Hello steemians, good to be back for cryptoacademy. Hope we all are doing good. I am writing on staking as presented amd lectured by professor @imagen.

Introduction

Crypto Staking is the process by which a crypto owner locks up a particular crypto of his in order to earn rewards over a period of time. This can be likened to what is done in a bank, where banks accepts your money on fixed deposit terms and pays you an agreed interest rate for a specific period of time. Within the time period the coins are staked, the owner do have access to it until the staking period elapses. This provides liquidity in the pool for the coin giving it strong backing. Sometimes too, the owners of the coin uses them to develop the system further.
Great thanks to tachnological developments, there are several platforms you can stake your currency without locking them for a long period of time.

Research and choose 2 platforms where you can do Staking, explain them, compare them and indicate which one is more profitable according to your opinion. (Binace is not allowed)

There are so many platforms and they can be grouped into two

1. Those who provide staking as a service platform- These platforms acts as third parties to crypto owners who stakes with them. This spares these stakers the burden of knowing all the technical details involved in the staking process. They charge a fee from their customers, normally a percentage of the interest earned. This encourages so many to become part of the staking community.
   Some the platforms that fall under this category are

a. Dokia capital
b. P2p validator
c. Stakewith.us
d. Stakinglab
etc.

1. Exchange Platforms - These platform encourage investors whi have coins in their wallet to invest them through staking and earn interests, espcially in the form of new tokens when they are launched on the exchange platforms. This enables so many on the platforms to acquire new coins without really buying them with funds while still retaining their cryptos. In this case the exchange takes care of the technical details while charging a little fee for the service performed.
   Some of the staking platforms that fall into this category are
2. Binance
3. Coinbase
4. Kucoin
5. Kraken
   etc.

Now let me select one from each platforms, explaining how it works.

Stakinglab

Stakelab

This company was established in 2017, with the

obective of providing a comprehensive platform for investors and project owners for proof of stake coin, masternode coins and other relevant services.
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This simply means that apart from providing the windows for investors to stake, they also provide the infrastructure for project owners.

How do I stake in Stakelab?

□ Type the website address on the search bar stakelab.io.
□ Go to login and click on signup to create account for yourself. Ensure you are verified.
□ Go through the coins available, read through to get more information on the coins so as to make informed investment decisions.
□ buy the coin and deposit same in your wallet, which is now acting as a masternode.
□ then wait as your interest drops.

Stakelab
Creating an account in stakelab

Benefits of staking with Stakelab.

1. It offer a strong secured platform for its investors since it makes use of Google 2fa Security.
2. The project owners who lists their coins on the platform have community members already available tb.pioo patronize them.
3. The platform currently supports over 100 coins. This is after doing due diligence with the project owners to ensure that investors funds are intact.
4. There are information on the go for any coin on the platform, which assist investors to make informed decisions about any coin that they want to invest in.
5. It has a automatic reward payment system that ensures daily payout of reward and forthnight payouts depending on the nodes used.
6. They also have attractive interest rates
7. There is reward for a referral system

The coins available for investment in stakinglab is shown in the screenshot below.

Stakelab

Stakelab
Coins available in stakelab.

Kraken

Kraken is one of the exchange staking platforms. This exchange was founded in 2011 in the United States of America. It has Jesse Powell as its Ceo. This allows wallet owners to personally stake their coins or fiat that would just be in the wallet aithout earning anything for the owner.. in kraken, stakingrewards could be earned, and can be grown further by comounding the future rewards.

How do I stake in Kraken

1. Make your staking assets available. This is done either by buying crypto assets or by funding my kraken account with any assets that can be staked at that point in time.
2. Choose a particular crypto that you want to stake, which is availabe in my spot wallet in kraken.
3. Just earn your rewards. - Rewards are received twice a week from my staked assets in kraken

Kraken

Coins offered for staking in both on-chain and off-chain staking with their rates of return.

It is also good to note that Kraken ptovides on-chain anf off-chain staking. However off-chain staking in Kraken is only limited to eligible countries.

To be able stake on Kraken exchange, you must create an account and undergo the verification process. Once this is done and you are verified, you can go ahead with the staking after funding your wallet.

Comparison of the two staking platforms

Stakelab	kraken
This involves a middleman	does not need a middleman
The platform cannot be used for trading	the platform can be used for trading
Returns are lower because it is shared	returns tends to be a bit higher
Limitation in what could be done on the platform	Several activities could be done by the investors
Availability of more coins to be staked	limited coins to be staked.
Fees are higher	lower fee charge or fee free.

For me, i would prefer the exchange staking platform, because of the opportunities it has and less fee charge. Additionally, using Kraken is just like using Binance which I am already familiar with and have been doing staking in for quite sometime now.
Below is a screnshot of my staking still running in Binance, which is about to liquidate.

What is impermanent Loss.

This can be defined as the temporary loss in value of your staked coins as a result of volatility in price. For instance, i staked BNB coins having of value og $50. Due to changes in price of BNB, the value of what I staked reduced to $37. The difference is what is referred to as impermanent loss.. The current value of my staked coin is now less than the original value invested.
Since so many tokens could be used to provide liquidity at the pool, loss in value of one could lead to overall loss. However, this can only be avoided if the asset supplied for staking is withdrawn at the value it was deposited for staking.

Delegated Proof of Stake(DPOS)

This is the process whereby members of a particular network can vote for delegates giving them the power to validate the next block in a chain. Doing so does not imply sendling tokens literally to another wallet, but by staking your coins in a staking pool.
This simply means that the number of coins a person has in the network, the higher his voting influence. Additionally, the delegates voted for are rewarded with trasaction fee gotten from the validated block and the users are rewarded in the form of interest from the staking pools. The higher the amount staked, the more the staking reward received.

DPOS is a better way of choosing who validates the next block by the consensus of a larger number of persons, thus enabling several group of persons to engage in the voting process. Another advantage of this system is that agreement is reached quicker and faster since there are limited verifiers, making validation to be done at high speed. It also helps to conserve energy and reduce use of expensive hardwares.

An example of projects that makes use of this the steem blockchain, which uses 20 witnesses who are voted to validate new blocks. An extra one witness is also kept as reserve in the case one of the 20 fail to perform its duties.

Conclusion

Staking is an important aspect of blockchain business. So asset owners now have various means to earn regardless of price volatility.
The availbility of so many platforms providing this staking services is a plus, as it gives investors a wider range to make decisions from. These platforms shield the in estors from the technical details involved in staking and other crypto related projects.
This course have helped me to understand what impermanent loss is and how I could avoid it too. I have also learned that assets in liquidity pools also determines validators of new blocks for projects that make use of DPOS.

Thank you @imagen for this wonderful lecture.

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