Stake Capital

Basics

• Aka Stake DAO

• Founded in:
• Mainnet release:
• Based in:

• From their own blog post (25-11-2019):

"Stake Capital is one of the world’s leading blockchain companies in both staking services and the #DeFi (decentralized finance) movement. It has been operating for over a year, capturing millions of dollars in AUM and validating more than 12 PoS chains"

• From EthHub #89 (25-11-2019):

"StakeDAO is a revenue-sharing DAO for Stake Capitals DeFi services which enables DAO token holders to continuously receive staking rewards.

• Not to be confused with StakerDAO
• Full list of tokens that can be staked via Stake Capital can be found here.

Token

Token Details

• From their own blog post (25-11-2019):

"Stake DAO will distribute value generated by a basket of DeFi services to stakeholders via the Stake Capital Token (SCT). The process goes as follows:

1. Stakeholders provide collateral on one (or more) Stake Capital DeFi services. Collaterals include Ethereum (coming soon), Tezos, Loom Network, Synthetix pools, Livepeer, Cosmos Network, Kusama, Polkadot and more.
2. After a set cycle duration, SCT tokens are disbursed to all delegators, proportionally to the amount of fees they generated for Stake Capital, no action required. The staking yield will be disbursed as usual in the same staked cryptocurrency. The cycle duration depends on the staking asset, as each token has a specific cryptoeconomic mechanism.
3. SCT holders can then stake their earned SCT to receive DAO fees staking rewards on Stake Capital website. Just like traditional stocks’ shareholders, SCT stakers will share revenue collected by the DAO on a regular basis.

SCT tokens have a fixed supply; they will be distributed at a continually diminishing cycle rate, incentivizing early staking delegators. Moreover, SCT holders will be granted pro-rata governance rights over the DAO, letting holders modify specific parameters such as adding a new DeFi service, changing the token disbursement rate or yield cycle duration amongst others."

The post further explains about LTokens; Liquid Tokens, which every collateral asset staked will generate.

Technology

• Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed [insert here].
• Built on: Ethereum

How it works

• From this report by Chorus One (6-2020):

"The LToken is modeled on Dan Ronbinson’s Yield Protocol, where the underlying assets (plus rewards, minus any slashing penalties) can be unlocked at a specific date in the future, and so the price approaches the locked value as it gets closer to the redemption date. A Livepeer (LPT) token might be locked for 12 months, along with the rewards from LPT inflation and network fees. LTokens are a claim on a specific pool of assets. When the maturity of a particular pool is reached, LTokens backing that pool are worth exactly what is in the pool, but before that, they might trade at a discount to the value in the pool, where the discount is due to the lack of liquidity.

This delta between the value of what is in the pool and market value of the LToken, can be used to infer an “interest rate” that is payable on the LToken between now and the maturity date."

Staking

• From this report by Chorus One (6-2020):

"The Stake DAO allows investors to earn Stake DAO SCT tokens in return for providing capital. The core idea is a cashback pool to give rebates to early backers of StakeDAO. Initially, token holders will be able to earn SCT for staking with Stake Capital validators or providing capital to a Uniswap liquidity pool. In the future Stake DAO plans to support other validators to the service and expand into arbitrage services. Commissions from the invested capital are pooled in a DAO, where some portion goes towards building out and running the DAO code, with the remainder going back to SCT stakers as dividends. The SCT tokens have a fixed supply and are minted over time, with early investors earning more tokens and thus a larger share of DAO rewards when they stake their SCT."

Roadmap

• Can be found [Insert link here].
• Will start (6-2020) with supporting ERC20 staking protocols such as Livepeer and NuCypher.

Audits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].

Competition

• StaFi, Rocket Pool and other liquid staking projects.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• From this report by Chorus One (6-2020):

1. "Easy to reason about the valuation of liquid staking tokens, due to similarity with bond pricing.
2. Built on Ethereum, so LTokens have access to DeFi protocols and there are fewer security risks than projects built on less proven chains (of course, the risk of smart contract exploits remain). 
3. Smart contract model allows for fast iteration and makes it easy to add new features."

Cons

• From this report by Chorus One (6-2020):

1. "Currently only for ERC20 staking protocols. Not clear when and how bridges will be operational to allow for cross-chain features.
2. Only partially fungible in that each LToken is tied to a specific pool of assets with a specific maturity date. 
3. Governance voting and validator choice resides with SCT token holders."

Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.

Team

• Full team can be found [here].

Funding

• Illuvium; was part of a $5M investment round (12-3-2021).
• Shiba Inu's Treat blockchain; part of its $12M raise (23-4-2024).

Partners 

• Is named as part of the MetaCartel ecosystem (as of 1-2020 on the website)
• "Stake DAO recently announced (12-2019) they will be leveraging Aragon for their foundation, largely due to the network of tools available for unique users within the DAO."
• Is a member of the Ren Alliance (19-6-2020).