coindesk.com
Crypto infrastructure provider Ankr has released a line of software development kits (SDK) allowing developers to offer token staking and yield farming to users of their projects and platforms.
The SDKs will be offered on the Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche and Fantom networks at first. Once integrated, developers can allow users to stake tokens and earn rewards in return for a liquid staking token.
Liquid staking allows users to, in effect, earn a yield on their locked tokens by issuing new tokens with an equivalent value to the locked ones. This frees up capital and makes such products attractive to users. Products such as ether-staking service Lido hold over $6.2 billion in locked value. Annualized yields offered by popular protocols, such as Compound and Aave, range from 3% to 10%.
More than $86 billion of cryptocurrency is locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) projects across multiple blockchains. To encourage users to participate, the protocols generate their own tokens, which are generally traded in the open market and have a total capitalization of tens of billions of dollars.
The staking toolkit connects to Ankr’s staking platform, which delegates tokens to validators and mints new liquid staking tokens that the stakers can claim to their personal wallets. They can then be used on other DeFi platforms to bolster earnings.
Ankr will charge developers a cut of staking fees for providing the SDKs, and the staking revenue that comes to Ankr staking will be partially shared with all ANKR token stakers once it becomes possible to stake ANKR in August.
Yield farming and value locked on DeFi projects peaked in November 2021, when some $230 billion was locked on various protocols. That’s fallen more than 62% amid a decline in the broader crypto market, DeFi Llama data shows.