staking soon after.

SolFlare, a non-custodial wallet for Solana, was released

SolFlare is a simple and intuitive interface that helps you connect to the Solana blockchain, manage and stake your SOL.

BitMax launched Polkadot trading and staking

In support of Polkadot (DOT) project, BitMax.io will launch DOT Cash Trading and DOT Staking Service after DOT on-chain transfers are officially enabled.

Easy Staking for xDAI STAKE

Easy Staking allows users to place STAKE into a contract and receive STAKE emissions on Ethereum. It provides an accessible staking mechanism for users and increases STAKE utility and DeFi composability. EasyStaking also:

Incentivizes liquidity providers on decentralized exchanges through unique reward mechanisms
Creates staking opportunities via hardware wallets and other Ethereum applications
Provides staking opportunities with no minimum STAKE requirements to participate
Limits total circulating supply

ICON IRC-3 Token Overview by Stakin

On July 14th, the status of the ICON Non-Fungible Token Standard creation project has moved to the final stage. Which means, it is possible to build IRC-3 on Mainnet. ICON’s Non-Fungible Token Standard (NFT) called IRC-3 was first proposed in 2018. The reason behind it was to create a standard interface to allow wallets, brokers, and other applications to work with any NFT on the ICON Network. The idea was inspired by the ERC721 token standard of Ethereum, allowing use cases such as ownership representation of digital or physical assets, and consignment to third party operators for token transfers.

IRC-3 covers the broad features of NFT use cases, including ownership representation of digital or physical assets, and consignment to third party operators for token transfers.

Bi-Weekly Newsletter Vol. 8 by Stakin

In this newsletter, they’re discussing:

SKALE Fuji Testnet
Solana Mainnet Beta v1.2 Upgrade and Serum Project
Ethereum 2.0 Final Testnet
ICON SCORE audit system
Ongoing and launched ICON DeFi Projects
Cardano Shelley Mainnet
Pocket Mainnet
StaFi Staking Drop

[How to] stake your SOL token using Solflare and your Ledger Nano S by Staking Facilities

Native MATIC Staking live on Frontier

Now you can stake your MATIC tokens with Trust Wallet, imToken, Fortmatic, Metamask Mobile using Frontier Mobile interface.

Frontier x Fantom = Access Fantom DeFi and Staking on Mobile

Fantom finance is a new platform that simplifies trading, lending, and borrowing of synthetic assets.

What is FIO Protocol and how it works by Everstake

FIO Protocol is a decentralized network for servicing the entire blockchain ecosystem and aimed at improving usability by developing a standard for interaction between various blockchains, crypto exchanges, wallets, and other cryptocurrency services. However, the platform does not integrate these systems and does not interfere with the internal processes of other blockchains.

Polkadot DOTs Staking Is Now Available On Lunie

Upcoming Staking Events

10th August 2020 — TezTalks Radio #7 — Community Update
9th – 11th August 2020 – Community Ethereum Development Conference, EDCON
13th August 2020 — TezTalks Live #9 — Elevated Returns
Until 14th August 2020 – Hackusama, Hack on Polkadot’s Wild Cousin. Feel free to join right now!
August 22nd – 23rd, 2020 – #FutureProof Technical Summit
24th August 2020 — TezTalks Radio #8 — Cryptonomic
27th August 2020 — TezTalks Live #10 — Payzos
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:

Source: GitHub + GitLab metrics

Recent days were full of hard work, worthy contributions, and support from a significant number of people from the community. As part of the development report, the Citadel team has shared what they’ve been working on at this stage. Firstly, they updated API load monitoring, optimized withdrawal of rewards for the specified time, created subscription to an e-mail newsletter, set up convenient work with application logs, and completed saving Ethereum transactions. As for frontend tasks, the Citadel developers optimized export key for Bitcoin address and import of Bitcoin address via Trezor, added the ability to use staked undelegated funds for ICON stakers, updated balance and stake interfaces, updated password recovery script, and made some small interface fixes. Currently, the team actively works with the feedback they are getting from the first Citadel users. They push out builds on a regular basis to satisfy all the needs of the Citadel community.

As for the social side, the team participated in IOST 2020 Q2 Global Partner Nodes Meeting and present the freshly released Citadel public beta. They attended CosmWasm 10th bi-weekly community call. The Citadel Founders had a series of calls with some great members of the PoS ecosystem including (Chainflow, Everstake, Staked, Stakin, Baking Bad, Bake’n’Rolls, weBloc, Sharpn, ICON Hyperconnect, ICON briz, IOST Best Node). Forby, they answered all the community questions associated with the release during the Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) session in the Citadel Telegram chat.

Last week, the team sat down with Citadel CTO, Gregory, for a conversation that hit on his personal working experience, the story behind joining the Citadel, and some highlights on the project itself. Read the full interview in the Citadel blog. On top of that, in fresh ‘Networks’ governance updates’ article, Dmitriy Shekhovtsov, Lead Analyst at Citadel, overviews the latest significant governance changes of networks supported by Citadel. Also, he wrote an article on Citadel’s features and IOST integration.

As you have gleaned, the biggest event from July was the long-anticipated launch of Citadel beta! We welcome you to test Citadel out as much as possible and give the team feedback so that they could make you experience much better!

Interview with CEO of Citadel.One – Anton Pavlutsky

We had our first-ever interview with Citadel’s very own CEO Anton, who is an experienced developer and crypto skeptic. We discuss Anton’s role in the Citadel project, the current crypto weaknesses, and possible ways of market development. Additionally, Anton discloses some features to come to the Citadel, so make sure to check it out!

Learn more about Citadel:

Check the recent biweekly updates on PoS Networks, created by Paradigm Fund:

"The Staking Data API has been a necessary part to make this product possible."
Matt Maximo (Portfolio Manager, GDIF - Grayscale)

State of Stake #26