On Friday, the Web3 wallet firm Metamask, a subsidiary of the Ethereum-centric company Consensys, announced the beta launch of ethereum staking features will be made available via Lido’s or Rocketpool’s liquid staking services. Users who want to stake ethereum and earn staking rewards can select one of the staking providers within the Metamask Web3 wallet’s interface.
Essentially, the two liquid staking providers, Lido and Rocketpool, issue two “rebasing” and “repricing” wrapped versions of ethereum (ETH) known as STETH and RETH. “Users either choose to hold on to this STETH/RETH token for when they would like to withdraw their stake, use it as collateral in [decentralized finance], or even swap it for another token (back to ETH or another ERC20),” Metamask details in a blog post published the same day. The Web3 wallet firm’s blog post adds:
In this post-Merge world, there is a growing demand for simple staking services that will ultimately secure Ethereum. Whether you’re a seasoned staker or a sideline watcher, Metamask Staking offers an intuitive way to jump in and stake your [ethereum] for rewards.
According to defillama.com statistics, there’s $42.8 billion total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (defi) on Jan. 13. The liquid staking provider Lido is the most dominant protocol in terms of TVL size, and it dominates by 16.32% with its $6.98 billion TVL. Rocketpool (RPL) today, has a TVL of around $719.82 million according to defillama.com’s metrics on Friday.
Last year, a number of exchanges experienced withdrawal stress tests, and after Nexo‘s office raid on Thursday, the crypto lender is dealing with similar issues. Reports on Jan. 12, 2023, disclosed that Nexo is under investigation by Bulgaria’s attorney general and roughly 300 investigators from various agencies. The company is accused of violating tax requirements, participating in money laundering, and bypassing financial sanctions associated with the Russian Federation.
Nexo has denied any wrongdoing and immediately issued a statement on Twitter to the community that the company adheres to “very stringent anti-money laundering and know-your-customer policies.” Following the incident, the company has seen a flurry of withdrawals according to its real-time attestation website. For example, on Jan. 3, 2023, Nexo held around 134,203 bitcoin, valued at $2.5 billion using current BTC exchange rates. By Jan. 12, 2023, the crypto lender’s BTC stash had decreased to 133,263 bitcoin.
Twenty-four hours later, on Friday, Jan. 13, 2023, Nexo’s BTC stash had decreased by 8,324 BTC to the current level of 124,939 BTC. This means that using current BTC exchange rates, $157.21 million was withdrawn from Nexo’s cache of bitcoin. Nexo’s withdrawals follow a number of other exchanges that have experienced large withdrawals in a short period of time. After the collapse of FTX, users withdrew a significant amount of digital assets from exchanges such as Binance, Kucoin, and Crypto.com.
It is unclear what will happen with the case against Nexo in Bulgaria, but with the rate of withdrawals over the past day, it appears customers are concerned. When speaking with The Block’s reporter Yogita Khatri, Nexo’s co-founder Antoni Trenchev said the withdrawals represented only 2% of the company’s assets under management (AUM). “Nexo can confirm that all systems are up and running and everything is being processed in real-time as always,” Trenchev told Khatri on Friday. “Activity is orders of magnitude smaller than post-Celsius and post-FTX,” the Nexo executive added.
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