And that was me a month or two ago...
Enabling the staking option for tokens on Hive Engine allows token holders to stake their tokens and be able to curate posts with certain tags. I am not sure as to whether or not the "curation" part is optional and it can be enabled/disabled, but one thing is for sure: some people have brought up the idea of enabling it for $STARBITS token as well. Mainly because of the STARBITS Millionaire Mission, since that's how it works - own 1M STARBITS and get 1% daily, instead of owning, just stake it.
Here's my take around the idea:
Staking Brings Another Layer of Security:
One major benefit of staking, in my opinion, is that even if your account keys are leaked or someone somehow gets ahold of your account, they can't access your tokens right away.
Many RSG players, such as myself, keep that 1 Million STARBITS and earn their daily 10K STARBITS through the Millionaire's mission. If someone were to access our accounts even for 30 seconds, they could easily transfer over the Tokens to their account and steal it. Whereas IF the 1M SB was staked, they'd have to 'un-stake' the Tokens which takes some time - as defined by the Token creator while enabling staking. So, a mere 30-second window wouldn't be enough for your funds to be stolen. And if you can get control over your account once again - change your password with OWNER KEY or through Account Recovery - you can easily get all your funds back.
The Drawback,
as mentioned by @foxon, is that if you want to spend those STARBITS or even withdraw them, you'd have to wait for the 'un-staking' period to be over, which would be a burden to many. Some players even like spending their SB till it's lower than 1M and work their way up before the next day is over (and before they lose one day's worth of 10K SB - as the Millionaire's Mission has a one-time-per-day limit).
The Complication
It's also worthy to note that there'd be some excess complications if we ever decided to do so. We already got "in-game STARBITS" and "on Engine STARBITS" and people are quite confused with them as they are. Adding another "Staked STARBITS" would make the game a bit less newbie-friendly which I believe is yet another point to take into consideration.
The Staking 'Activation Fee'
Hive Engine charges 100 BEEs ($51/55 SWAP.HIVE at the time of writing) as the 'token creation' cost. Enabling 'Staking' costs another 1000 BEEs ($510/550 SWAP.HIVE) which someone has to pay. The game is working fine as is, so there's really no need for extra expenses, but that could be changed in the future idk.
The cost could also be distributed among the players which would significantly drop the price needed (5000 players, each paying 400 STARBITS would be more than enough... if they need such an addition to the game), but as I've said before, the game is functioning properly so far, so not many see the need for it... yet.
The Coding Hassle
If the blockchain side of the game changes, the game will have to adapt to respond to those changes as well. There will have to be some trial and error in the now already perfectly working system if there's going to be a change, and JUX's time is preoccupied with the coding part of the next big update already.
The Bottom Line
I don't think there's a need for staking yet, but it's an idea being nurtured, and I've seen many start talking about it lately. Just don't see the need for it yet, might be security, might be 'utility', or... Whatever the reason or outcome, I'm just curious how it'll turn out in the end.
That's it for today's meme. I think I've covered everything I deemed important. If you feel like there's something missing or have a question, just drop a comment below and I'll get to you in due time...
Cheers~~