Important point
- Blockdaemon and Stakewise have announced Harbor, a liquid staking service for ETH and Ethereum blockchains.
- Institutional investors betting crypto will receive derived tokens that can be used with certain DeFi protocols.
- Alluvium and Lido are one of the harbor competitors, although there are few other institutions’ liquid intake services.
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Two prominent blockchain companies have announced the launch of Harbor, the liquid staking protocol for the Ethereum blockchain.
Harbor is currently running on the mainnet
Blockdaemon and StakeWise released the mainnet version of Harbor on June 6th this week, following the early testnet phase in March.
Harbor offers staking services to financial institutions and technology companies. Unlike other cryptocurrency staking methods, Harbor’s approach provides clients with the ability to earn staking rewards without losing access to funds during the lockup period.
Harbor will first work with the Ethereum blockchain to accept deposits on the native cryptocurrency token ETH.
Participants betting on ETH will receive a Derived Harbor Token. These tokens can be used for lending, borrowing, writing options, and interest rate swaps on authorized DeFi platforms.
Harbor also aims to be completely safe and compliant. Its user base consists of KYC-approved participants. Insurance reductions, multiple code audits, and fully protected smart contract keys further secure your funds.
Konstantin Richter, Founder and CEO of Blockdaemon, emphasizes Harbor’s unique approach and calls it “the first ETH agency-grade liquid staking solution available on the market today.”
Similarly, StakeWise co-founder Kirill Kutakov said the launch of the harbor was “the first time traditional institutions could participate in staking and DeFi under familiar conditions.”
Liquid staking is increasing
Currently, few other staking services offer liquid staking as a harbor, but other services with competing features are underway. Coinbase Cloud and Figment are supporting a liquid staking project called Alluvial, which is still under development as of May.
Institutional liquid staking services are also popular. The DeFi platform, Lido, makes up the majority of Ethereum’s liquid staking. Rocket pools are another highly regarded alternative.
Still, the harbor has the potential to attract a lot of value, thanks to the funds accumulated by its operators so far.
StakeWise claims to have delegated 50,000 ETH ($ 93 million) to validators so far. Meanwhile, Blockdaemon claims to have delegated $ 11 billion to its validator.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this work owned BTC, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies.
