LUNA Staking and Trends

    Q203. Over the past 30/60/90 days and the past year, how much LUNA has been staked per day? What is the staking percentage (LUNA staked/Circulating Supply), and how has it changed over time?

    Introduction

    Staking is the process of bonding Luna to a validator in exchange for staking rewards.

    On a Proof-of-Staking blockchain such as Terra, new blocks are mined by the validators participating in the consensus and the more amount of staked tokens one validator has, the bigger chance of him creating a new block and earning the block rewards.

    Terra users can delegate their LUNA to validators in exchange for a share of the rewards. Delegators are still in possesion of these staked LUNA but cannot be traded freely. In case they want to undelegate, a 21-day period is needed for the LUNA to be freed.

    Methodology

    Borrowing the methodology for calculating the circulating supply from my previous dashboard, which is based on p_crypto_0 Dashboard, I calculated the liquid circulating supply and the staked circulating supply separatedly from terra.daily_balances table excluding the following addresses:

    • terra1gr0xesnseevzt3h4nxr64sh5gk4dwrwgszx3nw --> LUNA Foundation Guard (LFG)
    • terra1dp0taj85ruc299rkdvzp4z5pfg6z6swaed74e6 --> Terraforms Labs (TFL)
    • terra1wqmfu6w725sal3nvr0ggy49mmtwqgc6tyf4anp --> Luna Incentives Distribution Address
    • terra1jgp27m8fykex4e4jtt0l7ze8q528ux2lh4zh0f --> Oracle Rewards Core Module
    • terra1jv65s3grqf6v6jl3dp4t6c9t9rk99cd8pm7utl --> Account Distribution Core Module
    • terra1tygms3xhhs3yv487phx3dw4a95jn7t7l8l07dr --> Not Bonded Tokens Pool Core Module

    I then calculate total circulating supply as the sum of both.

    For the staked amount, I calculate the daily balance of all addresses where balance_type = 'staked'. Note that this will include the balances of the addresses excluded from the circulating supply calcualtions.

    Results

    30, 60 , 90 days daily staked LUNA and percentage

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    Figure 1. shows the total amount of LUNA staked per day for the last 90 days. The time frame can be changed with the days parameter on the top of the dashboard. The staked amount has been more or less constant around 250M LUNA until April 16th when it suddenly dropped to 160M LUNA recovering the next day. Since April 24th, this effect has been since twice more: the first time it took 5 days to recover to slightly lower levels and on May 5th there was another drop to 127M LUNA which has not yet returned to prior levels - currently standing at 223M LUNA.

    Figure 2. shows the staked LUNA as a percentage of circulating supply for the last 90 days. The time frame can be changed with the days parameter on the top of the dashboard. There is an increase from beginning of February from 68% up to 73% staked, and since then downtrending back. The same big drops as in Figure 1. can be seen in April, reaching lowest levels of 55%.

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    Figure 3. shows the total amount of LUNA staked per day for 2021. It reached a max of 320M LUNA staked in mid July and apart from slighty lower levels in January and April, was realtively stable around 250M LUNA most of the time.

    Figure 4. shows the staked LUNA as a percentage of circulating supply for 2021. Levels above 100% are possible due to the calculations, see Metholodogy. The 134% peak happened in April 7th and matches one of the lower levels in total amount staked. This can only mean a significant reduction in circulating supply. In general terms, the circulating supply decrease in 2021 from around 95% in January to 90% in December, but going through a rollercoaster!

    Conclusion

    The total amount staked for the time periods analysed seems to have a balance around 250M LUNA. Depending on the current circulating supply, this can mean up to 130% staked vs. circulating, but this is transitory. We can see a stable decrease in this percentage from the 90% in 2021 to levels below 70%. I would say the main reason for this would be that LUNA holders prefer obtaining bigger yields than the stake rewards on their LUNA.