It’s the end of the first month of 2024, and today, we’re recapping all things stake.link for the month of January.

Today’s outline will cover stake.link metrics, SLURP-15 / SLURP-16 and where they stand on the snapshot votes, security update pertaining to stake.link’s work with Cyfrin and Codehawks, and covering stake.link analytics on the Dune Analytics dashboard.

Let’s go over what you need to know from stake.link’s January.

1). stake.link Metrics

• As of writing, 119,531.49 LINK has been staked into the Chainlink Community Staking Pool between the Priority Pool and accrued rewards.

• Since stake.link’s inception, 1,247,203.68 LINK has been staked through stake.link with an increase of 107,055.68 LINK in the month of January, or 9.389% month over month.

• This represents 2.771% of all LINK staked, up from 2.534% on December 31, 2023.

• Unbonding requests continue from Native Staking like clockwork. Here’s a graph outlining the # of Unbonding Transactions since the transition from Chainlink Staking v0.1 to v0.2:

• The Priority Pool is in a unique position to capture open space of withdrawals that are at or exceed 500 LINK tokens.

• Currently, the Priority Pool holds 669,608.59 LINK tokens that are ready to be staked once more withdrawals come through, with those who HODL reSDL in the wallet that deposited LINK into the Priority Pool the next to stake in the Community Staking Pool.

• The stLINK / LINK Curve Pool continues to increase in TVL, standing at $2.1M in TVL as of end of day Jan. 31.

• Users are able to gain immediate exposure to LINK staking by swapping LINK for stLINK and be eligible for BUILD rewards.

• Check out the Curve Pool here.

• At current pace, stake.link is seeing approximately 3,415.19 LINK staked per day since December 27, 2023, when the first unbonding transactions were eligible to fully withdraw.

• The current reward rate to stake LINK at stake.link is 8.77%, more than twice as high as Chainlink Native Staking’s 4.32% reward rate (2.03x higher).

• The current reward rate to stake the stake.link protocol token SDL is 5.92%, 37.037% higher than the reward rate at Chainlink Native Staking.

• Here’s the full chart outlining all staking transactions from stake.link since withdrawals began that consists of both LINK staked from the Priority Pool and accrued rewards that have been restaked.

We look forward to increasing the protocol’s share of total LINK staked in v0.2 month over month and are pleased to see continued, sustained growth.

2). SLURP Updates

At present, there are two SLURPs that are up for vote that conclude end of day Friday, January 31, 2024.

Currently, SLURP-15 (Insurance Pool) is set to pass with 5 members of the Governance Council voting FOR. SLURP-16 is also set to pass with 6 members of the Governance Council voting FOR.

Let’s recap each SLURP with an executive summary.

SLURP-15 | Insurance Pool

• SLURP-15 defines the insurance policy that outlines reimbursement to protocol users in the event of slashing.

  • The rationale is straightforward: as stake.link continues to grow, this SLURP aims to safeguard the ecosystem with an innovative Insurance Pool.

  Chainlink staking and the stake.link protocol continue to expand, and with this expansion is the need for a safety net. SLURP-15 addresses the potential risk of stLINK slashing events. This ensures user confidence and encourages further growth.

  • How Does it Work?

  In the event of an stLINK slashing incident, SLURP-15 defines an Insurance Pool that triggers a positive rebase that mitigates losses by transferring LINK to the pool.

  LPs for SDL or stLINK pairs can stake their LP tokens in the Insurance Pool and earn incentives. This creates a pragmatic mechanism for a secure and rewarding ecosystem.

  • Benefits Beyond Insurance

  SLURP-15 simplifies governance, consolidates incentives, and streamlines processes. It learns from past challenges, making staking more accessible and efficient.

  • Insurance Pool Parameters

  Defined parameters, including whitelisted LP/NFT tokens, % split of SDL incentives, and withdrawal periods, ensure a balanced and healthy protocol. Regular reviews adapt to the dynamic crypto landscape.

SLURP-16 | Deploy stake.link to Arbitrum

This Proposal supersedes SLURP-9 deployment to Optimism but does not prevent future deployment to Optimism or any other network.

• Deploy stake.link to Arbitrum as the first non-Ethereum Mainnet network.

• Include SDL, reSDL, wstLINK, and claiming accrued stLINK rewards from reSDL on Arbitrum.

• Leveraging CCIP for bridging stLINK, SDL, and reSDL NFTs between Ethereum Mainnet and Arbitrum.

• Enabling purchasing, staking, generating reSDL NFTs as well as claiming rewards on Arbitrum.

• Completed audits by Cyfrin and CodeHawks, with reports to be publicly available per usual on GitHub.

• Considering Uniswap (v2) and Camelot for DEX options.

It’s worth noting that SLURP-15 is a proactive SLURP that lays the groundwork for handling slashing events. Chainlink Staking v0.1 and now v0.2 solely secures the ETH-USD price feed, meaning it’s unlikely that a slashing event would take place, but complacency isn’t an option, and this SLURP will properly position the protocol to be as prepared as it can be for more complex iterations of Staking beyond the ETH-USD price feed, whenever that time may be.

And of course, for the first time through stake.link, Chainlink Staking is going cross-chain.

We noticed many users around November and December repeatedly ask the question of if and when they’ll be able to stake LINK on an L2 due to the prohibitive nature of Ethereum gas fees.

As a collective of 15 Chainlink node operators, we understand this pain. We’re proud to be the first to deliver this possibility to the Chainlink Ecosystem and further delivering on our objective of refining Chainlink Staking.

We’re excited on the passage of these SLURPs.

As always, stay up to date on SLURPs as they are published on Twitter, join the conversation in the stake.link Telegram, stake.link Discord, and governance forum at talk.stake.link.

3). Security

Security is top of mind in all that we do and of critical importance to the future of the stake.link protocol. We take security seriously, whether that’s the security of one of our social media profiles all the way up to scrutinizing each line of code to ensure optimal protocol deployments.

As part of this commitment to ensuring maximum security for stake.link, we concluded on January 12, 2024 our three-week collaboration with Cyfrin and their competitive smart contract audit marketplace Codehawks, enabling anyone to review code and find vulnerabilities ranging from low risk to high risk.

stake.link has now worked with three of the most professional, expert auditing firms in the Web3 industry as well as opening up our smart contract audits to the general public to pour over through the CodeHawks platform in the first ever open sourced CCIP audit that comes with a $27,500 prize pool.

We’ll have much more to discuss once the results come in,nand dive in to why this collaboration is a big deal!

4). stake.link Dune Analytics

Dune Analytics is a powerful platform that enables projects to tell a story through data. Stay up to date with relevant metrics at the stake.link Dune Analytics Dashboard here.

In Conclusion

stake.link has secured consistent Wins in the month of January, and we plan to maintain this momentum going into February.

The protocol continues to make gains in staking dominance, maintaining high standards to our security approach and going cross-chain for the first time--all while laying the groundwork to protect users in this iteration of Chainlink Staking and in future iterations via governance proposals.

We thank everyone who continues to engage us on strategy and operations of the protocol. We’re able to better deliver because of that dialogue. Keep in touch and stay up to date in the stake.link telegram, discord, and governance forum.

Disclaimer: This communication is directed only and persons outside the UK, and should not be acted on by any person located in the UK. Any persons located in the UK should make their own determination as to whether their participation in the stake.link protocol could be subject to UK regulatory requirements, and stake.link makes no claims (express or implied), and accepts no liability, in relation to the potential application of UK regulatory requirements to such persons or their activity.