Ethereum Merge Changes Staking: Interview with Filipe Gonçalves, Head of Staking and DeFi at Ankr

Ethereum’s merger of Proof of Work and Proof of Stake is the major industry news. Media argue that they can change staking and freeze assets for a period of time to help the blockchain operate. We asked Filipe Gonçalves, Head of Staking and DeFi at Ankr, to comment on the news and explain staking to our readers.

Nice to have you Felipe. Can you tell us more about yourself and your work at Ankr?

Filipe Gonçalves, Head of Staking and DeFi at Arr

Thank you for having me and yes of course. I am the Chief of DeFi at Ankr and oversee our entire suite of staking and earning solutions. Ankr was one of the first companies to introduce a new way of staking – liquid staking. This has opened up a whole new realm of opportunities to unleash liquidity previously tied up on Ethereum and other proof-of-stake blockchains, allowing for deployment in DeFi ecosystems. My work has been to find the most innovative and efficient ways for users to place them while allowing them to make the most of their staked assets in various DeFi earning strategies.

What do you think of the Ethereum merger? Do you think Proof of Stake can work at large scale on Ethereum?

The Ethereum merger will be a very significant development for stakers. As the services of all Ethereum miners are no longer required, these significant rewards are diverted to the efforts of Proof-of-Stake validators – and thus stakers. Because Ethereum provides a stable foundation for rewards, it will provide a very solid foundation for the security and validation system it relies on to function. There is a lot of speculation on how this could affect the average APY of ETH staking, with many believing it will provide a significant boost, but anything could happen, especially if many more stakers join.

Will the Ethereum merger change the staking scene? What is your favorite chain for staking?

The merger will definitely change staking as it will greatly expand its users as they will have more flexibility. Stakers will soon be able to withdraw their assets after the merger, giving them the freedom to take profits, re-deploy other solutions like liquid staking, or exit their ETH to collect rewards.

It’s impossible to pick a favorite from all the blockchains available on our Ankr staking platform! We currently have seven Proof-of-Stake options available, plus our newly released ANKR token staking. However, our BNB liquid staking product now offers players a wide range of DeFi earning options.

Nowadays there are many projects that offer liquid staking. What distinguishes Ankr?

As the first liquid staking provider for Ethereum, Ankr has had a long time to perfect the product. Ankr offers a great APY while providing users with an easy entry into different DeFi ecosystems. As Ankr already has integrations with the best DEXs, it is easier to find earning opportunities for our liquid staking tokens like aETHc. On our DeFi aggregator tool you can easily see all the additional earning opportunities waiting for your staked assets like liquidity pools, farming rewards and vaults. These additional earning strategies can significantly increase the return on your digital assets.

Recently, Binance Labs invested in Ankr. Can you tell us more about the deal?

Ankr has been a BNB Smart Chain Validator for a long time and has worked very closely with the BNB ecosystem teams over the last few years. All of our improvements to Binance infrastructure, liquid staking and everything else have not gone unnoticed. We also architected BNB Application sidechains and overhauled the BNB Smart Chain Node client over the past year, making Ankr an invaluable contributor to the BNB ecosystem. We couldn’t be happier that Binance Labs has shown an active interest in Ankr’s vision for the future of Web3 with their strategic investment.

Can you explain liquid crowd loans and vaults (return aggregators) to our readers?

Liquid Crowdloans is Ankr’s product designed to support the Polkadot ecosystem. Projects wishing to rent a slot to run their project on a Polkadot Parachain will need to raise a significant amount of DOT in order to be selected. Ankr lets community members support their favorite Polkadot projects by contributing their DOT, but allows them to get back a liquid token to use in the meantime if their project wins. This is important as it gives them liquidity during a potentially long rental period of up to 2 years.

Vaults or yield aggregators are a good way to earn DeFi yields with little effort. Vaults automate the DeFi earning process for users – all they have to do is contribute their wealth and wait while the vault generates income by running many different strategies automatically via DeFi. This is a good option for those who do not want to go through the time-consuming and gas-consuming processes of executing DeFi strategies on their own.

Any future developments at Ankr that you could share with us? Exciting news?

Ankr Staking is taking a more business-to-business approach to staking as we get more integrations from wallets, dApps, and DeFi protocols that aim to provide easy staking solutions to their users. We have a few projects that use liquid staking to power their decentralized stablecoin platforms. This is very exciting as it gives our products a lot more entry points while giving more users better opportunities to earn from their assets.

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