TL;DR
- What our team saw and heard at the Staking Rewards summit on Nov. 8th, 2022
- How the staking industry will be impacted by recent technological and market developments
- Discussing ways to support validators and add value through custodial liquid staking
Staking Rewards Summit Overview
Last week was filled with lots of news,and hopefully by now everyone has assimilated the situation. While it may look very dark for some, there are still builders working towards their goals in enabling Web3 applications to deliver on what we know as Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
Most of us who attended the Staking Summit organized by Staking Rewards can be considered in that group, as our team is not naive in recognizing that Centralized Finance can be subject to bad management and harm the whole staking industry. Regulators will start to look into what our industry does with more scrutiny and Meta Pool’s job to make sure that transparency is at the center of what we do.
We believe that putting users at the center of everything we do and each decision we make, is the important step towards achieving financial sustainability of the blockchain protocol. That was something our team has emphasized since our mainnet launch on NEAR.
Now we also have to take care of institutions that are exploring the Web3 space and especially DeFi, for them to have the right tools and services available to them under the right conditions so they can comply with their regulatory needs.
The Rise of the Staking Industry
One key point from the staking summit is that less than 10% of the tokens in a proof of stake network are flowing back through a liquid staking solution, such as Meta Pool. This shows that we have a long way to go. One recent newsletter article by the Staking Rewards’s analyst team gives a comprehensive breakdown of the data.
Emphasizing the point of value capture, Felix Lutsch of Chorus One talked about Maximum Extraction Value (MEV) and how nodes use this mechanism in order to extract value from the staking rewards which the delegator is not exposed to. In essence, those fees are not transferred to the end user and this is mainly done by validator nodes in a proof of stake network.
There were some great sessions on getting the staking industry ready for institutions, with great insights from Sygnum Bank, Klin Finance, Attestant and Swarm. They reinforced the idea that value creation will come from the infrastructure being deployed for digital assets. This framework will eventually host real world assets as we evolve and the needs of institutions start looking into crypto for value added creation to their businesses.
Institutions in the Staking Industry
During the conference our partner Finoa made the announcement of their partnership with Meta Pool, that enables liquid staking through their custodial services platform. For those not familiar with Finoa, they are the first custody solution for NEAR Protocol and have been serving the NEAR Foundation since launching.
When Meta Pool began exploring custody solutions, they were our first option. Then the opportunity came for Finoa to integrate our liquid staking smart contract in their custodial solution, and now they have. This was our first piece of big news coming before the end of the year!
Now financial institutions and venture capital firms can custody their NEAR and also participate in liquid staking which enables decentralization of the protocol, making it more censorship resistant and allows our liquid staking token stNEAR to flow into other applications while helping secure the network.
Validators and Value Creation for the Network
It is important to recognize that without the node operators, securing the network and validating transactions would not happen on a proof of stake protocol. We need to understand that they are running a business, and it should be an important consideration for protocols to take this into account when deploying solutions on the network that extract value from their core business.
We discussed this core tenet of the staking industry on the Influence of Staking for the Validator business panel we shared with Ankr, Alluvial, Lido and Tenderize.
Overall it was a great experience for our team, even with such adverse news. Everyone understands that CeFi has risks just like everything we do in Web3. This is magnified when operations are not transparent. Meta Pool believes that this bear market is helping weed out bad actors, and this will benefit the industry as a whole.
For now it is up to us the builders to lay the foundations on what we believe will help society evolve in value creation around digital assets.
Keep on staking!
About Meta Pool & stNEAR
Meta Pool is the leading liquid staking solution for $NEAR and wNEAR token holders. With Meta Pool you earn NEAR staking rewards and maintain your liquidity to participate in DeFi protocols on NEAR and Aurora.
Users staking $NEAR and wNEAR with Meta Pool receive in exchange stNEAR (staked NEAR) tokens.
stNEAR simultaneously accrues staking rewards and unlocks users’ liquidity enabling them to participate in DeFi activities (e.g. lending, farming, borrowing) on NEAR and Aurora.
Stake $NEAR on Meta Pool
~11% APY
Get stNEAR
Yield-bearing token
Go DeFi on NEAR & Aurora
More APY and more rewards
Meta Pool also solves the problems associated with Proof-of-Stake networks staking: illiquidity, immovability and accessibility. Meta Pool also aims to distribute staking in multiple validators to improve censorship-resistance of the NEAR network.
With a TVL of ~9 Million $NEAR and growing, Meta Pool has become in just a few months a cornerstone element of the NEAR ecosystem. Meta Pool is making NEAR Protocol more decentralized and therefore more secure.
In February 2022 Meta Pool has been successfully audited by BlockSec, confirming the implementation of the highest security standards.
For more information visit https://metapool.app.
