Chainlink staking overview

<p>It has been a little over two years since Near's mainnet launched and a wave of web 3.0 mass adoption started. The network has achieved over 20M accounts, 200M transactions and 800 on-chain projects.</p><p>We at P2P have decided to look back at the history of Near and highlight the events that caused the highest on-chain activity. We analyzed the dynamics of the daily number of transactions and new accounts, gathered data on how many likes Near official Twitter account collected and present all of this on a chart. Through our analysis, we spotted 5 big spikes and examined the events that caused them.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/p-k8p0tT1bSupBucMyf6ycLmnE9LtwWx828km08s1AXwNARd4R6PHiOnKuksk2_lzmz5cTpxum9BZqmu8pOPMcDQAz1DZHf4_HZ9UtCPyHBHHerb1Y3_5mP1uKA9AvFSQtLd0TpPl-z9aUcVMp2laBR19SQTiq0AH8kL6GoHhTrWNqo-DOMrDn1sN-unLA" class="kg-image" alt="Near blockchain transactions" loading="lazy"></figure><h3 id="huge-funding-raisejanuary-10-to-16-2022">Huge Funding Raise -  January 10 to 16, 2022 </h3><p>On January 10, 2022, Forbes listed Near as the 3rd fastest-growing crypto ecosystem, based on the growth of the number of full-time developers from 2020 to 2021. This tweet became the most-liked in the history of @NEARprotocol (33.7k likes and 2.7k retweets). As of today, Near is still in the top 4 by weekly active developers.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/MTJRdrelmBd2WgA3SZU-viQejaVA4o1oCHg4DpkC5ZnNXynz9USvmvcTYUBypGiAuFgoUYf_5P4iq2S41v5aTt6dFVeP0fD1-hOCcJKofHG4qHIn49MVPXUI4Lv1mHk-Zn0ypYtwNCxfXBM5mgXxUUYjXECUj0ZniKDUrgJySzqWS4l9eJMlNsWSa6MbJg" class="kg-image" alt="The 10 Fastest-Growing Cruptoccurency Ecosystems" loading="lazy"></figure><p>Shortly after, Near raised $150 million, supported by crypto-native funds including Mechanism Capital, Dragonfly Capital, a16z, Jump, Zee Prime, FoliuBN s, Amber Group, 6th Man Ventures, Circle Ventures, and MetaWeb Ventures.</p><p>“With multichain interoperability of Rainbow Bridge, Aurora (EVM), Octopus (Substrate), and NEAR native’s Nightshade sharding technology, NEAR is best suited for empowering blockchain applications for mainstream adoption,” said Amos Zhang, founder of MetaWeb Ventures.</p><p>Taking into consideration that only $65.9M were previously raised, such a massive investment led to a surge in interest in Near and the second-largest spike in the number of transactions and accounts was registered (up to 1.8M transactions and 0.6M new accounts a day).</p><h3 id="nft-boom-and-near-crowdmarch-15-to-21-2022">NFT BOOM and NEAR Crowd - March 15 to 21, 2022</h3><p>From March 15 to March 21, the Near network reached over 1M transactions and 270k accounts. During this time the Network achieved over 4 million total accounts and was equipped with strong developer tools attracting more and more enthusiasts to build their project.</p><p>One such project was NEARApss - an NFT platform that provided a convenient way to create and share digital art. On 20th March it generated over 500k transactions but shortly after became inactive.</p><p>The second most popular dApp back then which generated over 39k transactions/day was NEAR Crowd. It is a service that allows people to earn NEAR by completing small tasks like describing an image, writing an article or transcribing short audio clips, which are usually aimed at training machine learning algorithms. To ensure tasks are completed properly, some people are paid to verify that tasks were completed accurately. To keep these workers vigilant, honeypots exist. Honeypots are tasks that are intentionally completed with mistakes.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image.png" class="kg-image" alt="NEAR crowd - complete tasks to earn NEAR" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="1151" srcset="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w600/2022/11/image.png 600w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w1000/2022/11/image.png 1000w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image.png 1600w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"></figure><p>For small tasks, the price varies from 0.1 to 1 NEAR while more significant tasks could pay up to 5 NEAR. Working 2-3h a day could generate a 400-800$ income per month.</p><h3 id="sweatcoinmay-1-to-6-2022">Sweatcoin - May 1 to 6, 2022</h3><p>In April 2022 Sweatcoin announced a partnership with Near. On May 4th Sweatcoin airdrop generated over 0.5M transactions which made the network exceed 1.2M daily transactions.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-2.png" class="kg-image" alt="Sweatcoin - earn SWEAT" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="829" srcset="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w600/2022/11/image-2.png 600w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w1000/2022/11/image-2.png 1000w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-2.png 1600w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"></figure><p>Sweatcoin is a free app that rewards users’ daily steps with a native token SWEAT. It’s the #1 app in over 60 countries and has 120M+ accounts.</p><p>Right now you can earn 1 SWEAT - which is around 0.02$ - for every 1 000 steps. However, tokens get increasingly more difficult to mint as time passes. This means that over time it will require increasingly more steps to gain SWEAT. It is also only possible to mint SWEAT for the first 5000 steps done each day, the subsequent 5000 will reward you with Sweatcoin - a token that can not be traded and is only used for rewards in the Sweatcoin shop.</p><h3 id="pizzamakeraugust-21-to-22-2022">Pizzamaker - August 21 to 22, 2022</h3><p>On August 22, we witnessed the largest spike in transactions in Near history. Over 2M transactions and more than 75% came from one account named “pizzamaker.near”.</p><p>No one knows for sure what was the real purpose behind those transactions. We analyzed the behaviour of this account and noticed that most of the transactions were related to Ref Finance and Jumbo, the biggest exchange platforms on Near. He was active from February 2022 and on average sends around 2k transactions per day. However, on August 20 and 21 this account made 1.2M and 1.6M transactions respectively and paid over $15k in fees. Taking everything into consideration,  we assume that this is an arbitrage bot that was misconfigured at that point in time.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-5.png" class="kg-image" alt="Near transactions by month 2022" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="693" srcset="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w600/2022/11/image-5.png 600w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w1000/2022/11/image-5.png 1000w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-5.png 1600w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"></figure><h3 id="nearconseptember-11-to-14-2022">Nearcon - September 11 to 14, 2022</h3><p>On September 11, the Near foundation held the incredible Nearcon event. It took place in Lisbon and had 3 giant stages and over 220 speakers. Big announcements were expected at this conference and it attracted more than 100k new users every day which fueled the network with more than 1M transactions per day.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="Nearcon 2022 in Lisbon" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="901" srcset="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w600/2022/11/image-1.png 600w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w1000/2022/11/image-1.png 1000w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-1.png 1600w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"></figure><p>Here’s a highlight of the most notable announcements:</p><p><strong>Nightshade Sharding Phase 1 launch</strong> - an important mechanism that helps scale the network and keep transaction fees low.</p><p><strong>Javascript SDK release</strong> - a collection of software development tools, that made it possible to write smart contracts in JavaScript, by far one of the most popular programming languages. The Near network and web3.0 apps became accessible to 12 million JS developers.</p><p><strong>USDT release</strong> - USDT is a popular stablecoin and it was announced to be launching on Near.</p><p><strong>NDC introduction</strong> - a community-driven initiative to empower ecosystem-wide decentralization through transparent governance, on-chain decision-making and treasury management.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-3.png" class="kg-image" alt="NEAR" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="806" srcset="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w600/2022/11/image-3.png 600w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w1000/2022/11/image-3.png 1000w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-3.png 1600w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"></figure><p>For the past 2 years, Near has seen a lot of activity and growth. There’s still a lot more to come and at P2P we are excited to be part of this journey. </p><p>To support the community and celebrate NEAR, we are offering a 0% fee on Near staking until the end of 2022. Visit <a href="p2p.org/near">p2p.org/near</a> for more details. </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-4.png" class="kg-image" alt="Near staking - 0% fee" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="901" srcset="https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w600/2022/11/image-4.png 600w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/size/w1000/2022/11/image-4.png 1000w, https://p2p.org/economy/content/images/2022/11/image-4.png 1600w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"></figure><hr><h3 id="about-p2p"><strong>About P2P</strong></h3><p><a href="https://p2p.org/?ref=p2p.org">P2P Validator</a> is a world-leading staking provider with the best industry security practices and proven expertise. We provide comprehensive due diligence on digital assets and offer only top-notch staking opportunities. At the time of the latest update, <strong><strong>more than 1,5 billion USD is staked with P2P Validator by over 25,000 delegators across 25+ networks.</strong></strong> </p><p></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

<p>We are happy to announce the upgrade of the Lido on Solana program from December,6 to December, 8.</p><p>This upgrade focuses on validators in order to enable a more healthy validator economy: allowing operators to use their existing public Solana nodes with a commission of not more than 5%.</p><p>The proposal has successfully gone through <a href="https://snapshot.org/?ref=p2p.org#/lido-snapshot.eth/proposal/0x5844beba37131b3621c5c96621603db7cb7e2771d1c690dc6869ebd117e12abb">Lido DAO voting</a> , and the program code was <a href="https://reports.neodyme.io/reports/lido_v2_report/?ref=p2p.org">audited</a> by <a href="https://neodyme.io/?ref=p2p.org">Neodyme</a>.</p><h2 id="why">Why</h2><p>The reasoning and other details on this update are described in this <a href="https://research.lido.fi/t/lido-on-solana-protocol-upgrade-proposal/2959?ref=p2p.org">forum post</a>. This update is mainly aimed at changes in how the contract work with validators, these are the main points:</p><ul><li>Validators will not need to set withdraw authority to Lido anymore and they will receive block rewards and staking rewards in SOL (instead of stSOL) to their accounts directly.</li><li>There is no need for 100% commission nodes, so node operators can use their public node in the Lido set or make their existing Lido node public.</li><li>Set the maximum node commission to 5% to be eligible to receive a delegation from Lido on Solana.</li></ul><p>As per our<a href="https://p2p.org/economy/lido-on-solana-validator-set-vision/"> vision of a decentralized validator set</a>, we look to enable a more healthy validator economy where new and existing validators can look to participate. Our goal is to create a sustainable, high-performance validator set for Solana.</p><h2 id="rewards-distribution-model-change">Rewards distribution model change</h2><p>As an expected result of the changes above, the staking rewards distribution model will change slightly.</p><ul><li>In the current version of the smart contract, all the rewards are distributed simultaneously and precisely between node operators (5%), the DAO treasury (4%), the developers (1%), and the stakers (90%).</li><li>After the update, the 5% (max, it can be set lower) goes to the node operator, then from the remainder, the DAO treasury (4%) and the developer (1%) fees are subtracted. The remaining share goes to the stakers.</li></ul><p>As a result, the share of the treasury and the developer decreased slightly, the validator’s share remains the same, and the staker’s part (APY) increases slightly.</p><h2 id="update-timeline">Update timeline</h2><p>All these changes were published as proposals (<a href="https://research.lido.fi/t/lido-on-solana-protocol-upgrade-proposal/2959?ref=p2p.org">main contract changes</a> and <a href="https://research.lido.fi/t/lido-on-solana-maximum-validator-commission-proposal/2979?ref=p2p.org">max commission setting</a>) on the Lido research forum. We also launched a <a href="https://snapshot.org/?ref=p2p.org#/lido-snapshot.eth/proposal/0x5844beba37131b3621c5c96621603db7cb7e2771d1c690dc6869ebd117e12abb">DAO voting</a> concerning these changes, which ended successfully on the 25th of October.</p><p>We divided the update process into 3 main phases: preparation, program update, and post-deployment phases.</p><h2 id="preparation-phase">Preparation phase</h2><p><strong>Duration:</strong> 1 epoch;<br><strong>Impact:</strong> none;</p><p>During this phase, we will deactivate all the validators. This will be achieved by creating a special transaction and having multisig owners sign it. Validators will be deactivated at the start of the next epoch.</p><p>We plan to execute this transaction at the end of the epoch, so for most of the epoch, everything will work as expected.</p><h2 id="program-update-phase">Program update phase</h2><p><strong>Duration</strong>: 1 epoch;<br><strong>Impact:</strong> Unstake commands can’t be performed, validators are not voting, and not getting any rewards.</p><p>During this phase, all the stake is stored in Lido on Solana reserve account, and all the validators are deactivated and not voting. During this phase users still can stake their SOL and get stSOL, but obviously can not unstake. They can operate their stSOL in DeFI apps without any issues though.</p><p>In this epoch, we will update the program and bring it to life by creating a special transaction. Multisig owners will check and sign it. The updated program will start working on the next epoch.</p><p>During this epoch, validators are to configure their nodes to participate in the Lido pool with new requirements (public node, ≤5% commission). At the end of this phase, we create another transaction that will add the validators to the Lido on Solana pool on the next epoch.</p><p>Maintainer bots also have to update their program and restart in this phase too.</p><h2 id="post-deployment-phase">Post-deployment phase  </h2><!--kg-card-begin: markdown--><p><strong>Duration:</strong> 2-4 hours<br> <strong>Impact:</strong> none</p> <!--kg-card-end: markdown--><p>In this phase, everything starts working as intended. We will check if the validators’ nodes work correctly, vote, and get rewards. We also going to run the final tests and make sure that all the partners work correctly with our updated CLI, staking and unstacking operations can be performed.</p><p>After this phase, the update concludes.</p><h1 id="summary">Summary</h1><p>As an expected result of the program update process, we are losing rewards for one epoch, and users can’t perform unstake operations during the program update phase.</p><p>This will result in an insignificant APY decrease, but we consider this a reasonable loss and hope to compensate for it with a better-performing validator pool and small changes in the rewards distribution model, as described in the DAO voting proposal.</p><h1 id="documentation-and-guides">Documentation and guides</h1><ul><li>Research forum proposals: <a href="https://research.lido.fi/t/lido-on-solana-protocol-upgrade-proposal/2959?ref=p2p.org">1</a>,<a href="https://research.lido.fi/t/lido-on-solana-maximum-validator-commission-proposal/2979?ref=p2p.org">2</a></li><li><a href="https://snapshot.org/?ref=p2p.org#/lido-snapshot.eth/proposal/0x5844beba37131b3621c5c96621603db7cb7e2771d1c690dc6869ebd117e12abb">LIDO DAO Voting</a></li><li><a href="https://docs.solana.lido.fi/frontend-integration/manual-instructions/?ref=p2p.org">Migration guide for external integrations</a></li></ul>