According to the latest report published by the Binance exchange, there will be an increase in cryptocurrency staking when Ethereum (ETH) transitions to the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.
The report is entitled “The Rise of Staking: From Theory to Building Large Infrastructure” and it is the first major study on staking that Binance published through Binance Research, the exchange’s department dedicated to crypto and blockchain research.
Binance has thus estimated that staking volumes will increase significantly thanks to Ethereum:
“With Ethereum being the second-largest market cap coin and one of the longest-running blockchain products, it could drive many projects to follow and switch to Proof-of-Stake.”
In any case, even now that the blockchain has not yet switched to PoS, Ethereum still plays a leading role, although a good percentage of the cryptocurrencies held in staking remain those of other blockchains, as can be seen in the following table.
With Ethereum removed, the market capitalisation of all cryptocurrencies reaches a present value of $11.2 billion, which, compared to the total market capitalisation of the industry, represents about 5%.
In addition, according to the report, there are currently more cryptocurrencies staked than those locked in the various applications of decentralised finance, the so-called DeFi, even though they continue to rise.
Recently, in fact, the value of DeFi was around 3 million ETH. And, in the last months alone, from August to October 2019, its locked a value amounted to just under 1 million.
Ethereum 2.0 is expected to arrive soon and 10 million dollars have already been allocated for the development and implementation of the Proof of Stake, which should help the blockchain to be more scalable.
Other blockchains like Algorand, Dash and NEO have already been using the PoS protocol for some time, so it’s not a real novelty but it’s definitely a system that could make Ethereum faster.