Akash is a decentralized marketplace, where cloud providers (providers) can lease their computing power to users (tenants). The Akash marketplace functions by conducting reverse auctions whereby the tenant creates orders for computing power, and providers bid on these orders. When the tenant chooses a provider, they create a lease. After this, the user deploys a Docker container on the Akash Container Platform where users are able to then run any cloud-native application and access a range of cloud management services like Kubernetes.
Please note that the unstake period is 21 days. This means that you can only unstake and withdraw coins to your wallet after this time has passed. We wish you profitable staking!
In case you don't have the keplr extension installed in your browser visit https://www.keplr.app/ and click on Install extension.
Click on Install Keplr for Chrome if you are using a Chrome browser or Brave if you are using the Brave browser and follow the installation instructions.
Click on the extension in the Chrome/Brave toolbar and the following page will open up.
In case you do not have an existing Keplr account you can create a new account
You will be shown 12 words as your mnemonic seed. Select24 words option for a more secure mnemonic. Back it up securely (read the warning below)
Back up your mnemonic seed securely.
Enter an account name and a passphrase to unlock your wallet. You will be asked for the mnemonic again. Enter the 24 words in order. This is to make sure you remember the mnemonic.
Finally, click on Next to create your account
Regardless of whether you already have an account or if you created it just now you may now click on the extension to view your address or visit https://wallet.keplr.app/#/akashnet/stake to see the full dashboard.
If you don't already have AKT in your account fund it with some tokens. You may use an exchange to transfer the AKT tokens to your address or get it from someone who already holds those.
To stake click on the Akash network in the left panel and click on Stake
You will be shown a list of validators with whom to stake on the right side. Scroll to Chorus One and click on Manage.
A modal with Chorus One's description will pop up. Click once on Delegate to enter the amount of tokens you want to stake.
Clicking on Delegate again will take you to Keplr wallet for approval. Approve the transaction and you will be able to see your stake.
There is a 21-day unbonding process for staked AKTs during which delegator AKTs do not earn rewards and cannot be transferred, exchanged, or spent. AKTs can, however, be slashed during the unbonding period.
After some time you will see rewards getting accumulated in your account. You can simply go to the Keplr extension to claim them.
Withdrawals are imminent. This March, Ethereum will be undergoing its first hard fork of the year, bringing much anticipated withdrawals to the mainnet. As developers move into the final pre-launch sequence, by upgrading the public testnets (first Sepolia, then Goerli), we wanted to get you up to speed on this coming Shapella (Shanghai + Capella) upgrade.
If you look at Ethereum’s Beacon Chain today, the way to participate as a validator means you must send at least 32 ETH to the Deposit Contract, or “stake” your ETH. The Beacon Chain follows the contract, querying for changes so that it can process any new deposits. The entire validator lifecycle consists of different states that determine what you can or can’t do as part of the network.
Ethereum only allows a small number of validators to start or stop validating at a time to maintain the stability of the validator set. Once you are part of the “Active” set, you start accruing rewards by voting (”attesting”) every six minutes with the occasional proposal. The majority of these rewards are added to the balance of the validator.
At any point, you might want to stop validating and take out your ETH, in which case you would want to join the voluntary exit queue. On the other hand, you might have been a validator for some time and want to utilize the excess ETH, considering the average validator balance is ~34 ETH.
Withdrawals close the validator cycle and mark the end of the PoS transition that started with the Merge in September 2022. Before then, the two chains were unaware of each other. Specifically, the Execution Layer didn’t communicate at all with the Beacon Chain until they merged. Withdrawals stand opposite to the deposit process, crediting your ETH from the Beacon Chain on the Execution Layer to finally close the cycle.
There are 2 requirements for withdrawals to be processed:
For every block, the network scans the validator set for the first 16 validators that satisfy those two requirements. Then, those withdrawals get processed as part of the block in a gasless transaction.
According to the most recent estimate, ~300,000 validators are on the old credentials, meaning the majority of validators will need to change them (it involves digging for those mnemonics created over 2 years ago). This change can only be done once.
Chorus One developed a tool called “eth-staking-smith” that enables the user to generate those signed messages and easily update their withdrawal address.
The process after that is fully automatic. Meaning, you don’t have to do anything else to start spending those rewards, they will be credited to the withdrawal address without your intervention. If all of those validators properly change their credentials, a complete run through the active validator set would take about 4 and a half days. Meaning, you can expect to receive your rewards to the withdrawal address in that cadence.
Please check the official ETH Withdrawals FAQ to learn more about withdrawal mechanics and enabling withdrawals for your validator.
We have previously elaborated on why staking is the most attractive risk-adjusted source of yield in crypto. We believe in its force to provide value at the base level to stakers, deliver competitive results and guarantee that networks such as Ethereum continue to operate as the backbone of a decentralized financial system.
However, the inability to withdraw staked assets on Ethereum has been a risk consideration that stakers had to make before committing to the task for the past years. Not anymore. This massive unlocking of liquidity is sure to make big waves in the coming months and impact the staking panorama of Ethereum. Staking has also made the news with the recent news of regulations in the United States. As a non-custodial staking provider, we continue to believe in this thesis.
With an increasing number of ETH being staked post-Merge, along with growing adoption of the Ethereum network and a rising ETH price, we believe that 2023 will be an even stronger year for Ethereum staking post-Shanghai. However, we must get ready for some changes.
We made our bet on the Ethereum staking ecosystem last year, when we finally unveiled OPUS: our API and Portal solution to significantly speed up institutional staking operations.
Since then, we have been working on many exciting features, including enabling MEV rewards, with more in the pipeline to be rolled out in the coming months. We plan to support withdrawals in our infrastructure as soon as it's safe after the upgrade, and we are working to create the simplest staking and unstaking process in the market for all kinds of institutional clients.
We have been testing this process and will continue to do so on the available testnets for increased security. We also provide a suite of options including the mentioned update of validator withdrawals addresses and a full Portal to consult all rewards accumulated.
Reach out to sales@chorus.one to know more about how OPUS can help you start staking or offer staking to your customers with minimal setup.
About Chorus One
Chorus One is one of the biggest institutional staking providers globally operating infrastructure for 35+ Proof-of-Stake networks including Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, Avalanche, and Near amongst others. Since 2018, we have been at the forefront of the PoS industry and now offer easy enterprise-grade staking solutions, industry-leading research, and also invest in some of the most cutting-edge protocols through Chorus Ventures. We are a team of over 50 passionate individuals spread throughout the globe who believe in the transformative power of blockchain technology.
For more information, please visit chorus.one
Cryptocurrencies can be used in three kinds of yield-bearing activity. These have cumulative trust assumptions -
We believe staking yield is the most attractive risk-adjusted source of yield in crypto for two reasons:
Proof-of-stake ecosystems do not have an anchor in the real world. This means that the staking yield rate denoted in native terms is completely decoupled from any kind of factor in the wider economy. For staking, endogenous capital (e.g. ETH) is the only factor of production.
This is a difference to proof-of-work (PoW) systems, where electricity and hardware costs serve as an unbridgeable anchor to the real economy, directly affecting a miner’s yield rate. It is also different from most CeFi and DeFi yield sources, which depend more heavily on user activity.
The above implies that staking can be an uncorrelated yield source for two kinds of investors — those that are bullish long-term and denominate their holdings in native units, and those that are hedged against the price risk of the staked asset.
The token price risk may be hedged out through on- or off-chain solutions. The former case has the advantage of transparency, reflected in an improved counterparty risk assessment and iron-clad terms. With some of the largest lending desks in the space embroiled in a liquidity crisis, this is a significant factor. Validators are ideally positioned to execute on-chain hedging, as they directly interface with the staking yield source and thus no custody transfer, i.e. additional risk, is required to interface with a hedging solution.
One increasingly popular on-chain hedging solution is a “staking yield interest rate swap”. This allows validators to swap token-denominated staking yield for a stablecoin, typically USDC, locking in a stable and predictable income for a staking client. The associated risk is very minor as neither the validator nor the swap counterparty takes custody of the principal — the worst case, a counterparty default, would reduce to the price risk on the yield earned on the staked notional. Chorus One can leverage Alkimiya, the leading protocol for on-chain capital markets, to execute this type of hedge.
A second way to hedge is by using the staking yield to finance classic options-based strategies. For example, a zero-cost collar options package may incorporate the staking yield in a way that enables an asymmetric pay-off.
Chorus One is invested in & advises a range of solutions optimizing staking yield for return (i.e. MEV) and risk (i.e. hedging). Reach out to us at sales@chorus.one to learn more about how these can be tailored to fit your use case.
About Chorus One
Chorus One is one of the biggest institutional staking providers globally operating infrastructure for 35+ Proof-of-Stake networks including Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, Avalanche, and Near amongst others. Since 2018, we have been at the forefront of the PoS industry and now offer easy enterprise-grade staking solutions, industry-leading research, and also invest in some of the most cutting-edge protocols through Chorus Ventures. We are a team of over 50 passionate individuals spread throughout the globe who believe in the transformative power of blockchain technology.
For more information, please visit chorus.one
It’s quite simple to delegate purchased Tezos coins (XTZ). The main steps for delegating Tezos remain the same for most wallets
Let us see an example of each of these steps using Atomex wallet
Go to https://wallet.atomex.me/. Select My Wallets in case you already have an account otherwise click on CREATE NEW WALLET
If you are creating a new wallet then follow the onscreen instructions.
There you go! You have your Tezos wallet.
Press Wallets, select Tezos and press Delegate.
Upon the successful completion of your transaction, you will see the success message as below
Congratulations now you are baking your XTZ!!
After you click “Delegate”, the corresponding operation is sent to the blockchain and your delegation status becomes “Pending”. You can check that everything went well in Tezos explorer.
As you can see, your delegation is not applied immediately right after delegating. You need to wait a while before it’s confirmed. There are three stages of delegation:
This stage lasts 2 cycles = ~ 6 Days
1 cycle = 8192 blocks = 4096 minutes (each block every ~30 seconds) = ~2.8 days
In this stage you’ve successfully delegated, but your rights are not transferred to the baker yet. This delay is required to prevent the network from some forms of abuse. See more details in the Tezos documentation.
This stage lasts 5 cycles = ~ 14 Days
Your delegation is confirmed and the baker received future baking rights (to produce and endorse future blocks). So, now you know that you will definitely participate in Tezos staking in the near future and therefore you can estimate future staking rewards.
Now you are completely in Tezos staking and earning rewards. As you can see, you have to wait ~20 days after delegating to start staking.
All Tezos staking rewards are credited to the baker and not to delegators directly. Moreover, every time baker receives rewards, those rewards are frozen for the next 5 cycles (~14 days), so the baker can’t spend them. Only after ~14 days rewards are unfrozen and the baker can transfer it to someone else.
That’s why you can see that Tezos staking rewards for cycle N usually comes in cycle N + 6 (after ~17 days):
Every time the balance of a delegated account is changed (e.g. you raise additional funds, or withdraw funds, or even receive reward payments) you have to wait the same time as described above (37 or 23 days) until these changes are applied.
