Four altcoins, all of which individually boast a market capitalization of below $600 million, have recorded growth of over 100% in just seven days. At the top of the list is TrueFi (TRU), a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that supports uncollateralized lending. According to CoinGecko, TRU surged from a seven-day low of $0.14 to $0.75, […]
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The options for earning passive income from staking ETH continue to expand. Here are a few.
The overall feel across the cryptocurrency landscape over the past week has been one of bubbling anticipation, with the Ethereum network finally undergoing its London hard fork, which includes reforms to the transaction fee market, thanks to EIP-1559.
London is the latest in a series of upgrades that are part of Ethereum’s measured transition from its original proof-of-work consensus model to a proof-of-stake model dubbed Ethereum 2.0.
On Eth2, tokenholders who hold at least 32 Ether (ETH) can operate a validator node and verify transactions on the network. With the current price of Ether trading near $2,700, that puts the entry cost of running an Eth2 validator node at $86,400 — a price too steep for most participants in the market.
To help combat this issue, several options — including staking pools and centralized exchange staking — have emerged to offer all Ether tokenholders the opportunity to earn a yield on their tokens.
Here’s a review of some of the top options currently available to Ether holders.
Another option available to Ether holders who wish to stake their tokens while also being able to access their equity is Lido, a liquid staking solution for Ethereum.
Liquid staking protocols allow users to earn staking rewards without locking assets or maintaining staking infrastructure.
Through the Lido platform, users can stake their Ether with no minimum deposit required, with a current APR of 5.4% after the staking rewards fee is deducted. In return for staked Ether, users receive stETH, which can be freely moved and traded at will.
According to data from DeFi Llama, Lido is currently the top-ranked Ethereum staking pool and the eleventh-largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol by total value locked, with $3.26 billion in value currently locked in the Lido protocol.
A proposal to list bETH (wrapped stETH on Terra) as collateral to @anchor_protocol has been submitted️
— Lido (@LidoFinance) August 2, 2021
This will allow users to borrow UST against staked ETH collateral and earn liquidity mining rewards using Anchor’s collateralized lending.https://t.co/ThQrW9PGyc pic.twitter.com/C1DGLhqQZL
The liquid staking capabilities of Lido are currently in the process of expanding, thanks to an initiative in the Anchor protocol community to list bETH — a wrapped form of stETH on the Terra blockchain — as a form of collateral on the Anchor platform, which will allow Anchor users to borrow TerraUSD (UST) against their staked Ether collateral as well as earn liquidity mining rewards.
StakeWise is an Eth2 staking service whose goal is to help users achieve the highest yield possible on their holdings through the combination of staking, yield farming, low fees and a unique tokenomic structure that enables compound staking.
We have just released an ETH2 rewards compounding interface
— StakeWise (@stakewise_io) July 30, 2021
StakeWise users can now reinvest directly from the dashboard and boost their APY through monthly compounding.
No other protocol offers this ☝️ pic.twitter.com/9iSJFCkqHG
Interested parties can deposit Ether into the StakeWise smart contract and, in return, receive sETH2, which is “staking ETH.” Rewards for the staked assets are paid out in rETH2, which is “reward ETH,” and both sETH2 and rETH2 can be exchanged at a one-to-one ratio for Ether.
These assets can also be transferred to any Ethereum wallet or exchanged for other tokens, allowing tokenholders to access the equity held in their staked Ether while also being able to earn staking rewards.
The StakeWise protocol enables anyone holding at least 0.001 ETH to participate in staking via StakeWise Pool, while larger tokenholders with at least 32 ETH can use StakeWise Solo, a noncustodial staking service where users provide the public part of their withdrawal key and blocks of 32 ETH for StakeWise to create and manage validators on their behalf.
The current APR offered for staking on the StakeWise protocol is 5.64%. There is a 10% commission for rewards generated through StakeWise Pool, while StakeWise Solo users are charged a fee of 10 Dai per validator per month.
Related: Boomer brand changes NYSE ticker from ‘ETH,’ acknowledging crypto’s ascendancy
For users who are not quite up to speed on the ins and outs of decentralized finance — or simply prefer the more traditional custodial route — some of the top centralized exchanges in the ecosystem have started offering Eth2 staking services to traders on their platforms.
The leading options currently available to users in the United States are Coinbase and Kraken, the number-two and number-four globally ranked cryptocurrency exchanges, respectively, according to 24-hour trading volume.
The main drawback for users who wish to stake their Ether using one of these options is that their stakes will be illiquid, meaning that they will be unable to trade their tokens or access the value contained within until the Eth2 network is fully launched.
Kraken currently offers an annual staking reward of 5% to 7%, depending on the rules of the Ethereum protocol, and charges a 15% administrative fee on all rewards received.
We hit 800,000 ETH 2.0 staked on Kraken!
— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) July 26, 2021
That's over $1.8 Billion in $ETH securing the Beacon Chain
Since launch we've distributed over 25,300 ETH ($58 Million) in total rewards generated by our clients staking ETH 2.0.
Put your @Ethereum to work https://t.co/K5waYvklKj pic.twitter.com/AR23ys6YNK
The current APR offered by Coinbase is 5%, after a 25% commission is deducted. While neither Kraken nor Coinbase offers any kind of insurance on staked Ether, Coinbase has promised to cover any losses that occur should its validator responsibilities not be met.
Overall, the top staking options available to Ether holders offer an APR range of 5% to 7% and charge a minimum commission fee of between 10% and 25%. When compared with the sub-1% savings rate offered by most banks on a rapidly inflating dollar supply that loses more value by the day, Ether staking could soon become the preferred savings account and a source of passive income for cryptocurrency proponents.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Ether has more potential than Bitcoin as a newer cryptocurrency, and the latest EIP 1559 will help the token trade more like a fixed asset, Pantera Capital CEO said.
Amid the looming Ethereum London hard fork, Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead predicted that the upcoming upgrade would likely help Ether (ETH) outpace Bitcoin (BTC) as the largest cryptocurrency.
As a newer cryptocurrency, Ether has more potential than Bitcoin, Morehead said at the Reuters Global Markets Forum on Monday, noting that the latest Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 upgrade will help the digital token to trade more like a fixed asset.
One of five EIPs in ETH London upgrade, EIP 1559 is an anticipated update to Ethereum’s existing fee structure, introducing a minimum payment for sending Ethereum transactions and move away from a bidding system that allows miners to prioritize the highest bids. Designed to programmatically adjust fees for users to pay the lowest bid for each block, EIP 1559 upgrade would potentially make Ether a deflationary asset.
“You’ll see a transition of people who want to store wealth, doing it in Ether rather than just Bitcoin,” Morehead predicted, adding that the cryptocurrency’s shift to Ethereum 2.0 will significantly reduce Ether’s mining energy consumption levels compared with the one of Bitcoin. Ethereum’s wide implementation in decentralized finance applications would also help Ether grow bigger than Bitcoin, he said.
Despite predicting a brighter future for Ether, Morehead is still optimistic about Bitcoin’s growth in the future. The CEO reportedly predicted that Bitcoin would trade between $80,000 and $90,000 by the end of 2021, rising above $120,000 within a year. Surging mainstream adoption could further drive Bitcoin price to as high as $700,000 in the next decade, Morehead noted.
Related: Ether price hits 2-week high as London hard fork momentum builds
Launched in 2015, Ether is the second most valued cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization amounting to $290 billion at the time of writing. Scheduled to take place on Wednesday, the Ethereum London is one of the biggest Ethereum upgrades designed to move its blockchain from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, meaning that the network would mostly rely on staking instead of mining. Launched in 2009, Bitcoin relies on the PoW consensus algorithm.
Morehead is not alone in thinking that Ethereum could outperform Bitcoin in the future. Mike Novogratz, founder and CEO of crypto investment firm Galaxy Digital, predicted in late June that Ether could become the “biggest cryptocurrency one day.”
Want to get paid to HODL? Here are five easy ways crypto investors make money without trading.
Large price jumps and 100x gains get a lot of attention from pundits and influencers in the cryptocurrency community because they offer the hope of overnight riches.
In reality, these opportunities are few and far between. Not to mention, only a handful of traders actually manage to catch these waves and cash out in time to lock in life-changing money.
Fortunately, catching a large price surge is far from being the only way for crypto investors to make a buck, and the recent rise of decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the slow march of mainstream crypto adoption provides a near endless stream of investment opportunities.
Let’s have a look at five different ways crypto holders can make an easy buck without actually having to trade.
Staking, which rewards users for locking tokens on a protocol as collateral for transaction validation, is one of the best ways to earn a yield on assets held in a crypto-based portfolio.
In August, the Ethereum network will switch from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus model to a proof-of-stake (POS) model, and Ether (ETH) holders who stake in the Eth2 contract can earn up to 5.83%.
Under this new PoS system, token holders actively participate in transaction validation by locking their coins in nodes on the network that then vie for a chance to verify transactions, create new blocks and receive the rewards that come along with it.
Data from Staking Rewards shows that a stake of 10 Ether currently results in a weekly earning of 0.0075 ETH, worth $17.96 at current prices, and a yearly earning of 0.3876 ETH which is currently worth $933.69.
The percentage yield for Ether decreases as more tokens are locked on the network so the final earnings may change.
Currently, the top five crypto assets by staked value are Cardano’s ADA, Ether, Solana (SOL), USD Coin (USDC) and Polkadot (DOT).
All things considered, staking provides one of the best low-risk opportunities in crypto to gain a bigger stack regardless of market sentiment or performance, while also helping to support the network through transaction validation.
The growth of the DeFi sector led to the development of a diverse crypto lending ecosystem, where users can deposit their cryptocurrencies to various lending protocols in exchange for rewards in the underlying token or in different assets like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether and various altcoins.
Aave is the top lending protocol at the moment and the platform offers yield opportunities for tokens on the Ethereum and Polygon network with its native coin MATIC.
The chart above shows the top seven lending pools available through the AAVE protocol on Polygon and rewards are paid in Wrapped MATIC (WMATIC), with the current deposit annual percentage yield (APY) being 1.92% and a yearly estimated APY of 6.1%.
Other top lending protocols include Curve (CRV), Compound (COMP), MakerDAO (MKR) and Yearn.finance (YFI).
Lending offers another low-risk way to earn a decent yield, in both bull and bear markets, on tokens that don’t offer user-controlled rewards like staking.
Liquidity provision is one of the primary components of a DeFi platform, and investors who choose to provide funds to emerging platforms are often rewarded with high percentage returns on the amount staked, as well as a percentage of the fees generated by transactions within the pool.
As seen in the image above, providing liquidity to an Ether/USDC pool on QuickSwap will entitle an investor with a percentage of the $23,098 in total daily distributed rewards and a fee APY of 33.81%.
Ideally, long term investors would be wise to research the available pools on the market, and if a liquidity pair comprised of solid projects or even a stablecoin pair such as USDC/Tether (USDT) looks appealing, it has the potential to be the blockchain version of a savings account that offers far better yields than can currently be found in any bank or legacy financial institution.
Yield farming is the concept of putting crypto assets to work in a way that generates the highest yield possible while minimizing risk.
As new platforms and protocols emerge, they offer high incentives to depositors as a way of mining for liquidity and increasing the total value locked (TVL) on the protocol.
Rewards for STKGHST-WETH LP deposits on DinoSwap. Source: DinoSwap
The high yields offered are generally paid out in the native token of the platform as seen above, where a user has deposited a liquidity pool token for an STKGHS-WETH pair which has an APR of 189.2% and has so far generated a reward of 3.312 DINO.
For long investors who hold a portfolio filled with an assortment of tokens, yield farming is a way to gain exposure to new projects and obtain new tokens without having to spend new funds
Related: Here’s why DinoSwap’s (DINO) TVL rose above $330M a week after launch
Blockchain gaming and NFT collecting is another way to produce a return on a crypto portfolio without spending new funds.
Axie Infinity is the most popular example at the moment, and the in-game play involves trading, battling, collecting and breeding NFT-based creatures known as Axies.
Playing Axie Infinity generates rewards in the form of Smooth Love Potion (SLP), an in-game token that is used in the Axie breeding process and also trades on major cryptocurrency exchanges. Users can swap SLP for dollar-based stablecoins or other large-cap cryptocurrencies.
According to data from Your Crypto Library, “Today, the average player earns between 150 to 200 SLP per day,” which, at current market value, is worth between $40 and $53.50.
In some parts of the world, that amounts to the income provided by a full-time job. For this reason, Axie Infinity has seen a massive uptick in user activity and new accounts in countries like Venezuela and Malaysia.
Crypto investing, lending, staking and play-to-earn blockchain games provide a much higher return on investment than traditional banks offer on savings and checking accounts. As the blockchain sector grows, it’s likely that investors will continue to flock to platforms that offer high yields for engaging with the protocol.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Although it’s possible to draw comparisons between almost any two blockchain development platforms, comparing Ethereum with Polkadot is almost an inevitability. Not only on the technical level – they use a comparable architecture and proof-of-stake consensus to achieve scalability – but because Vitalik Buterin and Dr. Gavin Wood also have a shared history in Ethereum. […]
Some of JPMorgan’s new blockchain-related job applications seek candidates with experience in Bitcoin, Ethereum and proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms.
Major American investment bank JPMorgan is upping its blockchain hiring spree by posting a series of new blockchain-related job applications.
JPMorgan has opened multiple positions to pursue its global blockchain development efforts including job postings targeting blockchain-focused software developers, engineers, marketers and auditors. According to the company’s open positions on LinkedIn, many of these new blockchain-related job postings were published in the last few days.
The new job postings seek blockchain talent across several of JPMorgan’s branches worldwide, including the United States, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and other countries. The company posted more than 30 such openings over the past seven days in the U.S. alone.
A number of applications specifically target talent for JPMorgan’s digital currency-focused Onyx division as well as Liink, the company’s proprietary blockchain-based interbank data network. Launched last October, Onyx is focused on JPMorgan Chase’s in-house stablecoin known as JPM Coin.
One of the newly opened positions, a blockchain platform software engineer in Jersey City, New Jersey seeks experts specializing in blockchain security technologies, proof-of-stake algorithms, as well as experience with major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
Related: Crypto businesses struggling to fill job openings amid industry expansion
The new job postings come shortly after JPMorgan’s analysts forecasted that Ethereum’s upcoming transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake will boost global adoption of crypto staking yields, potentially triggering a surge of staking pay-outs up to $40 billion by 2025. The bank’s analysts also believe that Bitcoin could potentially evolve into a compelling alternative to gold and surpass a $140,000 price mark in the long run.
BTCST earnings per staked token increased after China cracked down on Bitcoin miners and the network’s hashrate dropped.
China’s ongoing crackdown on Bitcoin (BTC) mining resulted in a mass relocation of mining operations out of the country and it has led to a more than fifty percent drawdown in the Bitcoin network hashrate from an all-time high of 197.9 exahash per second (ehash/s) on April 15 to its current rate at 97 ehash/s.
One token that was hit especially hard by the hashrate drop was the Bitcoin Standard Hashrate Token (BTCST), a project that collateralized the Bitcoin hashrate with each token representing 0.1 TH/s of Bitcoin mining power.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that BTCST recently began to show signs of recovery after its price rallied 57% from a low of $13.57 on July 18 to an intraday high at $27.38 on July 19 as the Bitcoin hash rate begins to stabilize near 100 ehash/s.
Three reasons for the recent boost in BTCST include increased earnings due to the decline of the Bitcoin network hashrate, the ability to stake BTCST to earn rewards and a functioning community governance system that is able to compensate users who lose funds while being liquidity providers for the ecosystem.
While the decline in the BTC hash rate has widely been seen as a negative, the BTCST ecosystem actually benefited as the declines in mining difficulty translated into increased earnings per token.
Since each token represents 0.1 TH/s of Bitcoin mining power, the earning power of each token has increased by 34% as a result of the reduction in total hashpower, which in turn, provides increased rewards for participants in the ecosystem.
While the entire #Bitcoin hashrate has dropped significantly during the past few weeks, Standard Hashrate Group has maintained a stable hashrate of 150 Petahashes.
— BTCST (@BTCST2020) July 4, 2021
This means that the total amount of #BTC we reward #BTCST stakers daily has increased by over 34% to an ATH!
A second reason for the growth seen in BTCST is the growing number of opportunities to earn a yield through staking or providing liquidity.
As seen in the image above, BTCST holders currently have the opportunity to stake their tokens to earn rewards paid out in BTCB, which is the wrapped version of BTC on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), or the native BTCST token.
The platform also includes options for staking or earning Dogecoin (DOGE), shown above as DOGE or Tau DOGE (τDOGE), but at the time of writing the APY offered was listed at 0%.
Related: Malaysia is literally crushing thousands of illegal Bitcoin miners
A third reason for the recent strength seen in BTCST is the recent passage of STP 14, which is a one-time compensation plan for liquidity providers who suffered losses as a result of the recent ‘Restorative Rebase’
The #BTCST Community has passed STP 14: τAsset Liquidity Provider One-Time Compensation Program!
— BTCST (@BTCST2020) July 2, 2021
Liquidity providers on partnered swaps like @PancakeSwap who were impacted by Restorative Rebase will receive a one-time compensation equivalent to the Tau Asset and amount affected.
Tau assets on the network include τBitcoin and τDOGE and they are primarily used as a staking token that pays out rewards in τDOGE.
The passage of a new governance proposal suggests that the project is attempting to respond to negative developments and user’s loss of funds within the ecosystem but it is yet to be seen whether the current rally will find the momentum to continue higher.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
The Provenance Blockchain Foundation launched its new, open source proof-of-stake blockchain in May. Shortly thereafter, parent company Figure Technologies announced a $200 million Series D funding haul.
Provenance will utilize Bison Trails’ infrastructure to strengthen its network and provide support to Hash holders to run validator nodes, according to June Ou, the executive director at Provenance Blockchain Foundation. Hash is the native cryptocurrency of the Provenance blockchain, serving both as a medium of payment as well as a governance token.
“We’re proud to support Provenance in its mission to transform the financial services industry for the better,” said Joe Lallouz, Bison Trails’ CEO. “The launch of Provenance to a public Tendermint blockchain opens the door for the growing adoption and new applications of blockchain technology in financial services.”
The Provenance blockchain is launching on Tendermint with much fanfare after its parent company, Figure Technologies, closed a $200 million investment round in May of this year. The Series D fundraiser was led by Morgan Creek Digital Funding and 10T Holdings. With the raise, Figure Technologies now has an estimated valuation of $3.2 billion.
Related: Blockchain-based fintech firm Figure raises $200M
Provenance has been built to help traditional financial institutions uncover new business opportunities in blockchain. The platform’s primary use case is facilitating marketplaces and exchanges for buyers and sellers of digital assets.
As for Bison Trails, the infrastructure provider has been at the center of several high-profile partnerships. As Cointelegraph reported, Bison Trails provides key infrastructure support to Crypto.com’s payment blockchain. In February of this year, Bison Trails launched Global Blockchain Sync to enhance the node operations of its partners, which include Polkadot, Ethereum and Cosmos.
Bison Trails, an enterprise infrastructure provider for the cryptocurrency sector, announced Tuesday that it is providing network support to Provenance, a multi-billion-dollar platform that enables traditional financial institutions to offer blockchain services to their clients.
“We believe ClayStack has developed an efficient solution that addresses the shortcomings of present-day liquid staking protocols,” said CoinFund Founder and CEO Jake Brukhman. CoinFund was among several blockchain venture firms to participate in the raise.
Cryptocurrency staking protocol ClayStack has secured $5.2 million in seed funding from several prominent blockchain investor funds, putting it on course to introduce new innovations in staking later this year.
The seed round was co-led by CoinFund and ParaFi Capital, with around a dozen other venture funds also participating, ClayStack announced Tuesday. Most notably, Coinbase Ventures, Solana Foundation, Hashed and Spartan Group were among the investors.
On an individual level, some of the seed investors who participated in the round include Meltem Demirores of CoinShares, Aave founder Stani Kulechov, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal and Sandeep Naiwal, the co-founder of Polygon.
Staking allows investors to earn passive income or interest on their crypto by locking up their holdings for a specific period. In the process, stakers have the opportunity to participate in network governance and other consensus-taking processes.
The ClayStack protocol promotes a method called liquid staking, which allows users to stake cryptocurrencies without the liquidity lockup that’s characteristic of many networks. Santiago R. Santos, a general partner at ParaFi Capital, said “liquid staking is becoming increasingly important in a multi-chain world.”
ClayStack founder and CEO Mohak Agarwal noted that the need for liquid staking is becoming more apparent as the market for decentralized finance, or DeFi, continues to grow:
“The merging of DeFi and staking is a paradigm shift in cryptocurrency and this investment round will enable us to innovate from a position of strength as we head into our alpha launch.”
Related: Crypto staking rewards and their unfair taxation in the US
ClayStack is planning to release the alpha version of its staking protocol in the third quarter of this year.
Venture funds have poured billions of dollars into budding crypto startups this year, signaling heightened investor interest in transformative blockchain technology. One of the most prominent blockchain venture plays has come from Andreessen Horowitz, which recently launched a $2.2 billion fund earmarked for crypto startups.
