Kraken surpasses 500,000 ETH milestone
One of the original cryptocurrency exchanges – Kraken – has passed the half million mark for the amount of Ether within the platform.
The decade-old exchange saw its 500,000th ETH placed with validators yesterday as a combined worth of $890 million of Ethereum’s native coin was notched.
Kraken was one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges to offer secure on-chain ETH2 staking services back in early December.
Running an independent validator requires some technical experience and a minimum deposit of 32 ETH – worth roughly $56,000. By contrast, Kraken’s recent upgrades have allowed for the process to be completed in three clicks by any client who is now able to stake as little as 0.00001 ETH, which is currently worth less than two cents.
The amount staked through Kraken improves the chances that a Kraken validator will be selected to verify transactions, thereby increasing potential pay-outs.
Clients are told they can expect to earn 5-17% in yearly rewards through staking Ether. Whereas ETH2 stakers must commit to an indefinite lock-up period, Kraken clients outside of the US and Canada can, uniquely, trade staked ETH for unstaked ETH, thereby allowing them to freely exit their positions at any time.
Remarkable
“The scale of commits from Kraken clients for our on-chain ETH2 staking service has been nothing short of remarkable,” said Jeremy Welch, Kraken’s Vice President of Product.
“This shows clients want cryptocurrency exchange offerings to better reflect the growing sophistication of the broader space.”
As one of the first exchanges to list ether in 2015 – when it traded at just under $3 – Kraken has remained a firm supporter of the Ethereum project.
Last week, Kraken announced it would match up to $50,000 in Gitcoin donations to fund open-source Ethereum infrastructure projects. The funding will help with the transition to Ethereum 2.0 that came after a similar initiative in December, where Kraken committed to match $150,000 in Gitcoin donations.
Kraken has reported huge growth as it enters tenth year of operation. After being founded by Jesse Powell (main picture) in 2011 the platform has enjoyed impressive expansion, with January and February 2021 alone seeing it process more than $116.4 billion in trading volume – 15% more than the entire volume of 2020.
The company also reports that new customer sign-ups in the first two months of 2021 were triple the total of sign-ups throughout the previous six months.