A lot of people don’t tend to stake their tokens, but you should keep in mind that staking is a great way to help out your community. Staking tokens on proof of stake networks makes you a delegator, and as a delegator you can directly help make your network safer.

There are a lot of staking platforms and validators out there, and as a delegator your stake helps decide which validators are validating the blocks on your network. Before you start staking though, make sure you get information on which staking platforms are available for your network. Once you have all the information on the staking platforms participating on your network make sure to pick the best ones, for example: I found Cosmostation and pStake are probably the best staking platforms for Cosmos.

There are a lot of great staking platforms out there, but there are also many shady ones as well. Really, just like with anything else in this space make sure to do your research before you start staking.

Utility is something that is seriously overlooked by a lot of people in this space. It's understandable that this industry is highly speculative, but there are some blockchains in this space that don’t get the amount of attention they deserve.

These are blockchains that already exist, and even now provide a lot of utility, but they also have potential to provide even more utility in the future. Blockchains like Cosmos, Terra and Persistence are fast, cheap and decentralized. These blockchains also support advanced smart contracts, which allow the creation of great DApps.

There are a lot of blockchains in this space that are more popular than the aforementioned blockchains, and yet most of those blockchains either lack decentralization, or still lack support for smart contracts. Being a decentralized money that is a store of value is something Bitcoin already achieved over 10 years ago. New blockchains need to be able to add more utility on top of that, and the only way they can do that is by supporting DApps.

Additionally, Terra, Cosmos and Persistence are all highly interoperable with each other. The DApps on these blockchains benefit from this interoperability because they can support assets from any of the other 2 blockchains.

This is a pretty big question that people in this space have to consider. I personally like to do a bit of both in the sense that I stake the relatively stable tokens, and tend to just hodl the more volatile ones.

Hodling your tokens is definitely less risky than staking your tokens, but in all fairness staking doesn’t really seem like all that risky of an endeavor. Especially, when you consider the fact that a big part of staking just involves hodling your tokens. In fact, many of the risks associated with hodling your tokens are the exact same risks you will be exposed to whilst staking them, and that is the risk of downward price fluctuation.

The biggest additional risk stakers take on relative to hodlers is having their tokens locked into a liquidity pool for a certain period of time.. Usually no longer than a month, but for this extra risk stakers are given pretty decent rewards. Besides if you use a liquid staking DApp like pStake you could essentially avoid the risk of having your tokens locked up by simply minting a synthetic version of your staked tokens.

The synthetic tokens you mint can be used on DeFi applications just as you would use any other tokens.

A lot of Ethereum blockchain users are migrating onto new blockchains in hopes of finding faster, cheaper and more scalable networks. There is no doubt that Eth fees are insanely high, and the cost of making transactions on Eth only gets more expensive as time goes by. Additionally, transactions on Eth can take a lot of time to complete sometimes, and network scalability issues can at times outright cancel people’s transactions.

Considering the many issues Eth is facing right now it's understandable why many people would want to migrate their liquidity from Eth onto other blockchains, but don’t lose track of Eth’s biggest strength, it's decentralization. If you are really considering moving some of your liquidity onto other faster and cheaper blockchains just make sure it's decentralized, because there are quite a few centralized networks out there. Many of these centralized networks out there are extremely fast, charge little to no transaction fees, and have insane scalability, but they tend to lack the most important component of a blockchain, and that is decentralization.

A few really good, fast, cheap and scalable blockchains I would recommend are Terra, Persistence and Cosmos. These blockchains have a good amount of validators, and the tokens are distributed in a manner that should be expected of a proper decentralized blockchain.

There are just the blockchains that I personally find are fast, cheap & scalable, and yet still manage to maintain a good degree of decentralization. If you guys like to use any other fast and cheap blockchains that maintain a relatively good degree of decentralization then please share them here.

Staking is something most people in this space already know about. Staking involves locking your tokens into a contract for a certain period of time to get rewards, and help secure the network. Well, now there is liquid staking, and it allows you to stake your tokens as usual, but at the same time you will also be able to mint synthetic tokens using your staked tokens.

The synthetic tokens you mint using your staked tokens will have the exact same value as your underlying tokens, and will even match their price fluctuations. Additionally, these synthetic tokens can be utilized on DeFi applications for trading, and LPing on AMMs. You can redeem the synthetic tokens for the underlying staked tokens whenever you like just as long as the staking period is over.   

If you are interested in finding out more about liquid staking here is an article that covers it in depth. 

There have been a lot of new blockchains coming out in this space recently, and the main ones that are getting a lot of attention are Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Solana. Don’t get me wrong BSC and Solana are great blockchains, but I think some really great highly interoperable networks are really being overlooked right now.

Interoperability is one of the core areas that projects and users are looking for right now in this industry. On top of that, interoperability is just generally really important for the space because it allows users, liquidity, & projects to seamlessly and easily transfer between various networks.

If users can easily move around between networks it will drastically increase the competitive nature of the whole industry, and significantly reduce the current state of tribalism. Interoperability will make moving liquidity from DApps on one network to another much easier as well, and this will be a catalyst for great new projects regardless of which network they are based on.

Tendermint networks like Cosmos, Terra and Persistence are all unique, but at the same time they have one huge similarity, and that is their Tendermint infrastructure. The underlying Tendermint infrastructure on all three of these networks allows them all to have insane interoperability. Any network made using Tendermint can do its own unique thing, but still have the advantage of seamless interoperability with all other Tendermint based networks.

Staking is a really popular method in this space for people to earn some extra cash with their tokens. Staking requires people to delegate their tokens to a smart contract for a small period of time, and they are rewarded for this by receiving additional tokens.

If you are staking make sure to use an audited decentralized application, or DApp otherwise you are at risk of interacting with a compromised smart contract. It goes without saying that if you have or are delegating your tokens to a compromised smart contract it puts you in a very precarious situation.

Two great staking platforms that I really like to use and know are audited are Cosmostation and pStake. If you guys have another staking platform you like using make sure to check if it's audited. You can usually find a project’s audit report on an audit firm's site like this, or somewhere on the project's github. 

There are a lot of places where you can stake your Cosmos ATOM tokens, but these are the three best places I have found to stake your ATOMS. The three platforms which allow staking ATOMs that I decided to go with are: Cosmostation, pStake, and Binance.

Cosmostation is a validator, and is perhaps the most popular place for people to stake their ATOMs. The rewards for staking your ATOMS on Cosmostation are around 8% and 10% APR. Cosmostation is a validator and this means staking your ATOMs on it helps secure the Cosmos network. 

Staking ATOMs on Cosmostation is not free and stakers will have to pay a fee of 8.9%. There is a 22 day lockup period on your ATOMs if you decide to stake them on Cosmostation. Once your tokens are locked into a staking platform you cannot withdraw them until the staking period is over.     

pStake is a decentralized liquid staking platform which is relatively new, but it has already gained a lot of popularity among the Cosmos community. pStake offers around 8% APR to those who stake their Cosmos tokens on the DApp. My favorite aspect of pStake is that it is a liquid staking platform, which means it allows you to mint synthetic tokens that represent your staked tokens. These synthetic tokens can be used in DeFi whilst you earn rewards on your staked tokens.

pStake will charge stakers a service fee, and if the stakers choose to mint synthetic tokens to represent their staked tokens they will be charged a minting fee. Right now, however, pStake has kept their service and minting fees at 0% to promote adoption for the DApp. pStake has a bonding time of upto 24 days.

Binance is the largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange, and it allows users to stake a few cryptocurrencies with ATOM tokens being one of the tokens you can stake there. Staking your ATOMs on Binance will give you 6% to 9% APR in staking rewards.

Staking your ATOMs on Binance does come with a fee, and the fee is 2.5%. Staking on Binance also has lengthy lockup periods, even the minimum lockup period is one month. Staking on Binance isn’t my first choice since it's a centralized exchange, but it is the largest exchange. 

With ETH gas fees reaching new highs every couple of months I decided it's time to start using some alternative blockchains. These are the three alternative blockchains that I found to have the best performance, in case you are looking to mix things up a little.

Cosmos is cheap, fast, and most importantly highly interoperable. On average transactions can go through in a few seconds. The cost of making a transaction on Cosmos is also really low, it usually only costs a few cents! The main reason why Cosmos is so fast and cheap is due to its immense scalability. Cosmos can easily process 4000 transactions per second.

Cosmos has a large selection of DApps and you can find a whole list on their website, but a lot of the DApps on Cosmos were only recently made and are still either under development or a testnet.   


Persistence is a relatively new blockchain, but it performs amazingly well. Persistence is made on Tendermint, so it is highly interoperable with all other blockchains (Cosmos, Kava) using Tendermint. Transactions on Persistence take only a few seconds to process, and the cost of making a transaction is just a few cents.

Persistence doesn’t have a lot of DApps right now since it was only launched recently, but it still has a few really good DApps. There is the Persistence wallet for storage, pStake which is a liquid staking DApp, and Audit One the Persistence validator DApp.


Solana is one of the most popular alternative blockchains in the space. The main aspect of Solana is that it claims to be the fastest blockchain in the industry. Transactions on Solana can go through in a matter of seconds, and transactions on Solana are significantly cheaper than Ethereum. Solana may be the most scalable blockchain with the ability to perform 50,000 transactions per second.

As for DApps, Solana has a great selection of DApps. Raydium is Solana’s native decentralized exchange/automated market maker. Another great DApp on Solana is Solsea, which is an NFT marketplace.

There are three passive ways to invest in cryptocurrencies these days: you can just do the classic hodl, or you could try staking which is still something relatively new, and then there is liquidity providing or LPing which is the most recent.

There are risks and rewards for all three of these methods. For example, just hodling your cryptocurrency is the least risky, but it still carries the risk of price fluctuations. Staking your tokens carries some extra risks since you still suffer from the same risk of price fluctuations, but you could also stake using a compromised staking DApp, and lose all your staked tokens. LPing is the riskiest method of them all since it has all the risks of the other 2 methods, and the additional risks brought about by impermanent loss. 

On the flip side of the coin though, the riskier ways to invest in crypto also carries the most rewards. This makes sense because just hodling your tokens will only give you returns if your token appreciates in value. If you stake your tokens, you will benefit from your token’s price appreciation, and you will also be rewarded with more tokens in terms of staking rewards from the project whose tokens you are staking. LPing in many cases carries huge rewards since you will be getting rewards from 2 different sources.

LPing is done on AMMs (Automated market makers) by becoming a liquidity provider. An AMM will use the liquidity its liquidity providers provide to facilitate trading, and the fees the AMM generates from traders will go to the liquidity providers. Additionally, certain AMMs like Quickswap also rewards its liquidity providers with the AMMs native tokens.   

Personally, I like doing all three, but my preference tends to be towards staking on pStake as it carries far fewer risks than LPing, and still provides good token rewards.
 

Climate change is a pretty polarizing issue, but regardless of where any of us stand it seems like the world is heading towards reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption. The issues regarding energy consumption with blockchain technology is not something widely discussed in this space yet, but I think as this industry gets mainstream adoption it could become a serious topic of interest.. Especially considering the fact that a lot of the world is heading towards figuring out ways to reduce energy consumption and promoting green energy. 

People have mainly been interested in proof of stake networks because they believed that they can provide faster transactions, lower transaction speeds, and enhance the network scalability, but I think another important factor for proof of stake networks should be how energy efficient they are. I think Proof of stake networks like: Cosmos, Persistence, and Terra are a fairly energy efficient way for blockchains to operate and add new blocks into the blockchain. The ability to make very energy efficient proof of stake blockchains might become a really big factor in the upcoming future as the world starts getting more focused on energy efficiency.

 If this industry truly wants to be adopted by the mainstream public and integrated into people’s daily lives then it needs to become a lot more energy efficient.

I have been hodling my tokens for quite some time like a diamond hand, but unfortunately I never really got into staking until recently. The APYs of staking your cryptocurrency are insanely high considering the relatively (relative to crypto market) low risk it involves, and if you are someone who likes to hodl their tokens anyways then there is almost no risk in it for you.

Before you can start staking it's important to know that there are a lot of different types of staking protocols in this space. Many staking protocols have a lock up period, some have no lock up periods, and a few like pStake provide liquid staking opportunities.

 - A staking DApp with a lock up period means that after you stake your tokens on it you will not be able to unstake them for a certain time period

 - A staking DApp with no lock up period means that you will allowed to unstake your tokens anytime after you stake them

 - A staking DApp that provides liquid staking is one where you can stake your tokens to take advantage of the great APYs on staking protocols, and still be able to utilize your tokens on other DApps in DeFi.

Interoperability is the ability of a certain network to transfer data and value across other networks. Interoperability is a fairly old concept in computer systems, but I think it is especially important when it comes to blockchains. My reasoning for why I believe that interoperability is integral to the future of this space is due to how much value and liquidity each of the major blockchains carry, and contrary to popular belief liquidity is not gradually concentrating in one blockchain, but rather flowing into various different blockchains.
 
As time goes by the number of blockchains in this space have increased, and might even continue to increase. The amount of development on each of these alternative blockchains is also increasing, which has been successfully attracting liquidity to them. I doubt this trend of diversified liquidity across blockchains is going anywhere, thus interoperability, and DApps which promote interoperable activities like pSTAKE (enables interoperable staking) are also going to increase in this space.

Most of this is my personal observations of where the space is heading/headed, and a lot of what I said here is my personal opinion. Although, I am genuinely curious as to what everyone thinks about the diversification of liquidity across various different blockchains, and the implications it has on interoperability.   

The whole crypto market seems to be growing at an incredible rate, and more blockchains keep getting added in. A lot of people in the space seem to be uncomfortable seeing so many new blockchains getting into the market, but I think this is actually a great step towards helping this industry truly mature.

Think of it this way, if we only have one car manufacturer sourcing cars into a town then that doesn’t leave the town with a lot of options, and a lot of people will be left dissatisfied. A car has many different aspects such as fuel efficiency, reliability, price, looks, and much more. It's nearly impossible for one car manufacturer even with all their makes, models, and years to make a car that will be the best in every single one of the aspects of a car, thus we have so many car manufacturers in the world. Each car manufacturer tends to focus on only a few aspects of a car, and hopes to become the best in those particular areas. 

Similar to the car industry, the crypto space has hundreds of use cases, and some of them are very unique compared to others.  It’s simply impossible for any individual blockchain to be the best at every single use case in this space. Some great examples of this are: Polygon's scalability has created an excellent blockchain for DeFi, Solana has a strategic edge in NFTs, and Persistence has created an ideal blockchain for interoperability.   

These are just my opinions though, and I am curious to know what you guys think.