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Solana to Launch Stake Pools, This Is How It Will Enable Rewards For SOL Holders

The Solana Foundation has announced Stake Pools to increase the network’s security, promote censorship resistance, and rewards SOL holders in the process. The announcement was made via their official Twitter handle.

The Stake Pool program was enabled via an on-chain governance process, as the Solana Foundation said. Any SOL holder can participate in the process via SolFlare, a non-custodial wallet that allows users to connect with this network.

SOL token holders can earn rewards and help secure the network by staking tokens to one or more validators. Rewards for staked tokens are based on the current inflation rate, total number of SOL staked on the network, and an individual validator’s uptime and commission (fee).

The program was launched to increase the network ability to withstand disruption or attacks, the Solana Foundation said. This capacity is partially measured by looking at the “superminority”, the smallest number of validators capable of launching a successful attack.

Thus, the Stake Pools operate as incentives for the users to place their SOL funds between independent validators, the announcement clarified. As the stake distribution increase, so does the network’s security.

Solana is already one of the most censorship resistant networks (our superminority group is currently 16), but the Solana Foundation can do even more to increase stake distribution.

How To Earn Rewards While Securing Solana

When a user stakes their SOL token, these are distributed across “a larger number of validators”. Then, users earn tokens for delegators represented by the amount deposited, as stated above, plus rewards for staking.

The rewards can be use in other decentralized finance (DeFi) apps, the Solana Foundation said. For example, in the automated market maker Raydium or the decentralized exchange (DEX) Serum.

The stake pool system is comprised of 3 main actors: the manager, capable of earn and update the fess, the staker, capable of adding and removing validators to a pool and rebalancing stake, and the users, those that provide the SOL for an existing stake pool. The Solana Foundation said:

(…) the stake pool only processes totally active stakes. Deposits must come from fully active stakes, and withdrawals return a fully active stake account. This means that stake pool managers, stakers, and users must be comfortable with creating and delegating stakes, which are more advanced operations than sending and receiving SPL tokens and SOL.

Stake pool participates will be able to profit from additional incentives if they meet any of 3 criteria, the Foundation said. First, if they launch a stake pool by August 30, 2021, promoting a definition of censorship resistance. These managers will be eligible for a 100 SOL reward.

If they also reached 100,000 SOL deposit to their pool, they wil receive a 200 SOL grant or a 1,000 SOL grant if they reached 1,000,000 SOL staked.

At the time of writing, SOL trades at $27,01 with a 2.9% loss in the daily chart.

Solana SOL SOLUSDT
SOL with small losses in the daily chart. Source: SOLUSDT Tradingview
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The USDC Stablecoin Will Soon Expand Its Reach To 10 More Networks

The second biggest stablecoin by market capitalization is already a multi-blockchain project. Soon, though, USDC will live almost everywhere. According to Coindesk, it will soon be available in, “Avalanche, Celo, Flow, Hedera, Kava, Nervos, Polkadot, Stacks, Tezos, and Tron.” That will bring the total to 14; since USDC is already functional in Ethereum, Algorand, Stellar, and Solana.

The biggest stablecoin, Tether or USDT, is only available in 8 of those. Currently, the most used stablecoin is Tron’s version of USDT. 

Related Reading | Is USDC’s Billion Dollar Growth A Sign Crypto Smart Money Is Ditching Tether?

With that in mind, CENTRE said:

“We anticipate that USDC on these blockchain platforms and multichain protocols will further accelerate the use of the world’s fastest growing digital dollar currency.”

The consortium that runs USDC, CENTRE, is a joint venture between Coinbase and payments processor Circle. The information comes from, “a draft announcement from USDC administrator CENTRE obtained by CoinDesk.”

USDC market cap for 06/30/2016 - TradingView

USDC market capitalization | Source: TradingView.com

What Is USDC And How Does It Work?

For this, we have to go back to the academy. Coinzilla informs us:

USDC is one of the fastest-growing stablecoins pegged 1 to 1 to the US Dollar.

What is more remarkable is that Circle, the company that developed the stablecoin, is actually holding the amount of money required for backing the USDC in circulation. 

That’s definitely a shot at USDT. Tether’s audit and legal issues have been a topic of contention in the cryptocurrency community for a while now. Can they back all the Tether they’ve minted? A burning question that’s harder to answer than you’d think. 

For what is worth, USDC’s April independent audit is on the public record and says:

  • USD Coin (“USDC”) tokens issued and outstanding less tokens allowed but not issued (218,807,037) and less blacklisted tokens = 14,697,267,257 USDC  

  • US Dollars held in custody accounts are at least equal or greater than the USDC tokens outstanding at the Report Date and Time. 

Back to Coinzilla’s academy, the stablecoin’s characteristics are:

In essence, USD Coin is an ERC-20 token that functions through the Ethereum Network. Nowadays, USDC transactions can also be settled through Algorand, Solana, and Stellar’s infrastructures.

Since the launch of USDC 2.0, the payment process is simplified, the gas fees being paid directly in USDC. 

Related Reading | Circle’s Stablecoin USDC Passes Independent Audit, Fully Backed by USD

Stablecoins Are Supposed To Rule The USA in 2021

The official love affair between the US government and stablecoins started last January, when Jeremy Allaire from Circle announced that, “the largest US banking regulator with new guidance allowing US banks to use public blockchains and dollar stablecoins as a settlement infrastructure in the US financial system.” According to him, “Decentralized, permissionless, open source and internet mediated software is literally becoming the foundation for not just the US financial system but for the global economy.”

Recently, Randal K. Quarles, the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chair for Supervision, considerably raised the stakes:

In my judgment, we do not need to fear stablecoins. The Federal Reserve has traditionally supported responsible private-sector innovation. Consistent with this tradition, I believe that we must take strong account of the potential benefits of stablecoins, including the possibility that a U.S. dollar stablecoin might support the role of the dollar in the global economy. For example, a global U.S. dollar stablecoin network could encourage use of the dollar by making cross-border payments faster and cheaper, and it potentially could be deployed much faster and with fewer downsides than a CBDC.

Will stablecoins like USDC and USDT substitute the Digital Dollar project? Could they be an alternative to CBDCs? We’ll have to wait and see.

Featured Images by NeONBRAND on Unsplash - Charts by TradingView