StakeWise v2 — tokenized Pool, non-custodial Solo & final beta

The historic day of the Eth2 Deposit Contract release is here, and the stage could not be set more perfectly for the announcement of our final beta.

Today, we are launching StakeWise v2, which is the final iteration of our platform before Phase 0. It signals the start of tokenized staking and the introduction of multiple major improvements to our infrastructure. It also shows off a unique payment system for non-custodial Solo validators and adds the initial documentation about StakeWise products.

Whether you’re planning to stake ETH on your own or with a provider, you do not want to miss out on this beta because all the participants are in for an awesome surprise at the end!

Let’s look at all the cool features that will be going to mainnet in more detail.

Tokenized staking

We implemented a dual-token structure, which represents your ETH deposits and rewards in a 1:1 ratio. Our structure is unique and offers several advantages over the alternatives:

i) Absence of impermanent loss when providing liquidity for the token. This gives liquidity providers more incentive to choose stETH for LPing, which results in more liquidity for your deposit as a staker.

ii) The flexibility of controlling your deposit and rewards independently. It allows you to compound your staking returns by swapping rewards (rwETH) for ETH (or other coins) and re-staking them. Further, you can swap a part or the whole of your deposit (stETH) without losing the accumulated rewards.

iii) Separation of risks and rewards between tokens. When both stETH and rwETH are held in the address, any rewards or penalties are reflected in the rwETH balance, and when penalties exceed balance of rwETH, stETH decreases. However, when rwETH is held separately from stETH, its balance becomes immutable forever — in fact, it becomes a wrapped ETH2. This allows separating a more risky but yield-generating asset (stETH) from a riskless asset (rwETH), which is a very useful feature in trading, improving liquidity for both tokens.

The more we think about it, the more excited we get because:

1) non-sophisticated stakers will have liquidity for their deposits and rewards before Phase 2,

2) sophisticated stakers will leverage various DeFi protocols to increase staking yield,

3) it becomes possible to introduce community governance into our platform’s decision making.

Learn more about Tokens here.

Infrastructure updates

Our new arrangement sets the ground for diversification between validator clients before Phase 0, increasing stability of the system. However, it will not be the only improvement — we will also diversify between cloud providers, to increase redundancy of an already highly-available setup. As a cherry on top, we also heavily upgraded the resilience of our operator — an entity responsible for communication between the different parts of our system. Taken together, these changes will result in a more stable setup that further protects our users from downtime and penalties.

Unique payment system for non-custodial Solo

We built a one-of-a-kind system for non-custodial solo staking that will reduce the chance of missing a payment for your validators to a minimum. It works like a pay-as-you-go sim card: you upload DAI to your billing account, and it gets credited every month as your validator continues staking (we charge 10 DAI/validator/month). This way, you can prepay as much as you want for your validators to set-it-and-forget-it or withdraw DAI from your balance if think you loaded up too much. If your balance runs out, do not worry — we will send you notifications with a reminder to top-up before your balance reaches 0. And even in case you miss our notifications, we will run your validator for an extra 60 days after your balance has reached 0, just to be on the safe side. Still, missing your payments is not advised 😅.

Documentation

No product is complete without the documentation that describes its core and secondary features in detail. As we approach Phase 0, we considered it important to give users more information about our services and how to use them to the maximum effect. Hence, we added a Documentation page that already contains an FAQ, more details about the Pool and Solo, and guides on creating the withdrawal credentials for non-custodial Solo and topping-up your billing balance. More information and guides will be added to the Docs in the coming weeks and we would appreciate your suggestions on what to include in it.

Incentivized beta

We want every single person interested in Eth2 staking to learn about StakeWise Pool and Solo options and test the platform before we launch it in mainnet. Therefore, we are excited to announce that the new beta is incentivized — every StakeWise v2 beta user will be rewarded for their participation. A major announcement will be made for everyone who made a deposit in the Pool and Solo before the commencement of the beta period, so make sure to hit that Deposit button as many times as you can. At the risk of FUD, you don’t want to miss this :P

Check out the new beta by visiting https://stakewise.io.

We invite you to follow our updates in Discord, Telegram and Twitter.

Happy staking!

StakeWise Team