stakin

On October 29, KR1 plc, a company listed on the main board of the London Stock Exchange that focuses on on-chain infrastructure, announced the launch of its technical infrastructure operations on the decentralized artificial intelligence network Bittensor. The company stated that it has recently acquired 5,000 network-native assets TAO and has initiated staking as part of its technical infrastructure strategy. Based on the reward rate observed on October 28, the company estimates that the annualized infrastructure income is approximately equivalent to 6.6% of the current value of the deployed TAO holdings.The announcement stated that Bittensor is a layer blockchain that supports subnets, covering services such as AI inference, computing power, training, and prediction, where independent suppliers compete for network rewards based on performance. KR1 supports the assessment of service provider performance through staking and receives a portion of the network rewards. There is no mandatory unbonding period for TAO unstaking, allowing the company to retrieve its holdings immediately after unstaking. Rewards can be retained to expand the scale of productive assets or can be liquidated for subsequent investments and operational costs. The company will also disclose its TAO holdings and related infrastructure income in monthly unaudited updates.Keld van Schreven, Managing Director and Co-Founder of KR1, stated: "As artificial intelligence enables more complex tasks to be performed by software, the demand for infrastructure related to supply-side intelligence is expected to grow significantly. Bittensor introduces open competition for the supply of AI services, and the company is focused on how its incentives are forming services that lead to continuous customer payments, as well as how to deploy TAO holdings to enhance the value and income potential of productive digital assets per share." KR1 claims to be the only publicly listed company on the main board of the London Stock Exchange that focuses on on-chain infrastructure, holding and operating productive digital assets on the relevant network.

Solflare announced that new validators are now online. Users can now manually unstake from Solflare (Legacy) and stake to the new validators, or wait for the application update to migrate.The official team will compensate for the rewards interrupted during the migration period, with specific duration and details to be announced later.

The decentralized liquidity staking protocol Diva Staking announced on social media that it will shut down the project and will not launch the mainnet. The official statement said that this decision was made after thorough discussion and apologized to the early stakers who had pre-deposited in the vault, stating that related deposits can be withdrawn through Enzyme without further waiting.The official statement mentioned that the team has been operating for about two and a half years without income or salary since the funds were exhausted in mid-2024, with three members pushing the project forward. Diva went live on the Hoodi testnet earlier this summer and has been running stably for about four months without any issues, but failed to gain support from large institutions for the mainnet launch. The three-member team also could not bear the costs of a new round of audits and mainnet operations, thus choosing to wind down rather than risk launching.The announcement also stated that the demand structure for LST has changed after the Shanghai upgrade. As of the end of June this year, BitMine, Coinbase, and Binance together accounted for about 30% of the total staked ETH, with approximately 11.5%, 10.9%, and 7.9% respectively, which is comparable to the concentration when the market was concerned about Lido's share being close to one-third. The official also congratulated Lido for advancing Simple DVT and opening up to independent stakers.

According to SolanaFloor, Solflare stated that its staking service provider experienced a security incident that affected the keys held for its validators, which are no longer generating staking rewards. Solflare claimed that user funds were not affected, and the delegated SOL remains in the users' own staking accounts, controlled by their keys.Solflare will guide users to migrate to new validators through an app update, and rewards will resume once staking is activated, with plans to compensate migrating users.

The French Ministry of Finance, the Financial Markets Authority (AMF), the French Central Bank, and the Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR) jointly suggested to the European Commission to allow third parties, such as crypto platforms, to offer rewards to stablecoin holders under specific conditions. The four institutions believe that such rewards should be regulated rather than outright prohibited.The four institutions proposed that platforms should disclose reward information to holders, must not promise guaranteed returns, and should not promote rewards as savings products; regulators should also monitor the impact of rewards on bank deposits. The French side still supports banning stablecoin issuers from paying interest but opposes extending the ban to staking and lending activities. The European Central Bank and the central banks of EU countries advocate maintaining the ban on interest for stablecoins and including indirect benefits such as rewards and fee waivers, as well as lending and staking activities within the scope of restrictions.The European Commission must submit a review report on the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) to the EU legislative bodies by June 30, 2027, and may propose amendments.

The decentralized exchange Osmosis based on Cosmos has terminated the issuance of OSMO tokens and shifted the source of staking rewards from newly issued tokens to protocol revenue.This adjustment eliminates approximately two percentage points of the staking annual yield supported by the issuance, while freezing about 51.9 million previously minted developer tokens.

On October 24, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko (Toly) posted an idea on X, planning to utilize Solana validators to build an oracle that allocates voting power based on staking weight, providing price assessments for tokenized assets and using such assets as collateral.According to this concept, validators will participate in price judgments based on the amount of SOL they have staked. The profits generated by the related mechanism could increase revenue for the Solana network through taxation. However, this idea is still in the conceptual stage and is not a formal governance proposal, with no clear implementation timeline or governance voting arrangements at present. If realized in the future, this mechanism could introduce a native alternative to Solana's existing oracle network, but it also involves supply changes brought about by the increase in SOL issuance, as well as potential conflicts of interest and manipulation risks arising from validators participating in collateral pricing.

Marinade, the Solana staking service protocol, released its Q3 2026 report. As of September 30, the amount of SOL staked was 7.94 million, a quarter-over-quarter increase of 21.2%, mainly driven by the non-custodial native staking product Native and the institutional-focused Select. The amount staked in Native increased by 47.3% quarter-over-quarter to approximately 3.77 million, while Select grew by 38.7% to about 1.68 million, and mSOL decreased by 6.8% to around 2.27 million.Revenue for the third quarter was approximately $1 million, corresponding to 10,918 SOL, a quarter-over-quarter increase of 25.9%, primarily from validator margin settlement income, which grew by 38.1% quarter-over-quarter. In the staking auction market, 48 out of 51 epochs in the quarter had yields higher than the Solana staking index, with an average yield before Marinade fees of 5.93%, compared to 5.67% for the index during the same period.In governance, since the implementation of MIP-22 in July, Marinade has used 10% of auction fees to repurchase MNDE on the open market. In the third quarter, a total of 4.2 million MNDE was repurchased with 906.6 SOL, and the first distribution opened on October 1. The report also disclosed that on September 25, attackers exploited a vulnerability in the DAO voting process to submit two malicious proposals, one of which involved transferring DAO treasury assets; the council vetoed both proposals within about 6 hours, and the fix was completed that night, with no funds being transferred.

In a live broadcast in the third quarter, Aave founder Stani stated that Aavenomics 3.0 will include AAVE buybacks, staking, and burning.The AAVE buyback was suspended the day after the rsETH vulnerability incident on April 19. Since then, the DAO has committed to providing 25,000 ETH to DeFi United to compensate for the losses and has arranged for Mantle to provide a credit line of up to 30,000 ETH. Before the buyback was suspended, there was a proposal in the forum suggesting to reduce the annual buyback budget from approximately 50 million dollars to 30 million dollars.

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, three addresses have cumulatively withdrawn 24,454 ETH from Kraken and Binance, worth 60.68 million USD.Among them, a certain whale withdrew 10,954 ETH from Kraken and staked it after being inactive for 4 months; a certain whale withdrew 9,000 ETH from Binance and deposited it into Aave; a certain whale withdrew 4,500 ETH from Binance 10 hours ago.

The GMX governance forum has released the GMLabs-003 proposal, which plans to use all remaining protocol revenue after the GT buyback on the Solana side to repurchase GMX. The purchased tokens will be added to the staking rewards pool, and the GT buyback mechanism will remain unchanged.The proposal also intends to introduce a 180-day unbonding waiting period for existing and new GMX and esGMX staking positions on Arbitrum and Avalanche, calculated from the submission of the unbonding request, with the previously staked time not counted. Pending requests can be canceled, and existing positions do not need to be migrated. The above adjustments are scheduled to be implemented on October 28, depending on the readiness for implementation.

The Cardano Foundation calls on the European Union not to introduce new independent regulatory rules for DeFi and staking, advocating that existing financial laws should regulate based on the function and risk of activities rather than the technology used. The foundation outlined its 19-page opinion submitted to the European Commission on September 30 in a blog post released on Wednesday, urging a distinction between direct participation in decentralized networks and financial services provided by intermediaries, especially those involving the custody or control of user assets. The foundation stated that regulation should follow the substance of the activity, the functions performed, and the risks generated, rather than the technology relied upon to conduct the activity.The foundation pointed out that Cardano users can delegate native ADA tokens to help secure the network without relinquishing custody or locking up tokens, and this form of direct participation should be treated differently from staking services operated by intermediaries. The opinion also calls for a clearer distinction between the EU MiCA regulations and existing financial laws, warning that overlapping regulatory requirements and inconsistent interpretations among member states could create uncertainty for crypto businesses.This move comes as EU regulators consider expanding oversight of crypto services. In September, the European Securities and Markets Authority suggested adding additional safeguards for staking and lending activities and establishing a new category of regulated services for companies providing access to DeFi protocols. Additionally, the Cardano Foundation, along with five other blockchain organizations, sent a joint letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on October 20, urging it to formally recognize digital commodities as non-securities under the proposed crypto framework.

According to Cointelegraph, the current amount of staked Ethereum has risen to a record 43.8 million ETH, accounting for 35.9% of the total ETH supply. Meanwhile, both the staking yield and the number of validators have decreased.

Dmitry Gusakov, the engineering lead of the Ethereum liquid staking protocol Lido, warned at the developer conference ACDC #189 that the one-time builder access mechanism introduced by the Glamsterdam upgrade could interfere with the existing deposit protection logic of the staking protocol, leading to the hijacking of staking deposits. This issue involves multiple deposits sharing the same validator public key.According to Ethereum's current deposit rules, the first valid deposit determines the withdrawal credential, and staking protocols typically leverage this feature to prevent credential manipulation, such as initially depositing a small amount of ETH and then topping up the remaining funds once the expected credential appears. However, the special access mechanism introduced for builders by Glamsterdam may change the interpretation of subsequent pending deposits under the same public key during the fork transition period, putting the staking protocol at risk of a third outcome: the validator does not appear, and the deposited ETH is credited to the builder.Lido's proposed fix is to maintain the distinction between validator deposits and builder deposits during the one-time access process. However, core developers rejected this modification on the grounds of timing, mainly because the Sepolia testnet has already been activated according to existing specifications, and the Hoodi client version is also in preparation. Changing the behavior at this point could require redeploying Sepolia and conducting additional testing. The issue affects the access process during the fork transition period, rather than the ongoing deposit processing rules, but its consequences could impact deposits waiting in the queue.

According to official news from IoTeX, the Zanzibar hard fork has been activated on the IoTeX mainnet (block height 53,533,081). According to IIP-59, voter rewards will be calculated and distributed on-chain during each reward cycle, eliminating off-chain services and intermediaries, allowing anyone to directly verify each payment on-chain. The first on-chain distribution will take place the following day.This upgrade also strengthens consensus by checking the proof of holding representative keys, preparing for subsequent BLS signature aggregation. Node operators need to upgrade to iotex-core v2.5.1 without the need to modify configurations or resynchronize.

According to Cointelegraph, Solana has not reported any mainnet outages for two consecutive years. The Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT) report indicates that its network health has made progress in resilience, economic security, and performance metrics.The report points out that high staking participation and incentive mechanisms for rewarding validators support Solana's economic security, while low latency, improved scalability, and low-cost transactions also support its large-scale applications.The report also states that the concentration of staking among a few validator identities and operators, as well as the concentration of custodial and client software, still requires ongoing observation. Jacob Creech, Vice President of Technology at the Solana Foundation, stated that Solana reduced the slot time to 350 milliseconds on August 21; the foundation announced plans in June to further reduce it to 200 milliseconds, with three subsequent adjustments of 50 milliseconds each.

Stacks, the second-layer platform for Bitcoin, has released its third-quarter ecosystem report. The data shows that a total of 735 BTC entered the Bitcoin staking system during the first two locking periods. Since the PoX-5 hard fork, the number of STX participating in staking has increased by over 25%, rising from 392 million to 493 million.In the first locking period (Bond 1), a total of 230 BTC was deposited, with participants including 21shares, HashKey Cloud, UTXO Management, and Sypher Capital. The deposit amount in the second locking period doubled to 505 BTC. The locked value of Zest Protocol exceeds 80 million dollars, with deposits over 122 million dollars, total borrowings exceeding 42 million dollars, and 800 Bitcoin deployed as collateral.Stacks plans to launch a self-custodial lending feature backed by staked Bitcoin in the fourth quarter, along with the introduction of the Earn treasury, and further integration of stBTC with platforms such as Zest, Bitflow, and Hermetica. Additionally, Stacks plans to release the Epoch 4.1 network upgrade in early December, which includes improvements to the smart contract language Clarity.

Lido announced the integration of direct ETH staking functionality for Arbitrum, Base, Linea, and Optimism Layer 2 networks into its official staking interface, which was announced on October 15. This process is supported by Chainlink's cross-chain interoperability protocol CCIP, allowing users to directly obtain wstETH on the originating network without manually transferring ETH across chains to Ethereum and back.Lido stated that users' ETH will be exchanged for wstETH through dedicated liquidity pools on the same L2, with the Chainlink price feed reflecting the exchange rate of the Lido protocol rather than the exchange market price. The underlying staking still occurs on the Ethereum mainnet: the ETH deposited by users on L2 will automatically be transferred to Ethereum and staked through Lido, after which wstETH will be sent back to replenish the local liquidity pool. Users receive the wrapped version of stETH, wstETH, which maintains a fixed balance while its value reflects staking rewards.This functionality integrates existing cross-chain infrastructure into Lido's own interface. Lido previously introduced relevant channels for Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism in October 2024, with third-party frontends including XSwap, OpenOcean, and Interport, while Linea followed up in October 2025. In terms of fees, users will still need to pay L2 transaction gas, and cross-chain costs come from the separately funded contract balance rather than staker deposits;

According to a report by Business Wire, Interactive Brokers has launched a cryptocurrency staking service for eligible clients, with the staking service provided by Zerohash.In the initial phase, eligible Interactive Brokers LLC clients can stake Ethereum through the staking panel in the client portal, submit staking or unstaking requests, and view pending statuses. Rewards will be distributed in the form of staking tokens and can accrue interest during the staking period.Interactive Brokers CEO Milan Galik stated that similar to its stock yield enhancement program, the staking service allows clients to earn additional income from their held crypto assets. Currently, Interactive Brokers supports trading of 20 digital assets and allows deposits using USDC, RLUSD, and PYUSD.

Sui liquidity staking protocol Volo announced that the additional incentives for Volo Dowsure stable vault S1 participants are now online. Eligible S1 participants can now claim additional incentives denominated in USD through the exclusive claim page of the Dow Protocol.Volo stated that all eligible Sui wallet addresses and the corresponding deposit amounts have been provided to the Dow Protocol. Participants need to connect and bind their EVM wallet, and after completing the S1 participation verification, they can claim the aforementioned incentives on the Dow Protocol website.