📝 Introduction

In blockchain technology, staking is the process of actively participating in the validation of transactions. In this type of mechanism, anyone who has the minimum balance required for a particular cryptocurrency can participate in the Proof of Stake (PoS) process and earn rewards.

The Ethereum blockchain has been working on its transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to PoS for several years. Along this path, many hardforks and softforks have been done, to pave the way for this transition; Because this type of transfer causes a total change in the infrastructure of a network and it cannot be done easily and quickly.

The Beacon Chain was an update that introduced the PoS algorithm to the Ethereum network (which previously operated with the PoW algorithm). It can be said that Beacon Chain has been the most tangible update in the direction of moving to PoS in recent years; With the launch of the beacon chain, users can start staking ETH (in the PoS algorithm) in addition to mining ETH (in the PoW algorithm) and the network works in a hybrid way.

About 10 days after writing this article, Merge will be updated. The Merge phase itself has two hardforks, in the first fork miners are removed from the network and stakers take their place and start processing Ethereum main network transactions, and the second fork will be implemented about a month later, in this phase , the possibility of withdrawing the 32 ETHs that the validators had deposited into the Ethereum 2 smart contract in the Beacon chain phase is opened.

In the following, some of the most important Liquid Staking ETH Platforms are introduced. 👉

1️⃣ Lido

To staking in the Ethereum network, users need at least 32 ETH, while the cost of buying this amount of ETH is very high. To solve this problem, some platforms emerged that allow users to participate in Ethereum 2.0 staking with any amount. One of the best platforms for this is Lido.

Lido is an easy-to-use decentralized platform that provides staking services to users. Initially, this platform was used for Ethereum 2.0 staking, but now Lido has expanded to support networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Polkadot and Kusama.

2️⃣ StakeWise

StakeWise is a liquid Ethereum 2.0 staking service that allows anyone to benefit from the yields available on the Beacon Chain. StakeWise runs secure and stable institutional-grade infrastructure, combined with unique tokenomics, to provide the highest possible staking yields for its users. [1]

3️⃣ Stakefish

stakefish is the leading validator for Proof of Stake blockchains. With support 23 networks, their mission is to secure and contribute to this exciting new ecosystem while enabling their users to stake with confidence. [2] The highest annual reward rate among the different networks that stakefish supports is currently related to the Juno network.

4️⃣ Rocket Pool

Rocket Pool protocol allows anyone to earn rewards on deposits as low as 0.01 ETH. When users trade ETH, they will receive rETH, a token that gains staking rewards over time based on the performance of all decentralised node operators in the protocol.

5️⃣ Ankr

Ankr is a staking-based platform and calls itself StakeFi. The Ankr platform was created with the aim of making easy access to ways to earn money in the crypto market for everyone. Ankr platform is trying to make the use of blockchain and its capabilities simple and cheap for users by creating a cloud space.

6️⃣ Staked.us

Staked.us operates the most secure, performant, and cost-effective block production nodes for decentralized PoS protocols on behalf of institutional investors. their multi-tier signing and listening node architecture delivers stakeholders the ideal combination of security, scalability and decentralization.[3] In addition to Ehereum network, staked.us also supports several other networks.

📃 Purposes of dashboard

In this dashboard, the performance of ==Liquid Staking ETH Platforms== is analyzed first. The platforms that are reviewed are:

• Ankr/ Lido/ Rocket pool/ Staked.us/ Stake.fish/ Stakewise

Then the activities of the addresses that had ==Direct Staking== are evaluated. The following metrics are used to check Ethereum staking status:

• Volume of ETH staked
• Number of unique stakers(depositors)
• Number of ETH staking per month/day
• Top 10 stakers based on staking volume/count
• Classification of users based on the volume of ETH staked
• Classification of users based on the number of ETH staking
• Distribution of the number of staking
• Number of platforms where users have staked their Ethereum.
• Average/ median/ minimum/ maximum of ETH staked per day
• Assessing the correlation between ETH price and ETH stakers activity

🟡 Part(1). Liquid Staking ETH Platforms Analysis

🟡 Part(2). Direct ETH staking Analysis

✍🏻 Methodology

• In this dashboard, the following tables are used to extract data:
  • ethereum.core.ez_eth_transfers → This table is used to check the amount of ETH transferred to the platforms.
  • ethereum.core.fact_hourly_token_prices → This table has been used to extract the price of ETH and check its correlation with some staking indicators.
• All data is from November 2020 onwards.

👀 Observation

• The volume of ETH staked in March, April and May was more than other months.
• The largest amount of ETH staked in one month is related to March 2022. (1.04M ETH)
• From June 2022 onwards, contrary to the number of stakes, the volume of staked ETHs on various platforms has decreased significantly.
• The highest number of stakes and the highest number of unique stakers were recorded in May 2022. (15.48k stakes - 12,643 stakers)
• The review of different platforms shows that the highest amount of stakers activity is recorded in LIDO.
• The largest volume of ETH staked in a month on different platforms is:
  • LIDO → March 2022 → 944k ETH
  • Staked.us → December 2020 → 118k ETH
  • stake.fish → December 2020 → 78k ETH
  • Rocket pool → March 2022 → 60k ETH
  • Ankr → December 2020 → 28k ETH
  • Stakewise → March 2021 → 10k ETH
• About 80% of the volume of ETHs staked among different platforms is related to LIDO. After this platform, staked.us and stake.fish are ranked second and third respectively.
• About 78k unique users have staked their ETHs in LIDO so far. This shows that LIDO is unrivaled among different platforms. In terms of the number of unique users, Rocket Pool and Stakewise platforms are in the second and third places with a big difference compared to LIDO.

The top users of various platforms in terms of the volume of ETH staked are:

• LIDO → 0x220bda5c8994804ac96ebe4df184d25e5c2196d4 → 330,465 → This address, which is related to 1inch.exchange: Aggregation Executor, **has the largest amount of staked ETH among all addresses.🏆
• Staked.us → 0x46436f1fa2f9d77b146cde18d545ae3ed28057c1 → 30,016 ETH
• Stake.fish → 0x61c808d82a3ac53231750dadc13c777b59310bd9 → 115,592 ETH
• Stakewise → 0xe2008b01a2ad0a9aeea9f71ecc6a176138553a61 → 15,107 ETH
• Ankr → 0x13e252df0cafe34116cec052177b7540afc75f76 → 8,800 ETH
• Rocket pool → 0x3bdc69c4e5e13e52a65f5583c23efb9636b469d6 → 129,643 ETH

The top users of different platforms in terms of the number of stakes are:

LIDO → 0xa2f987a546d4cd1c607ee8141276876c26b72bdf → 7,276 → This address, which is related to Anchor Protocol: AnchorVault , **has the highest number of staking among all addresses.🏆

Staked.us → 0x46436f1fa2f9d77b146cde18d545ae3ed28057c1 → 14

Stake.fish → 0x61c808d82a3ac53231750dadc13c777b59310bd9 → 41

Stakewise → 0xe7ee3d4ea937f112e772b3dc5a212545869dffab → 24

Ankr → 0x870f64e73e7d2dc5022b4b74e58c323b3148a984 → 42

Rocket pool → 0x3bdc69c4e5e13e52a65f5583c23efb9636b469d6 → 6297

In the next part, the correlation between the following parameters is examined:

• ETH price and staked ETH volume
• ETH price and number of stakers

To obtain the correlation, we used the relationship shown on the right. If we wish to label the strength of the correlation, for absolute values of r, 0-0.19 is regarded as very weak, 0.2-0.39 as weak, 0.40-0.59 as moderate, 0.6-0.79 as strong and 0.8-1 as very strong correlation. On the other hand, the correlation coefficient can be positive or negative. A positive correlation coefficient means that as the value of one variable increases, the value of the other variable increases; as one decreases the other decreases. A negative correlation coefficient indicates that as one variable increases, the other decreases, and vice-versa.

The results show that the correlation between ETH price and the number of ETH staking users is very weak. (correlation coefficient = 0.18) On the other hand, the correlation between the volume of ETH staked and the price of ETH is also very weak. (correlation coefficient = 0.13) This is while the correlation coefficient between the price of ETH and the volume of ETH staked in terms of $USD is higher than previous state and is equal to 0.27, although this value also indicates a weak correlation between the two parameters.

👀 Observation

• The results show that the maximum amount of ETH staked in one day is about 244k ETH.
• In half of the days, daily users have staked about 12k ETH.
• On average, users stake about 20k ETH per day.
• The highest number of users who have staked their ETHs in one day is equal to 2,179 unique addresses.
• The number of ETH staking users has been more than 85 unique users in half of the days.
• On average, 138 unique users have staked their ETHs per day.
• The maximum number of stakes in one day is equal to 7,628 stakes.
• The number of staking in half of the days was more than 382 times.
• The average number of daily staking is 640 stakes.
• In ‘direct staking’, most addresses are staked only once.
• Most users have staked 32 ETH.
• **The address '0xae7ab96520de3a18e5e111b5eaab095312d7fe84', which is related to LIDO, ranks first both in terms of ETH volume and the number of staking times.🏆

• Examining the results shows that most of the users have staked on these platforms only once. (74.5%)
• Among all users, 13 addresses have staked their ETH more than 100 times.
• Considering that some of these platforms, such as stake.fish, have a limit on the amount of Ethereum staked (minimum 32 ETH), but the results show that most users have staked less than 10 ETH on these platforms.
• As most users have only staked their ETH once, most users have only used one platform to stake their ETHs. Among them, 3 addresses have staked on 4 platforms.

💡 Conclusion

In this dashboard, the activity of users in Liquid Staking ETH Platforms was analyzed. Some of the most important results obtained are:

✅ The amount of ETH staked on various platforms has decreased in the last few months.

✅ Among the different platforms, LIDO ranks first in terms of the amount of ETH staked and the number of unique users.

✅ Most of the addresses are staked only once on these platforms.

✅ Most users have staked less than 10 ETH on these platforms.

✅ Most users have used only one platform to stake their ETHs.

✅ Correlation between ETH price and parameters related to ETH staking is weak.

✅ Most addresses have staked 32 ETH in direct staking mode.

✅ LIDO is the top rank ETH staker in direct staking mode.

Analyst: Emanoel

***Twitter: ***

Discord: Eman#9698

Special thanks to the Flipsidecrypto 🧡