1. Introduction

1.1. Stacking

Staking is a way of earning rewards for holding certain cryptocurrencies. If a cryptocurrency you own allows staking — current options include Tezos, Cosmos, and now Ethereum (via the new ETH2 upgrade) — you can “stake” some of your holdings and earn a percentage-rate reward over time. This usually happens via a “staking pool” which you can think of as being similar to an interest-bearing savings account. The reason your crypto earns rewards while staked is that the blockchain puts it to work [].

1.2. Liquid Stacking

In the face of limitations surrounding both self-staking and exchange staking, liquid staking comes as an innovative alternative to sidestep risks associated with illiquidity, complexity, and centralization. Liquid staking is an alternative to locking up a user’s stake: it allows users to stake any amount of Ethereum and to effectively unstake their ETH without the requirement of transactions being enabled. This is done through the issuance of a tokenized version of the staked funds — a sort of derivative — which can be transferred, stored, spent, or traded as one would a regular token [].

1.3. Ethereum Staking Platforms and Pools

Some protocols offer liquid staking derivatives, like Ankr, Rocket Pool, and Lido.

Ankr Staking receives daily ETH rewards into the Ethereum 2 (ETH2) staking pool, which are then reflected in aETH holders' wallets. As a result, the amount of aETH that users hold in their wallet automatically increases with every daily rebase. The rebase adjustment represents the staking rewards [].

It is worth mentioning that ETH2 is an upgrade to the Ethereum network that aims to improve the network’s security and scalability. This upgrade involves a shift in Ethereum’s mining model (“Proof-of-Work”) to a staking model (“Proof-of-Stake”) [].

Rocket Pool’s Ethereum 2.0 staking pool lowers staking costs. It requires smart contracts to create its structures of validators. A node on Rocket Pool requires fewer Ethereum staked. Similarly, the platforms mentioned previously reward users for staking their Ethereum, essentially contributing to the ecosystem, and to liquid staking as a whole. As a result of staking ETH on Rocket Pool, in exchange, you receive rETH and, additionally, RPL if you serve as a node validator [].

Lido is the leading Ethereum staking pool letting you benefit from efficient liquidity and pool security. Lido lets you stake ETH to earn daily rewards. Stake any amount and grow your balance with DeFi []. Lido allows users to stake any amount of Ethereum, issuing stETH in return, which can be used for lending, collateral and more, all the while still earning daily staking rewards. As a user’s staked ETH generates staking rewards, the user’s balance will increase once per day, allowing them to access the value of their staking rewards. Lido’s approach also allows users to unstake at any time through the use of stETH-ETH liquidity pools [].

The aim of this dashboard is to investigate the trends of the price volatility for these tokens as well as the swap activity thereof.

• This figure shows that rETH token (which belongs to Rocket Pool platform) has the highest USD price among other tokens.
• All of the tokens show same trend over a specific period of time (Dec 2021 to Sep 2022)
• It can be observed that the price of all tokens has decreased from Dec 2021 to Mar 2022. Then an increasing trend until 4 Apr 2022 can be seen. After 4 Apr 2022 the decreasing trend for all tokens is observable.

3. Results and Discussion

2. methodology

The data in this dashboard has been extracted from the following tables:

1. ethereum.token_prices_hourly
2. ethereum.core.ez_dex_swaps

The following token address has been used in this dashboard:

1. “0xe95a203b1a91a908f9b9ce46459d101078c2c3cb”

2. “0xae78736cd615f374d3085123a210448e74fc6393“

3. “0xae7ab96520de3a18e5e111b5eaab095312d7fe84“

   All stakes performed in the above-mentioned protocols have been analyzed with the following parameters:

   • The daily price of tokens and ETH
   • Difference between tokens and ETH
   • Weekly swap from and swap to
   • Daily total swaps
   • Distribution of swap volume size for each token

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These figures show the difference between the price of the ETH token and its derivatives. It can be concluded that the stETH token (which belongs to the lido protocol) has the lowest price difference from the ETH token. The highest price difference is between ETH and aETH (which belongs to the ankr platform).

• As far as daily number and amount of ETH swaps as well as daily amount of USD swaps is concerned, these charts show that stETH token (which belongs to the lido protocol) has the upper hand.
• The most number of ETH swapped for stETH token is 1102 that has been reported on 10 Jul 2022.
• The highest amount of ETH swapped for stETH token is about 276 k that has been reported on 16 May 2022.
• The highest amount of USD swapped for stETH token is about 527 M that has been reported on 13 May 2022.

As far as weekly number of ETH and USD volume as well as weekly cumulative USD volume is concerned, again stETH token and consequently lido protocol stands first among other ETH derivative tokens.

As far as the total number of ETH and USD volume swaps from and to ETH derivative tokens is concerned, again stETH token constitute the highest portion of these amounts:

• 64.5% of the total number of ETH has swapped from stETH token
• 94.9% of total USD volume has swapped from stETH token
• 72.9% of the total number of ETH has swapped from stETH token
• 94.8% of total USD volume has swapped from stETH token

These pie charts shows that highest portion of swap size of ETH derivative tokens lies in the range of 1000-10000 USD as follows:

• 30.4% of aETH swap size lies in the range of 1000-10000 USD
• 36.2% of stETH swap size lies in the range of 1000-10000 USD
• 31.8% of rETH swap size lies in the range of 1000-10000 USD

These pie charts show that:

• 73.4% of the unique users have swapped ETH for stETH token.
• 71.9% of the total amount of ETH tokens has swapped for stETH token.
• The highest portion of total amount of ETH and USD has swapped for for stETH token.

Conclusion

The analysis of the ETH derivatives tokens e.g. rETH, aETH, and stETH, showed that while all of these tokens show similar trend over a specific period of time (Dec 2021 to Sep 2022), rETH token (which belongs to Rocket Pool platform) has the highest USD price among other tokens.

• All of the examined parameters in this dashboard such as the daily price of ETH and its derivatives tokens, the difference between derivatives tokens and ETH as well as daily and weekly swap showed that stETH token is superior to other derivative tokens. Therefore, it can be concluded that the Lido protocol has a significant advantage over other platforms and shows higher potential for expansion and development.
• Investigation of the distribution of swap volume size for each token showed that the highest portion of swap size of ETH derivative tokens lies in the range of 1000-10000 USD.

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Thanks to: mzi0111

the results of this dashboard truly helped me to do my own analysis: