Zilliqa Launches Non-Custodial Seed Node Staking

As of 1800 hours Singapore time today, Zilliqa has launched the highly anticipated non-custodial staking services on its mainnet. This is the latest in our long list of milestones in 2020, and signals a turning point as we seek to bring more utility, mass adoption and value into a burgeoning DeFi landscape.

You already know that staking on Zilliqa propels greater decentralisation across its seed node architecture — unique to the network’s sharded structure. This service also incentivises the participation of node operators and community members to support the service.

What’s new is that with non-custodial staking, Zilliqa token holders no longer have to stake their funds through an intermediary. They can deposit funds directly into the smart contract and receive rewards from the roster of seed node providers. Token holders can stake either via Zillion, a sleek and secure staking portal, or choose from a select number of wallet providers such as Moonlet. Frontier Wallet and Atomic Wallet will join the fleet soon.

This launch marks the beginning of Phase I of the seed node staking programme that began with an exchange-enabled staking offer via KuCoin and Binance in its Phase 0, which is now concluded.

Let’s recap our unique staking offer and why you should get on board immediately:

• According to our projections, even with 80% of today’s circulating supply being staked, the annual returns through staking will be around 6%. We expect the yield to be around 12% when 40% of the circulating supply is staked.
• Choose from a roster of five reputed SSN providers — Moonlet.io, Shardpool.io, ViewBlock, Zillacracy and Zilliqa’s own hosted node. More SSN providers to be announced in the coming days!
• You can earn our new fungible governance token gZIL alongside staking rewards. For every 1,000 $ZIL earned as a staking reward, 1 gZIL will be issued. With gZIL, long-term token holders can become decision-makers in the Zilliqa ecosystem. As a limited time token, it will only be issued for around one year starting from today, with a cap of 722,700 placed on minting. Yet another reason to begin accruing staking rewards now!
• To bring greater liquidity to the Zilliqa staking ecosystem, the recently launched Zilswap — a decentralised exchange built by Switcheo Exchange on the Zilliqa network — will also enable users trade, and re-stake their staking rewards, or pool ZIL and gZIL rewards in staking pools on Zilswap.

Our seed node staking contract was designed with security and usability in mind. Thanks to our trusted auditors PwC, and our community’s excellent feedback during the public beta testing — we were able to build on that and implement finer fixes to create an unparalleled staking experience for all.

Our launch will be accompanied by some very exciting campaigns. Watch out for contests on Zeeves and Twitter this week. Without further ado, here’s a short clip you can use to start staking right away!