Chainlink: Of increasing staking and LINK’s rally

Journalist

Posted: December 24, 2023

• 90% of LINK staked by community stakers in v0.1 has been migrated to v0.2 since its launch. 
• LINK was up by 10% last week, but bearish sentiment saw an increase. 

Chainlink’s [LINK] staking ecosystem has been an important space for the blockchain for quite some time. Things got even better in the recent past as the blockchain launched Staking v0.2.

Since the launch, Chainlink’s staking ecosystem has come a long way, while LINK’s price action has turned bullish.

A look at the Chainlink’s staking ecosystem

To check how the space was doing, it’s critical to check the state of the first version of Chainlink staking. AMBCrypto’s look at Dune’s data revealed that there were a total of over 7,800 stakers in v0.1, with a total of 24,051,964 LINK tokens staked.

At press time, 2.405% of LINK’s total supply was staked on v0.1.

Source: Dune

These numbers might not look impressive at first glance. The reason behind this was the launch of LINK staking v0.2, which was launched in late November 2023.

For the initiated, as per Chainlink’s blog, the original staking application, v0.1, was replaced by v0.2, which is a modular, extensible, and upgradable Staking platform.

Since launch, v0.2 has gained much traction, causing a migration from v0.1 to v0.2. Chainlink recently posted a tweet highlighting v0.2’s journey since its launch.

Last month, #Chainlink Staking v0.2 launched on mainnet, featuring a total pool size of 45,000,000 LINK, with 40,875,000 LINK allotted for Community Stakers.

Through the combination of a nine-day Priority Migration period, a four-day Early Access period, and a 15,000 LINK… pic.twitter.com/fQ1YMtKnNx

— Chainlink (@chainlink) December 22, 2023

Staking v0.2 was released on the mainnet, with 40,875,000 LINK allotted for community stakers out of a 45,000,000 LINK total pool size.

As per the tweet, more than 90% of LINK staked by community stakers in v0.1 was migrated to v0.2. Additionally, 19,188,359 LINK tokens were staked in under seven hours after the launch.

Apart from the additional features brought by v0.2, Another possible reason for the rise in the metrics could be LINK’s price action. As LINK entered a bull rally, investors might have chosen to stake more tokens in expectation of more rewards.

Is anything in store for investors?

LINK’s bull rally was nowhere near ending at press time, as its charts remained green. According to CoinMarketCap, LINK’s price surged by nearly 10% in the last seven days.

At the time of writing, it was trading at $15.63 with a market capitalization of over $8.8 billion. The good news was that buying pressure on the token remained high, as evident from its declining exchange reserve.

AMBCrypto found that both LINK’s active addresses and transfer volume also remained high.

Source: CryptoQuant

Read Chainlink’s [LINK] Price prediction 2023-24

AMBCrypto then checked Santiment’s data to see market sentiment around LINK. Our analysis found that despite the recent hike in price, LINK’s popularity decreased as its social volume went down.

Its Weighted Sentiment also registered a downtick, meaning that bearish sentiment around the token was on the rise. Whether investors’ sentiment will have an impact on LINK’s price will be interesting to watch.

Source: Santiment