Exploring Aptos Staking and its Growth Potential

P2P.org recently launched a public pool on Aptos, and we are currently working towards accumulating a stake of 1 million to activate our node. If you’re interested in partnering with us, please feel free to reach out by contacting [email protected] or reaching us on Telegram at @P2P_staking.

Aptos is a Layer 1 blockchain heavily backed by an impressive group of VC funds, a16z, Tiger Global, Katie Haun, Multicoin Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs and PayPal Ventures. With its own programming language called Move, strong partnerships, and a focus on technology, this blockchain holds great potential for real-world applications based on interest from various tech giants. On April 20th, delegated staking was launched, and P2P.org aims to provide you with all the information you need before starting your Aptos staking journey. Additionally, we conducted analytical research comparing the pace of staking adoption to a similar Layer 1 competitor.

Currently, six node providers are available for staking, most of whom are well-known players in the crypto world. For example, Jump-Crypto has built a wormhole bridge connecting over 20 networks, and B-Ware labs led the development of delegated staking on Aptos. The network security is robust, backed by over 100 validators from around the globe using a different private staking mechanism. There is also a liquid staking opportunity called Tortuga Finance.

Node providers start generating rewards only after the total stake reaches over one million APT, approximately $9 million (as of 24.05.23). Currently, over ten inactive validators are still seeking enough stake to become active.

The Annual Percentage Rate (APR) on Aptos is 7% and depends on a validator's uptime and commission. So far, all validators have been performing well, and there haven't been any significant downtime periods. There is no slashing, and the minimum commission is 7%, resulting in a final yield increase of approximately 6.5%.

The validator unlock period varies from a few hours to 30 days, depending on when you unstake your APT. For example, if you stake 10 days into the cycle, you must wait 20 days to unlock your tokens. Once the unlock date has passed, you can withdraw your tokens.

The minimum stake required is 11 APT, and there is also a staked fee. You may notice that the amount you have staked is less than the total stake you added. This is because you start earning rewards when the next epoch begins. However, this fee is then returned at the end of the current epoch.

Staking can be done directly from the main Aptos Explorer page. All you need to do is connect one of the supported wallets (Petra, Pontem, Martian, Blocto, to name a few), choose a validator, and click the "stake" button. Our pool is called p2p-org.

How quickly does the staking amount grow? Is the pace fast enough to instil confidence in token holders regarding Aptos as a long-term investment? How many institutions and whales are involved in staking? To answer these questions, let's compare Aptos to a similar Layer 1 blockchain, Near. For a fair comparison, let's return to October 2020, during the early stages of staking on Near.

As we can see, the lines are quite uniform, except for the significant spikes that occurred on Aptos on days 3 and 23. These spikes result from the requirement of reaching a threshold of 1 million APT for a public node to become active. On those days, several large public pools joined the validation set, particularly on day 23 when a pool with over 14 million APT entered. In Near, at that time, the total of 100 biggest validators was required, so the minimum stake needed was not predetermined, resulting in a smoother line.

Now let's examine who delegates on Aptos.

As we can see from the table, the majority of the stake is held by a few large institutions on both networks. However, this distinction is more significant on Aptos. You cannot start a pool and wait for small delegators to collectively generate 1M APT. They are more likely to stake with active pools to generate rewards. Therefore, you must find a large partner who can stake 1M APT at once.

The table shows that only 15 delegators own 98.7% of the total stake. Most of them staked their tokens before the pools became active. Their total Total Value Locked (TVL) in USD is nearly $290,000,000, accounting for 85% of all delegated stake. However, this comparison is uneven because, at this stage, the Aptos foundation hadn't yet bootstrapped the validators, and there are only 6 mainnet participants who essentially stake their own money through the mechanism. This distribution will normalise when over 100 private validators join public staking.

Aptos delegated staking represents a significant milestone in the network's roadmap, although it is still in the early stages of development, with only a few participants currently involved. Despite this, there is noticeable interest in staking within the community, with a sufficient number of small and medium-sized delegators. However, the majority of stakers are still large investors. In contrast to Near, Aptos has gained support from major VC funds and global tech giants. This offers the potential for significant collaboration projects (e.g. Google Cloud partnership). According to Aptos, this is expected to accelerate the adoption of web3 and lead to numerous real-world applications of crypto solutions.