October 2023 is in the books, and it was a month stacked with stake.link node appearances at SmartCon in Barcelona, Product Updates, SLURP-Alerts, Spaces with the LTOADs DAO, Community Elections, and the rollout of the stake.link Dune Analytics Dashboard.

Let’s recap stake.link’s October 2023 below.

1). Stake.link Nodes at SmartCon

SmartCon in October 2023 was revered as one of the largest and most professional gatherings across the Web3 space with leaders across the tech and finance industry making appearances as well as some of the brightest minds across Web3 and the Chainlink Ecosystem.

To no one’s surprise, stake.link nodes were in appearances across a number of panels.

Here’s the outline of panels and fireside chats that featured member-nodes of stake.link:

Day 1

• Unlocking the True Potential of Oracles: Custom Chainlink Integrations || Dalí Stage | Oct 2 | (Twitter Thread Recap)

-Kubilay Özçelik, CEO of Matrixed.Link

• Partnering With Data Providers for New Oracle Product Innovation || Miró Stage | Oct 2 |

-Rishi Singh, CEO of Tiingo Finance

• Setting the Standard: Chainlink Node Operators || Miró Stage | Oct 2 | 8:05 AM - 8:35 AM EDT (Twitter Thread Recap)

-Patrick McNab, CEO PierTwo

-Kubilay Özçelik, CEO of Matrixed.Link

-Peter van Mourik, Co-Founder ChainLayer

Day 2

• From ZK to OTC: Understanding the Web3 'Infra' Stack || Picasso Stage | Oct 3 |

-Francesco Cremona, Node Operators Lead of Simply Staking

We look forward to continued publications of the remaining panels and chats with the member-nodes of stake.link. Stay tuned on our Twitter for more at @stakedotlink.

2). Council Votes & Elections

• SLURP-9 (Passed with 7 Votes October 7, 2023): the protocol is integrating Chainlink CCIP for a deployment to Optimism to bridge deposits and staking rewards -- all automatically for users.

• SLURP-10b (Passed with 7 Votes October 7, 2023): A formal liquidity mining incentive structure of SDL and OP for #Optimism's Velodrome DEX, deprecation of ixETH LM incentives, and moving LM incentives from SushiSwap to Uniswap

• SLURP-10a (Passed with 7 Votes on October 7, 2023):  A retroactive airdrop of 2,000,000 SDL for individuals who stake LINK in the Priority Pool and mint reSDL NFTs in advance of the close of Phase 3/General Access of Chainlink Staking

• **SLURP-12 | Community Seats (Passed with 7 Votes on October 7, 2023): **To define the election process, duties, and compensation of the Community Seats on the stake.link DAO governing council.

• **Community Elections (Concluded October 27, 2023): **We congratulate community members Seth anderlaan and Ari Kiry on being voted by the community to represent the community in stake.link Governance. We appreciate the other community members who threw their name in the ring as well – stake.link is a better protocol because of the active engagement, feedback and suggestions from those who ran for a seat on the Council. Thank you.

3). SmartCon Staking Update

On Day 1 of SmartCon, Chainlink Labs released its latest update pertaining to the next version of Chainlink Staking v0.2

Attached here is the Chainlink article, and we’ve recapped the relevant stake.link takeaways in this Twitter Post.

TLDR:

• The capped 45M LINK pool will consist of 40,875,000 LINK for community members and 4,125,000 LINK for node operators.

• Stake.link for the first time will offer a blended yield between the Node Operator Staking Pool and the Community Staking Pool, allowing stake.link to offer an optimized reward rate.

Stake.link will capitalize on this new approach by deploying Chainlink Automation contracts that will be out in full force the very moment of the opening of General Access: We’re pushing YOU to the front of the line to stake LINK.

Staking v0.2 is coming. Stay tuned for more.

4). LTOADs DAO <> stake.link Twitter Spaces

On October 16, stake.link core contributors Eric Jaurena (Director of Innovation, LinkPool) and Jonny Huxtable (CEO, LinkPool) joined the LTOADs NFT DAO, the first LINK ecosystem NFT project built by the LINK community, for a discussion of Chainlink Staking and all things stake.link.

We’re proud to say that at the time of writing, the spaces between stake.link and the LTOADs held the largest live-listener audience for the LTOADs as well as the most replays after the Spaces was published. This Spaces highlighted the interest and importance of security through staking in the Chainlink Ecosystem, and we were excited to get to speak with the LTOADs community who has achieved large feats since their inception.

Here’s the link to the Mirror article where you can read our key takeaways of the Spaces.

TLDR;

• Stake.link tokenomics are maturing with the implementation of Tokenomics 2.0

• Benefits to LINK token holders in the Priority Pool

• The full process of depositing LINK into the Priority Pool to LINK being staked, and everything after

• Withdrawals in Staking v0.2

• The massive demand to stake LINK in v0.1 at stake.link

• Thoughts and goals when building stake.link

• The Future of Chainlink Staking

5). Stake.link Product Updates

• NFT Public Search

  • Displays a given NFT including the underlying SDL amount, the reSDL amount, the original lock period and boost, and the dates associated with lock periods.

  • (Supports permalinks as well)

• SDL Calculator

  • Calculates reward rate for SDL based on a variety of factors including: LINK staked, platform fees, blend between operator strategy and community strategy pools, USD price of LINK and SDL, user SDL amount with lock period and boost, etc.

  • General Usability Improvements

  • Changed the language of reSDL boost from additive to net.

  • For example, previously the language was “2x, 4x, 6x, or 8x” boost on top of the underlying SDL for "1, 2, 3 or 4 year" locks.

  • The net result was 3x, 5x, 7x, or 9x of the original amount of SDL. Language has been updated as such

• Stake.link Dune Analytics Dashboard

  • On October 11, we rolled out the official Dune Analytics Dashboard for stake.link that covers a wide range of metrics and data for the protocol.

  • View in real-time what’s going on in stake.link at the official stake.link Dune Dashboard.

• Smart Contract Audit

  • We confirm that in accordance with the changes ratified in SLURP-8 with Tokenomics 2.0 that stake.link smart contracts have been audited by trust-security.xyz, and that all risks ranging from low to high have been addressed and resolved.

  • You can view the audit here.

• Stake.link on DeFillama 

  • As of the last week of October, stake.link metrics and data is now live on DeFillama. Check it out!

6). The Priority Pool

• The Priority Pool has been live since September 21 and continues to grow.

• Priority Pool LINK Deposited at writing: 686,231.154

• Priority Pool TVL: $7,678,926.61

• In October, we also rolled out the visual graphic of the Priority Pool, and how the process works from start to finish.

View the Priority Pool Etherscan Contract Address here.

It’s simple how the Priority Pool works:

• LINK holders deposit LINK into the Priority Pool from their Web3 wallet (currently at a low gas fee on the Ethereum Network)

• Once General Access Staking v0.2 goes live, stake.link configured Chainlink Automation contracts will begin working around the clock staking LINK from the Priority Pool, prioritizing those who hold reSDL.

• Once staked, users will then be able to manually claim their staked LINK receipt token, stLINK, at any time.

• All users whose LINK is staked from the Priority Pool are then able to earn rewards for LINK provided to the security of the ETHUSD feed, as well as their vigilance in monitoring and alerting for the ETHUSD feed, ensuring not more than 3 hours passes for an update on the ETHUSD feed on Ethereum mainnet.

• Priority Pool stakers will also be eligible for BUILD rewards no differently than those that stake through native Chainlink Staking at staking.chain.link

We’re making staking easy this year.

Set and Forget in the Priority Pool at a low deposit fee, and let Chainlink Automation contracts do the rest. We’re pushing Priority Pool depositors to the front of the line to stake LINK.

—

That concludes the October 2023 Community Update. As always, we like to take this time to thank our community members as well as the 15 member-node operators of stake.link.

We’re the first protocol to build a liquid staking solution for the Chainlink Ecosystem, and it’s because of the tireless work of the member-node operators and the consistent and quality feedback we receive from community members that is positioning stake.link to be the standard liquid staking protocol for the Chainlink Ecosystem at scale.

The future of the capital markets industry is onchain: we know this is true from the press releases and conferences since the end of this Summer.

As more and more financial institutions and market infrastructure providers move their operations onchain, we’ll be at the forefront providing the necessary level of security that these firms demand while constantly refining LINK staking.

Brick by brick, that’s the world we’re headed to, and in order to continuously improve, we encourage all to stay engaged with stake.link in our telegram, discord, and governance forum.

We’re all in this together!

OK;LG