At Ankr, our goal is to continuously add new DeFi earning strategies for our users so they can take full advantage of DeFi composability and access the best combination of rewards. As we keep expanding our staking services and creating more use cases for our native token, we have decided to discontinue the addition of new ETH validator node providers to the platform. This has been a long time coming ahead of The Ethereum Merge that will change the dynamics of liquid staking.
To facilitate this transition, we have kept existing ETH2 node providers on board for the past 6 months. We will now be discontinuing ETH2 node providers entirely while ensuring that all providers will receive their earned rewards and their initial deposit.
What Is Changing?
As of September 1st, 2022, we will begin discontinuing the ETH2 node provider service users can run in Ankr Hosting. This move comes at a time when all of the team’s efforts are going towards decreasing Ankr’s dependency on third-party nodes for validating and building a more self-reliant and sustainable environment.
What Will Happen If I Run An ETH2 Validator With Ankr?
The transition will happen in two stages:
- On September 1st, Ankr will start reducing the number of keys for each node. This will give users time to stop the nodes they are currently running or connect to another validation network.
- Starting September 6th, all keys will be revoked, at which point users will no longer validate blocks.
How Do I Claim My Deposit and Rewards? Claiming Your Insurance Deposit
Users who have been running ETH2 Provider nodes will either have their insurance deposit sent back to them automatically, or they can claim the insurance amount through the new interface on the website, depending on what asset they deposited.
- ANKR Token Deposits — If you used ANKR tokens as your insurance deposit for an ETH2 provider node, that same amount of ANKR tokens will be sent back to your wallet automatically after September 6th. If you would like, you are now able to stake your ANKR in a new way via Ankr Staking (currently ~9.14% APY).
- ETH Deposits — Those who deposited ETH will be able to withdraw their deposit in liquid staking tokens (aETHb or aETHc) after September 6th.
These tokens automatically accumulate ETH staking rewards just by holding them. However, you can sell them at any time on the open market. Alternatively, you could choose to claim your deposit in your original ETH along with rewards after the Shanghai update (6–12 months after The Merge).
Claiming Your Accumulated Staking Rewards
All earned rewards can be claimed after ETH2 withdrawals on Ethereum 2.0 become active for users who deposited ETH to run a node. According to the official timeline, this will occur with the planned Ethereum Shanghai update expected to occur 6 to 12 months after The Merge.
You can claim the rewards via a new interface on the Ankr Staking platform. More news will be released on this when the interface is ready.
What is Next for Ankr Staking?
Ankr will continue to add new trusted node operators in place of former ETH2 node providers. Each node operator will have a separate insurance pool. This pool can be filled with tokens of its choice as a form of slashing risk insurance.
The Ankr DAO will play a crucial role in delegating validation keys to node operators and specifying the selection criteria for ETH Liquid Staking.
ETH Liquid Staking from Ankr will delegate validation keys to these node operators as we position Ankr for the coming weeks when the node operator market will become open and accessible to anyone. Creating an open ETH node operator market is an exciting development that will decrease the barriers to ETH liquid staking. It will allow direct access to node operators for projects willing to delegate ETH validation keys in exchange for a fee. At the same time, these node operators will be secured by insurance deposits, giving them the option to share their node operator fee with delegate stakers in their insurance pool. In case of conflict between the delegator of the validation keys and the node operator, Ankr will own a back-up of the validation keys to ensure system security.
In parallel, Ankr will pursue its collaboration to create ANKR-SVV ETH Liquid Staking as a separate version of ETH liquid staking using SSV node infrastructure. Working closely with ssv.network, a leading distributed validator technology infrastructure protocol, will enable trustless staking through multi-operator validation on Ankr’s upcoming node operator marketplace.
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