Chainlink (LINK), a well-known blockchain oracle service, declared on November 30th that it is preparing to launch staking on Ethereum on December 6th. It is a component of the long-term, economically sound plan for the blockchain network that the LINK ecosystem has developed.
In order to support specific performance guarantees for oracle services, stakers commit LINK tokens in smart contracts using a crypto-economic security mechanism called “Chainlink Staking.”
Additionally, in a Twitter thread, Chainlink gives an update on how Staking will be developed in the future, beyond this first release, and how that will impact key features like the lock-up time.
They explained that the first lock-up duration of 12 to 24 months was predicated on a conservative release cycle that contained more sophisticated features with each release. Whereas “Smart contracts” tend to take longer cycles because it is important to audit them separately, and so duplicate efforts across each new iteration are avoided.
After talking to community members and node operators, they found that they prefer more rapid iterations of new releases with condensed scopes.
According to the tweet’s comment section:
As a result, the next version of Staking (v0.2) is now planned to launch in 9-12 months, at which point v0.1 stakers can unlock or migrate their staked LINK and rewards.
Chainlink Staking (v0.1) On Ethereum
Only “addresses that qualify for Early Access” will start using the beta version of Chainlink Staking (v0.1) on Ethereum. These can participate in a capped staking pool and stake up to 7,000 LINK, or about $53,270. Activity on-chain and off-chain, which can be verified by the user’s wallets, determines eligibility.
According to the blog post:
The capped v0.1 staking pool will then open to General Access two days later on December 8th. At that point, anyone will have the chance to stake up to an initial limit of 7,000 LINK per address, subject to the initially limited 25M LINK pool cap and other applicable participation requirements.
Furthermore, the staking pool v0.1 offers support for the ETH/USD data feeds on the Ethereum mainnet. Users can help secure the Data Feed by providing alerts if it fails to meet specific criteria such as adequate uptime.
In addition, without the node operators taking over the community stake, Community Stakers in v0.1 will immediately have their share transferred to Node Operator Stakers. The term “Auto-Delegation” is used to describe this method.
Nevertheless, following the first implementation of staking version 0.1, the economic and security architecture of the network would be changed. With this, staking will become a fundamental mechanism for LINK tokens to provide assistance with its security.
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