Over the past week, liquid staking cryptocurrencies have been seeing a big upside. All of those tokens have efficiently moved into the inexperienced territory, recording double-digit beneficial properties for his or her holders. Though these digital property appear to be following the overall crypto market uptrend, there’s one other issue pushing up their costs.
Why Are Liquid Staking Crypto On The Rise?
Liquid staking cryptocurrencies have been receiving extra consideration ever because the announcement that the Ethereum “Shanghai” improve is prone to happen in March 2023. This improve is essential for the community as a result of it should imply that staked ETH will lastly be withdrawable.
Anticipation round this improve is already on the rise and liquid staking tokens are having fun with a superb portion of this consideration. Their recognition comes from the truth that they permit stakers to earn a yield on staked ETH regardless that they will’t withdraw their ETH. It additionally makes it doable for stakers to have tokens readily available which they will deploy on different protocols to additional take part within the ecosystem.
Liquid staking protocols reward stakers with ETH-pegged tokens comparable to stETH and ankrETH and make it doable for ETH customers to stake with out having to develop into validators themselves. However as an alternative of getting to depend on centralized exchanges to do that, as was beforehand the case, these DeFi protocols are decentralized.
ETH worth crosses $1,300 forward of Shanghai improve | Supply: ETHUSD on TradingView.com
The upper incomes potential of staking with liquid staking protocols has led to extra demand for them. With the Shanghai improve coming, it’s anticipated that extra ETH shall be moved to those protocols, resulting in extra demand for his or her native cryptocurrencies.
The Largest Liquid Staking Protocols
The most important liquid staking protocol within the house now could be at the moment Lido Finance. It accounts for round 30% of the whole 15 million staked ETH, making it an essential contender within the house. Its native LDO token has a market cap of $1.6 billion and its worth is up 57% within the final 7 days.
Lido is the most important liquid staking protocol | Supply: CryptoSlate
Subsequent in line is Frax Share whose worth is up 21% within the final week. The digital asset’s market cap is nearly $403 million, rewarding customers with frxETH for his or her staked ETH at an 8% APR. That is the very best APR of any liquid staking protocol.
Rocket Pool takes third place with a market cap above $260 million and is up 18% within the 7-day interval. However by way of ETH deposited, it is among the highest, accounting for round 6.5% of the whole market share.
Others embrace Ankr Protocol which is up 26% in 7 days, in addition to Stafi, pStake Finance, and StakeWise, all of that are up 32%, 20%, and 10%, respectively, in the identical time interval.
