While we have written quite a few articles about Defi, the risks they pose, the challenges it poses, and such - we have never really written about Defi in terms of deep linking with the blockchain protocol. Traditional financial institutions use forms of money to loan out, and in the process earns interest. However, this is not necessarily because the lender is truely earning value for the money - through an investment that returns a positive outcome. Very often the borrower can be taking a loss on the borrowed investment, and might inturn be returning the interest because of the contract involved. There is often no ascertainable way in traditional financial modes of earning interest to be sure that the borrower is making positive returns on the borrowed capital.
Staking is a financial model wherein a participant (who operates as a lender) can make a deterministically positive return on his investment. For example, a staker on a network can earn a positive interest determined by the network protocol. Stakers on the blockchain network are assured of deterministic returns when they submit their deposits to intermediary platforms or directly participate in staking pools for the sake of confirming and mining blockchains. On the overall, staking is a low risk positive return and cash flow business, where one can deterministically determine the returns on ones own investments. Staking for proof-of-stake derived algorithms is a positive step since it reduces the carbon footprint on networks, and enables a steady supply or limits supply to the means.
While staking is slowly becoming a competitive business, with smart contracts written by many wallet-based platforms such as Coinbase, there are entire businesses such as staked.us that are dedicated to staking one's crypto holdings for mining. As time goes by and as staking becomes increasingly profitable, more and more crpto-exchanges and wallets will support it. Very often on platforms such as staked.us, users can earn anywhere between 10% and 4% for just staking their cryptotokens. This is a low risk/medium return business dependent entirely on the price of the cryptocurrency so involved.v st.
