Last week, Chainlink, the blockchain industry’s most widely used decentralized computing platform, released the latest upgrade to its native staking mechanism. Chainlink Staking v0.2’s phased rollout began with a nine-day Priority Migration period for existing v0.1 stakers. Six hours after Chainlink opened Early Access today, v0.2’s expanded staking pool was completely filled.
Staking is a fundamental pillar of Chainlink Economics 2.0, which launched during SmartCon 2022. Following its Staking Roadmap, Chainlink released Staking v0.1 last December. This initial model featured a basic reputation framework and staker alerting system that served as a simple and secure foundation for future iterations.
As a community-driven cryptoeconomic security system, staking allows members of the Chainlink ecosystem to commit tokens in smart contracts to back certain performance guarantees of Chainlink’s oracle services. According to an official Chainlink blog post, v0.2 introduces greater flexibility, improved security guarantees, modular architecture, and a dynamic rewards mechanism to the Chainlink Staking Platform.
v0.2’s expanded community pool of 40,875,000 LINK tokens also makes staking accessible to a more diverse group of LINK token holders as the Chainlink Network secures more value. In an official announcement, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov highlighted Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) as a driving factor behind Chainlink’s growing cryptoeconomic security.
“The security of the Chainlink Network has enabled over $9T in transaction value, something that has been recognized by the world’s leading financial institutions through their adoption of CCIP and other Chainlink services,” he said. “Because we are seeing a consistent increase in the amount of value secured by and paid for over the Chainlink Network, it’s increasingly important to improve the cryptoeconomic security of the network.”
Read the official Chainlink Staking v0.2 blog post.