Introduction

The Web 3 community is abuzz with news of Ethereum’s impending upgrade, where the blockchain’s fundamental consensus mechanism will change from mining-based, or "proof-of-work" model, to a staking-based model.

Staking

Staking is a fundamental concept in cryptocurrency – it refers to the process where users leverage their digital assets to support a blockchain network while earning rewards in the process. Users who stake their cryptocurrencies are known as “validators” or “stakers” and contribute to the operation and security of the blockchain. The stake is like a collateral of sorts to ensure validators carry out their responsibilities, with their collateral at risk of being slashed if they fail to perform. Ethereum staking is the act of depositing a minimum of 32 ETH to activate validator software on the Ethereum blockchain. The staked ETH can only be withdrawn some time after The Merge occurs.

Pooled staking

Users deposit their ETH into a pool and the third-party operator handles all validator duties, including hardware and node operations. There are numerous platforms that offer this service with varying APRs, but rewards generally depend on how much ETH is deposited. Platforms usually have liquidity tokens that represent the amount of staked ETH and the share of validator rewards. These tokens have the additional benefit of being tradable anytime, some with deep liquidity, and potentially being used on DeFi platforms.

Pooled staking has the lowest entry cost, with some projects having no requirements at all. Depending on the platform, users can deposit their ETH directly from their wallets to staking pools, or they can trade ETH for liquidity tokens. Pooled staking operators usually take a percentage of yields in exchange for services, and popular options include Lido and Rocket Pool. 

Objective

Choose 1 liquid staking provider (Ankr / Lido / rocketpool, etc) and answer the following question:

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• How much ETH was staked? 
• How many unique depositors are there? 
• What is the avg/median/max/min/distribution of ETH deposits? 

Methodology

To identify the staking activity, we use the ethereum.core.fact_event_logs table. Everytime an user stakes, he/she receives an equivalent token back which can be used for farming, and later used for redeeming the eth. To identify the stakes, we track the movement of these equivalent eth tokens.

Whenever

The address of the common protocol are given below.

Lido : 0xae7ab96520de3a18e5e111b5eaab095312d7fe84

Rocket pool : 0xae78736cd615f374d3085123a210448e74fc6393

stake wise : 0xFe2e637202056d30016725477c5da089Ab0A043A

ankr : 0x84db6eE82b7Cf3b47E8F19270abdE5718B936670

Note : All values in the analysis are in eth

The dashboard has been influenced from peters dashobard

Analysis

We break down the analysis into 3 parts.

1. Analysis of top service providers
2. Staking trend analysis
3. In-depth analysis of 2 staking providers

Analysis of top service providers

Here, we analyse the metrics of 4 different service providers. Namely,

1. Lido
2. Rocketpool
3. Stake wise
4. ankr

While analysing we look at the distribution of eth staked, number of stakers, average amount of eth staked etc

We first look at the top liquidity staker providers. We can clearly say that ==Lido finance is the leader in the segment,== providing close to 70 % when compared to the other three.

While rocketpool makes up 27%, ankr and stake wise have only a small share.

While we look at the total number of stakes, Lido is again highest. with rocketpool second.

Though the number of stakes is high for rocketpool, it’s returning customer is less.

The graph of number of users tells the same story. Lido being a leader and rocketpool is a distant second.

Surprisingly, ==the average amount of eth staked per staker is high for stake wise and the lowest for lido.==

Trend analysis

Indepth analysis

From, the above graph, we see that a spike occured on July 19 for lido. This is because it announce that “ Lido Finance Will Soon Offer Staked Ether on Layer 2 Networks, Proposes to Sell LDO for DAI” on July 19. reference

Conclusion

1. ==Lido finance is the leader in the segment,== providing close to 70 % when compared to the other three.

2. ==the average amount of eth staked per staker is high for stake wise==

3. a spike occured on July 19 for lido. This is because it announce that “ Lido Finance Will Soon Offer Staked Ether on Layer 2 Networks, Proposes to Sell LDO for DAI” on July 19.

4. The distribution shows that lido deposits are made by whales (60 % of them have invested more than 1000 Eth) while rocketpool has few and is mostly (85%) by 10-1000 eths

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Observations:

1. The staked amount in LIDO is much higher than rockepool.
2. the average staked amount is also much higher in lido, however, the max suggests that more whales are invested in lido and hence the higher average amount.
3. ==The distribution shows that lido deposits are made by whales (60 % of them have invested more than 1000 Eth) while rocketpool has few and is mostly (85%) by 10-1000 eths==