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Nodes, Staking & ONTO Growth: Inside Ontology’s Active Ecosystem
Recorded: Dec. 11, 2025 Duration: 0:59:10Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion highlights the evolving landscape of staking in the crypto space, emphasizing trends towards greater accessibility and user engagement. Key insights include the importance of yield generation, the growth of platforms like MyEtherWallet and Exelix, and the community's role in driving participation in staking and governance.
Full Transcription
Thank you. All right, Jim, everybody.
Let me know if you can hear me.
Actually, not where I'm usually at because I was having internet issues, so...
Great to have some special guest speakers today and hoping to have some of our Node operators
up here pretty soon, too.
It's going to be a fun conversation.
Continuing the series, the anniversary series at Ontology, where we started initially last week celebrating community writers and just generally the community who is participating
in different challenges and events that Ontology is hosting this week or weeks,
I would say even month.
And now with our node operators next week,
we've got more conversations happening around tokenized communities,
probably a bigger emphasis on OntoWallet at that point,
and then tapping it off Thursday with a conversation around decentralized identity.
In general, what the vision is for 2026.
So with that said, with that introduction already made, I want to welcome my co-host, Jeff.
How are you doing, Jeff?
Yeah, pretty good.
And I always enjoy these events
with more people up here speaking
because it means I don't have to say so much
which is always a bonus for everybody
Well, I'm going to bet my bottom dollar
that you still have a lot to say
and we don't want you to stop that
because you definitely add a lot of good perspective
in terms of like what's happening in the industry
but also from an academic point of view as well.
So, appreciate having you up here.
Also want to welcome Exelix on the stage, GM.
GM, GM, Alex from Exelix is here.
Happy to be here, really delighted.
And yeah, basically a brief intro of Exelix.
Exelix is on the market since 2018.
You're just friendly, helpful swap platform.
We go very easy on the UI if you want to, you know, bypass any kind of registration.
And OK, I see that's, I think, the go-to place.
And I think that it really releases the friction, which many people are looking for, you know.
So basically, we do around 2,000 tokens at around 200 networks.
And we keep growing.
We keep increasing, you know, the offer.
And yeah, just trying to provide people with the best service we can.
Amazing.
Yeah, and I love to see builders
who have continued to build and persist
across different markets and changes in the ecosystem.
So glad to see Exelos continue to build.
Also have Vince up here,
who is speaking on behalf of another friend of ours, Mew,
which actually we've hosted several spaces with y'all now.
Oh, hey, how you doing?
Try again.
I had a bit of an issue hearing that just now.
Anybody else having an issue?
What about now? Can you hear me now?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, perfect. Yeah, sorry about that.
Skill issue, clearly.
Yeah, hey guys, happy to be here.
I'm Vince, I head of marketing here at MyEtherWallet,
and we build open source self-custody wallet products that don't make you want to gouge your eyes out with a fork.
I love it. And by the way, just the Gen Z brain on a Gen Xer here, I call y'all Mew.
But of course, it's MyEtherWallet for everybody who's listening, obviously. Which, again, this is
something I've mentioned in previous spaces. And I'll just reiterate here because I think it's important.
My Ether wallet has been here building consistently for a long time.
In fact, they literally were my first Ether wallet.
So for me, it's my MFU.
God, that's the Gen X dad brain.
Sorry.
Jokes don't always make sense. They only make sense to me. But yeah, it's pretty cool to see it just come around full circle to see MyEtherWallet continue to build in this space. wanted to hear from everyone on stage today is just generally, what is your purview into staking?
I know that not everyone who's up here, their products are at all involved with staking. But
as an individual and just generally as a platform who services tokenized communities,
I wonder if we could talk about like staking in general,
and what is your visibility into those communities that are maybe swapping tokens
in order to participate in some staking network? I'm going to throw it first to Jeff.
But then we just kind of, I feel like we could all kind of expand on like,
what is the staking landscape look like today? Jeff, just generally for you,
you know, and of course, talking about ontology,
but just in general too, like what is your purview into staking and the staking economy now?
Yeah, for me, I feel we've gone back to slightly more simpler times in some respects, which
is unusual. I know we're used to cycles in crypto and so on. But I remember, you know,
a year and a half ago, two years ago,
it was all restaking, Egan Lair, all these different things.
I found it personally quite confusing.
But eventually, and it made sense to me.
But by the time I'd got my head around it, it kind of wasn't as fashionable. So I think we've gone back to a simpler time where staking, staking rewards,
feeling like you're part of that ecosystem,
feeling like you are in some ways helping with decentralization
and you have a stake in what's going on,
I think has come back to where it was maybe five or six years ago.
And I'm quite pleased about that.
I think staking is the foundation of a lot of good things in the Web3 space.
And I'm pleased to see it's still space. And please see it's still there.
Please see it's still active.
And I'm pleased that it's quite simple and accessible to people.
Yeah, so that's my take on it.
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, and I'm going to go maybe a little bit further back
just because I like to add context for anybody
who's kind of listening to this terminology for the first time,
staking for me was kind of one of these first entry points
into what I could do in this space.
And, you know, that's one of the reasons why,
at least for me, both as an individual, but also as an entrepreneur,
I chose to use ontology for staking.
I think if anybody is unfamiliar, the two-token system that Ontology has is definitely quite novel.
Not unique because they're not the only ecosystem that does that.
But it provides for anybody who's looking for yield, probably one of the higher APYs,
which I think is one of the more sought after
kind of use cases for tokens.
It's like, how can I generate yield
just simply by being a token holder?
And it definitely is one of the simpler ones.
And, you know, this two token system
having two different markets
allows for a higher yield at most times.
So with that said, I agree with Jeff in terms of what was being described in terms of like the different types of staking,
I guess, systems that were being developed with restaking and even liquid staking.
developed with restaking and even nickel staking. I think restaking was quite popular and I think to
some degree there are still some restaking you know methods and methodologies and companies and
platforms that are being developed but certainly not where the attention is. One of the ones that
personally I thought was really interesting because it allowed for this kind of flexibility, I guess
the best way to do for your token holdings, and that is liquid staking, which simply by holding
tokens in a non-custodial wallet, you're able to earn yield from this. And then at the same time,
you could participate in some other kind of like DeFi kind of use cases with your token.
So I think that that is definitely a very interesting one.
And of course, you know, if there's some sort of like derivative tokens that can then be used to double up or triple up into kind of getting other DeFi yield,
I think that that's always interesting.
So for me, those are kind of the things in terms of its current state of where we are at.
I wonder, maybe we can go to XLX next,
or Alex, just, I'm not calling you XLX.
What is your purview?
Just maybe talking for an individual lens of staking,
and then maybe you can reflect on
how does XLX see staking communities as staking tokens
on the platform uh well um i had my time in d5 probably since 2021 and uh like my personal
uh experience with staking was that i actually tried to earn as much yield as i could you know
a few years ago uh well you you know with a
lesser trusted platforms it never worked out they promised like huge uh huge yields and and then they
just not necessarily rugged i mean they could just you know switch to something else and you
could have hard time pulling out your tokens anyways uh but i think uh this you know
Anyways, but I think this, you know, DeFi scene is developing all the time.
And I believe by the time I learned about Liquid Staking, it reminded me a little bit of, you know,
derivatives from the traditional finance. And I've been thinking whether it's a good or bad thing,
because on one hand, you remember
like 2008 mortgage crisis and why it happened.
On the other hand, you at least know that on blockchain, you actually can verify the
validity and the essence of those staked assets.
While we know what happened with the mortgage bonds, bonds which were basically uh well uh you know
unreliable you know because they consisted of mortgages that people couldn't really pay for
uh as for uh our i know how to say like a team view on behalf of xlx i'd like to tell that we're
just happy that we uh can provide that that better and easier accessibility to various tokens
so people can actually participate in stanky much faster and easier because you know if we provided
an ability for people to swap only after they complete you know some kind of difficult kvc
procedure that might take like an extra day or basically just deny people because some kind of difficult KVC procedure that might take like an extra day or basically
just deny people because some kind of process doesn't let their photo, you know, to be verified.
And then we require some kind of registration. They forget the password. Then it takes like two
days or something. So basically, much less people would actually be able to do that. And in our case,
and people can register if they want to just get updates, notifications, discount codes for commission fees.
We do that regularly.
Then, yes, of course, we're happy to provide that.
But if not, just come to our website and swap.
Sometimes it takes less than a couple of minutes.
And that's it.
I think that is actually a big benefit for many.
100%. Thank you so much for sharing that.
I mean, I think that, you know, from an Xtrings point of view,
it is a valuable resource to provide for communities or individuals specifically
who are looking to swap between different tokens so they can participate
maybe in, you know, looking up the higher yield.
And along with you, 2020 was definitely you're experimenting for me and DeFi.
And there was a lot, a lot of things to do and check out in that space.
Of course, we've kind of refined.
And because of that, refinement reduced some of the experiments that are happening.
Great to see that staking is still thriving.
Jeff Kopperman.
Yeah, just wanted to call out.
Exlex is doing a great job, actually,
in that one of the linking it back to staking is,
obviously, if you stake ONT for ontology,
you get ONG in your rewards.
Exlex is a nice platform.
Just take those ONG, quickly swap them with no messing about
in a nice decentralized way, and get that ONT back and double up on your stake, right? So
they actually serve a really important part of that ecosystem to make life easier for stakers
on the ontology network as well. So just wanted to add that in there. That's all.
Awesome. I think Alex might have been raising his hand to say the same thing.
Actually, you just mentioned the acronym LSDd and i basically remembered one final situation it was about i think 2022 and
basically um another project was running spaces uh dedicated to lsd and i remember that like in
the end of the session as it often happens you know uh there was like a few minutes to let audience ask questions.
And one guy actually took a mic
and he was completely stoned.
And we realized that he was looking
for completely different kind of LSD.
That's hilarious.
I love that.
You just never know.
And in this space, probably more so.
We'll go to Vince. Vince, what's the purview,
I guess, from a personal point of view, and then maybe from MyEtherWallet?
Well, I'll kind of combine the two. So I think staking is absolutely wonderful because it gives people something to do in crypto, right? It's a use case where you get skin in the game. It's so
dead simple to get involved and just start
actually engaging, whether it's with that token, with that community.
It's just something that we really love to point new users at.
Excuse me.
Just because, one more time, there we go.
Just because there's not a lot of use cases in crypto for newbies to really grasp.
Go for it, Alex.
Yeah, I would like to support that claim that Vince makes
because I think DeFi space overall is not user-friendly currently at all.
I mean, there were some attempts to make some kind of, I don't know,
platforms that connect some DeFi services together
and allow some kind of a dashboard,
but all those projects were so ambitious,
none of them were finished by now.
And basically, I think that is one of the problems
that really thwarts adoption.
And I believe this solution is somewhere on the surface,
but it hasn't been found yet.
Yeah, I completely agree.
We have to give people that are coming in
that are not super tech-centric
or not super financially literate
the ability to actually start doing something.
And yeah, I agree.
It's not solved yet
but I do think staking is a great step
in the right direction.
I mean, 100%.
I think most people are familiar with traditional, I guess, banking.
And through that, people know that they can generate yield simply by holding assets in
a bank account, in this case.
account in this case, very low yield, but some yield nonetheless. I think that because of that,
Very low yield, but some yield nonetheless.
people are looking for functionality that, you know, it seems or kind of services their money
in a similar way. And certainly, I think staking is probably one of the simplest ways to do what
you might be already familiar with, whether that be through some liquid staking
methodology or some actual traditional staking the way that ontology does, where you
stake your funds to a node or run your own, right? And I think that's a great segue, actually,
to the next phase of our conversation. We have someone on stage who can speak directly about that, the node operator of the Australia node.
So I would love to welcome you to the stage.
First of all, if you want to introduce yourself and explain just in general, like, you know, why do you run a node?
general like you know why do you run a node and you know how does the node up work for you and
some of your own philosophy in terms of like being a staking provider as a node operator excuse me
uh good morning or can can you hear me yep perfectly yeah cool no worries okay so
firstly um my name is dan um so just for up, I don't do speak on stages very often,
so it's the first time, so bear with me.
Thanks for the invitation, and good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, wherever
you are in the world.
Here's just 6.30 in the morning at the moment.
Yeah, so introduction, pretty much, I'm over here in Australia and how I actually came to be to
Ontology or to staking in general. My background is actually, I started actually out as a crypto
miner a long time ago. And obviously I've just listened to all of you talking about generating
yields, making passive income, getting some staking rewards.
Pretty much, you're probably all aware after ETH went to 2.0,
there was not much going on anymore in the mining space, apart from probably Bitcoin, Litecoin, some privacy coins like Zcash, Monero.
And I like the privacy aspect.
And I wondered then pretty much out in the Web3 space and had a look how I can actually compensate for those missing mining rewards.
And pretty much done a deep dive in and discovered staking on different projects.
And yeah, as I said, privacy for me in that space is important.
And so I found and stumbled a few years ago over ontology and got actually introduced quite nicely.
Had some issues to join Discord back then in the day.
I was hanging in the verification loop and Donnie was trying to help me out back in the day
to get into the Discord community, which I started being then quite active,
but I was done kind of a deep dive.
And that's how I discovered staking or running actually a node.
I never knew actually it existed to be able to run a node from home as a staking operator.
And not unless for certain nodes, like validator nodes and other nodes or smart nodes,
you might need some technical understanding,
which when you run an ontology candidate node,
you don't really need this.
So many people don't know that you actually
do not need to run a dedicated server
or even a PC or whatever from,
or a Raspberry Pi from home 24 seven.
You don't need this if you wanna run a candidate node.
It's a very simple and easy setup process.
And what was actually intriguing
is staking for me is it's like the dollar cost average pretty much. Okay. So, and there's
the system and the way it's designed at Ontology Network, it's quite simple compared to other
systems like, or ecosystems like say Cosmos, for example even other projects like ones like Casper
and what else is out there
as I said dollar cost averaging
was interesting the
APYs are very good
at ontology when you have a look across all
the landscape some people
get fooled
lightly when they see 100-200%
at some stage
or on some chains and projects.
It's
not easy to find
reputable
projects like Ontology for 8 years.
I've seen a lot of
projects. I do run
validator nodes and did run validator
nodes on different
projects as well just to
test it out.
And the amount of rug pulls I've seen over the last 18 months, that is insane.
That is scary.
So, and, you know, do you have reputation to gain trust?
This is why I started with Ontology and running my own note.
You can see that also under the profile on the note page. I do do or everyone can receive loyal nfts for each round
you stake so this is for me to try to trust score people can see how many nfts or many nfts the note
has earned over the consensus rounds so um because the problem is sometimes node operator can shut
down their notes without notifying the community.
And some people, they do long-term staking.
They wouldn't even know.
And I've seen it once or twice.
They're coming back after six, eight, ten months.
The node is gone.
They missed out on rewards.
This is the reason why I started also the X or Twitter space, sorry, page.
So people actually can stay in touch, you know.
For people who don't know, I'm also kind of the mod in the ontology Discord under Till Dawn.
So if you have any problems, reach out.
But just going back quickly, sorry, I'm rambling on a little bit,
but going back to why staking is important.
It's not just earning yields, you know,
and sort of compounding and building up your wealth.
It's also you earn a stake in the network.
So for me, it was important to have governance, you know,
have the voting power as well and be part of the projects
and of the decisions that have been made for the community,
the long-term.
Other projects, it's, you know, when you run validator nodes, again,
some of those validators, they're receiving a huge amount of foundation delegations.
And sometimes you have top three or four validators out of 100,
and all the community, they have so much voting power,
they can just vote in their favor, you know,
and that's different with ontology as well.
So as I said, there's a few more things
in the background to consider.
It is a simple and easy process to, obviously,
to stake, to select your node operator.
To onto a wallet, that's not a problem.
But as I said, for just simply staking,
there is a deep dive.
If you're interested into, you know,
what you would or should consider for staking,
I'm happy to answer questions there as well.
And also probably how to find projects like Ontology
you actually can trust in the space
and not get rock pulled, you know.
So, yeah, sorry for rambling on a little bit,
but that would be my take on staking and by running a node.
And again, I have to say it again, it's the running a node,
the candidate node, it's never been cheaper than it is now.
It's only $48 or $49 US at the moment ONG
to set up your node in your onto wallet.
And it literally takes you probably five minutes the most without having any technical knowledge.
So I've never seen this in any other project.
I always kind of try to share this with the community.
Get out there, set up your node because if you think when you earn 21 or up to 24% at the moment APY as a node operator. You will receive commission as well.
That means you earn even a little bit more for your efforts to keep that up.
So just be aware of this. Thank you.
Yeah, amazing. Oh my gosh.
I appreciate all the context you've given us
and the insights as a node operator yourself.
I think that's probably the best we're going to get in terms of like the visibility of,
you know, what it means to run a node.
As I mentioned briefly at the top of the call, but I know I've mentioned it several calls before.
My first introduction to Ontology was as a node operator.
I was a co-founder of a business called Sesame Seed.
And at Sesame Seed, we brought node operations to a variety of AVM or Layer 1 blockchain, excuse me.
And Ontology was one of those.
And we certainly saw the value not just to stake our own ONT, but also to grow a community in Ontology and to build.
community in Ontology and to build. Because I do remember way back when, gosh, this is probably
like three, four years ago, we built a DEX on Ontology amongst a bunch of other things. So
yeah, really great to hear that. Also agreed in terms of like the technical knowledge required,
I think because Ontology has been doing this for so long, their staking platform is quite robust and quite accessible to anyone.
Also, thanks for pointing us to node.ont.io.
uh staking uh kind of system looks like you can see or very quickly visualize you know what brown
we are the total stake that's on there you can also check out uh you know the the node that we
were just talking about here it is the uh omt australia um unless i'm mistaking because I'm looking at your Twitter handle.
And you can see, you know, the stake, the percentage that's being distributed,
its uptime, and you can see some of those other elements that were being shared,
including some of the loyalty NFTs and everything else that you need to look at that enables some visibility into the reputation of the people
who are operating these nodes.
So awesome, thanks so much for that.
Also great to hear kind of what the social element is
to running a node from engaging communities
and talking to them and even participating
in the Ontology Discourse as well
to grow your community there,
which I think is a big part of what, you know, Node Operations is.
And in terms of like, excuse me, you know, what community growth looks like as well.
And what you could do as what it sounds like you're doing here in terms of being able to grow a community even outside of what
you're doing at Ontology. So it becomes like more of this synergistic building across different
ecosystems. So appreciate that, you know, kind of perspective as well. Next up, we want to expand
on like what some of our partners are doing, just, you know, obviously give you an opportunity to speak to, you know, your platform.
So let's start with Vince at MyEtherWallet.
And let's look at like, just in general,
like what is the, what has 2025 looked like for you all?
What are some of the things that you feel were done exceptionally well?
And, you know, what are some of the learnings going into 2026?
Yeah, for sure.
So, I mean, 2025 has been an interesting year,
I think, in crypto across the board, right?
We've seen a lot of, like, regulatory clarity here in the States,
which is excellent.
And we've seen a lot of changes kind of in the perception of crypto,
which I think is good.
You know, this year has been a lot of focus on stablecoin stuff
in the broader conversations,
which for me is not that interesting.
Stablecoins are a great use case,
but they're not something to get super excited about.
They're an exciting tool.
So for us, over the last year,
we've basically been collaborating with a bunch of different builders,
adding a bunch of different networks to our wallet products, and kind of moving towards,
you know, one wallet to handle all of your different chains, right? Nobody really wants
to have a bunch of different wallets to try out a bunch of different things in crypto.
And I think that that's kind of been our main focus is cross-pollinating from one ecosystem
to another and really kind of giving people something focus is cross pollinating from one ecosystem to another and really kind of
giving people something that is interesting to explore to do and engage in a meaningful way
awesome yeah and 100% of agreement with you i think we've gotten a lot more regulatory clarity
here in the u.s which has definitely been a catalyst for growth, I think, for a lot of projects.
And definitely anyone who was based out of and building in the U.S., I think,
now has a little bit more freedom and confidence in, you know, continuing to develop and invest
into the technology that they're building. So thank you for sharing that.
Into 2026, just to kind of
keep the conversation with you for a little bit longer, do you all have like writing on the wall
in terms of like, what is it that you are expecting to kind of lean into maybe a little bit more
into 2026, maybe share a little alpha in terms of like what your vision is moving into the future. For sure. Yeah. I mean, we're looking at like things that are, you know,
bringing more and more things into the mobile experience. A lot of people focus, I feel,
in crypto on browser extensions, which is such a niche piece of tech, niche piece of kit,
where, you know, a lot of the rest of the world doesn't have access to actual
computers, but everyone has a smartphone for the most part in the world. And so we're going to be
bringing a lot of the experience of multi-chains and like tokenized assets onto our mobile app,
MewWallet, which primarily, you know, focuses on Ethereum, Bitcoin and Solana for now.
But the alpha is we're going to be adding several more chains there and a lot more functionality
to further foster in bringing more people into crypto via a mobile experience that is beautiful.
I'd love to see it.
The multi-chain thesis is alive and strong, I think. And so it's important to
continue to develop for communities that, you know, aren't maybe even aware of what's happening,
excuse me, outside of their own platform. I know that's true for me. Again, this is no secret. I've
made comments about this in the past, but I started my journey in this space
on Tron and you know that was you know this EVM chain that I remember at the time was getting a
lot of heat for literally just like forking what Ethereum was doing but for me that's where I
landed and that's where I learned but thankfully because of the multi-chain thesis and the
different platforms that were cross-chain and interoperable, I was able to learn about other blockchains and builders and platforms that were being built, including, of course, the main chain, Ethereum, but also platforms like Ontology.
And of course, leaning harder into ecosystems that predated it, like Bitcoin.
So, yeah, that's really great.
Thanks for sharing that.
And great to see kind of that's what the vision is.
And I would agree.
I think that that's the same for Anto.
Did you want to add one more?
I was going to say what you said was beautiful
because I think that's a lot of people's journey in blockchain
is they come in because they're like,
ooh, I want to be part of this community and engage with this.
And then it may not always work out well,
but what's great is they can go and find other communities,
find other projects that kind of speak the same language,
so they're still moving towards the same ideology.
And that's just what makes this space great.
Yeah, 100%.
Let's talk to Alex now, and again, giving you an opportunity, share a little bit about what's been happening at Ectolex in 2025. What are some of the things that you feel that the project did incredibly well and what are you meaning into 2026? We increased the volume. We definitely made lots of important partnerships and, you know, I think expanded our horizons a bit.
I'm also willing to tell you a bit about some of our features that some people might not know.
For instance, we actually, on top of what we offer on a website like exlex.com, people can also use a mobile app which is currently available only on
android but happy to also uh head to is at some point and also there is a telegram based app and
any solution works with full functionality just like any other so people can switch between networks do cross
cross chain swaps they can choose either fixed or floating rate and basically yeah it's convenient
depending on where people are and like what are their preferences so we are definitely going to look further into expanding those solutions.
On top of that, as you've mentioned, Jeff and community,
I'd also like to tell you that we are expanding operations
in terms of community behind Xlex.
We are running more campaigns, campaigns with partners.
We are doing various kind of sprints
where people not just follow like and retreat or something,
but they actually do some kind of creative work
and then we assess it.
So we actually want to grow alongside our community
and empower for them as well as they help us.
And that's for 2026.
I think we've taken a great course.
So definitely working on that.
And we'll see.
We'll see what's coming next.
Excellent.
Thanks for sharing that.
Jeff, did you want to add anything, you know,
in terms of like your personal experience?
I know you've already added a little bit of ExcelX
before we move on to the next stage.
Yeah, no, no.
I suppose just to point people to the pinned tweet I put up there,
we have a node campaign live at the moment.
So Dan mentioned how easy it is to run a node at the moment.
So I pinned that.
There's two days left.
That enables you to have the chance
of getting your setup fees reimbursed as well.
So that's pretty cool.
So just worth doing that.
That's it, really.
The only thing just from a personal interest perspective,pty is I love Dan's journey so we had um Polaris people
listening may remember Polaris quite well who led us to Donnie as well and obviously Humpty you know
Donnie very well as well as Polaris and then both of those two led to Dan being in there so I love
this um progression of people who are linked to each other that stay
within the community and carry on doing things and take over roles and keep helping each other.
So I just wanted to call out that as being a pretty cool thing. Yeah, also, thank you for
that. Thank you for reminding me because I know I made a mental note, but as everybody knows,
my memory is crap. So I do want to recognize some of the people that have uh been a part of our community
that have definitely uh helped and supported to grow the community and you know donnie is
definitely someone who um i brought into you know ontology because i just know both his enthusiasm
but uh ability to understand like these complex topics and being able to communicate them in simple
terms so that people feel like obviously confident in taking the next step. You know, and not just
their intelligence journey, but just in general. I know he's heavily involved in the Bitcoin
ecosystem now because of that and doing exactly the same. But I do remember now that anecdote of him helping
with some of this verification headache
that was mentioned earlier.
So it's just great to see the people
that we've had come through
and being very supportive of building on ontology.
Great, moving on to the next part of our conversation here. Excuse me. Just seem to have misplaced my notes. Here we go. Great. I really want to now touch on, and maybe this is where Jeff shines, as he says, he's able to talk our heads off but I think if anything I would say he's able to teach us to
the point where our heads get so big they almost explode is this idea of where staking is going
I think there's a lot of different narratives that we can pull on but one that I think was
touched on and I would like to kind of hear from the audience here,
and our panelists especially,
is staking as a commodity,
meaning where it will become so easy,
excuse me, so easy
that anyone that's coming in
from the mainstream
will almost be able to do this
right out of the box.
And I think some of our builders up here can maybe speak to that
as non-custodial wallet builders and exchanges and so on.
But what is our thought in terms of like how we can continue
to make staking a consumer product?
Jeff, we'll start with you.
I think it's a really interesting question.
And I think we've made great leaps on that already in terms of, you know, when I first started staking, I had to download a wallet and it was quite difficult. And so I had this separate desktop wallet that was hard to get my head around. It was separate to the other wallets I was using. And those things were quite difficult. They created barriers. For me, I started staking because I bought a Ledger. I got a Ledger hardware
wallet. And so my first steps into crypto was Tron, Tezos, somebody else who I forget at the
moment. And it was whatever the Ledger hardware and Ledger Live supported at the time, because
that was easy for me. And then I ventured out into ontology, but I had to get the wallet,
which was cumbersome and difficult.
And now we're starting to see staking just natively in wallets
that is quite easy and quite straightforward.
And I think we will get there for the consumer.
I think probably for me, more interestingly,
is what else it can empower consumers to do.
You know, we've seen all these technical derivatives like liquid staking and restaking and all these different things.
What I'm really interested in seeing is what we can do outside of the technical element and whether from a business sense or a social sense,
and how we can develop staking to support consumers to do other things, where your staking actually counts for something else.
Where it might count for funding a certain product or funding a certain venture.
Or it might count for some sort of proof of social concept and things like this.
I think that's something we've not touched on enough as the space.
And I think it's untapped.
I see a hand go up, so I'll stop and let you jump in right now.
Yeah, I'm not ready to give any answers, but I'd like to expand the question because, you know, sometimes we can wonder, I mean, is it about the volume?
Like whether we're asking ourselves how can we expand, you know, the volume of, I don't know, people or entities and what is this taking?
the volume of people or entities and wasn't the stake in.
And on the other hand, we should realize that typically,
it's not like individual retail people who compose the majority.
And when we are asking ourselves how to make it convenient for the majority,
I mean, just retail folks who have a choice and we want to weigh them to stake into a certain
network then yeah i believe that these days as we've already figured out defy may be inconvenient
but people can go to various let's say centralized solutions let's say big centralized exchanges and
they see basically earn options that i don't know what actually those exchanges do with these assets.
I believe that most of the time they just use it for leverage trading,
but typically they can also, sorry, typically, technically they can also
get involved in staking as well and basically form pools because, you know,
with ETH, for instance, I'm actually, I should apologize.
I don't know what is the minimal threshold to have your own node on ontology,
but on Ethereum, it's 32 ETH.
Right now, it's how much?
It's more than $100,000, right?
I mean, that's expensive.
So there are pools.
And I mean, if you want people to join those pools, the solution should be convenient.
Accessibility is key.
I will also point to, since we're bringing it up, and I'll just reiterate this at the
end of the talk, too, because I noticed that maybe Jeff, my co-conspirator here, put it
up, but there is currently an ontology node campaign.
And what that means is if you set up a node between now and estimated,
December 12th to 13th, when round 266 ends, staking round ends,
there will be a price pool for simply launching your node and increasing at stake. right that could be self-stake that could be delegated stake um so that's an interesting uh campaign that's happening
now is still open so well time space to make sure that people are aware of it uh people are
participating in it as well um great yeah i mean i think for me in general, just to answer this, because no one asked me,
but that is that as staking becomes, again, commoditized, meaning it's accessible anywhere,
you know, be it through your centralized exchange where you first bought your token or through a decentralized exchange where you hold your tokens or through a wallet
where, again, just simply holding your tokens allows you to participate in the staking economy.
I feel the differentiation starts to happen when it comes to reputability, right?
starts to happen when it comes to reputability, right?
Like what makes you a valuable individual platform product to trust?
And I think everyone here is kind of doing that in their own way
in terms of like how long they've been building
and also like the product features and listening to their customers
and integrating or updating their products to support kind of their customers' needs.
Or as the Ontology Australia node mentioned was, you know, how do we provide these individual delegator, you know, projects or delegation projects a verified or reputability signal. So the community knows,
hey, they've been consistently building, they've been here for some time, they're
rewarding people on time, they're not changing the value of what people are earning by sticking to
them. So I think that those are all very important signals. And of course, with decentralized identity
and built-in reputation and verifiable credentials, as we know, how can we enable that so that people can verify that themselves in a privacy-preserving way?
Go for it, Vince.
Yeah, so I absolutely agree.
And I think Jeff had a great insight there about kind of the future of staking,
of unlocking things that are more than just yields.
I think that that's something the space hasn't really dabbled with too much.
Beyond like, oh yeah, here's more rewards.
I think user phasing-wise, if there are perks related to staking beyond just an APY,
that's kind of the next phase I kind of see from at least me personally as a crypto user.
Yeah, 100%. I can agree with that.
Again, having run a delegation node myself, multiple chains,
giving people access, not just to your product,
not just to your community, but also to you and your
time, I think is very important in developing that trust and building relationships. Go for it.
I see another hand raise. Yeah, just want to touch base what Jeff said as well, you know,
how it started or how easy it is today or these days
to stake i mean it's kind of it's always been sort of easy when you go to the centralized exchanges
because most of those chains you can actually or staking is enabled those proof of stake chains
those exchanges obviously have paid their stakeholders some reward.
You know, the difference is what do you want to do?
You want to go decentralized or you want to go on a centralized exchange where your crypto holdings or tokens or coins are not actually yours
because they are in a different wallet you don't have the keys for.
But what those guys obviously do in this, as most of them are probably aware is when they run those staking nodes or staking services obviously they
have to run some infrastructure and the rewards usually significant lower or less than you would
run your own staking service and I've seen this with ontology as well and I was wondering there
was another reason to start up our node because I thought, why do I get 10 or 12% somewhere APY for staking ontology
when I can actually just run my own node and earn 22 or 23%
without having any additional cost?
You know, that's obviously, it's nice to earn 10% or 12% APY,
but it's nicer to have 21% and running your own node
that might even be or is actually higher
because of the commission component there.
But yeah, nonetheless, I think staking was always accessible,
but not in the way we know it now,
because now pretty much you can do it from the comfort of your home.
Before, you had to go and rely on someone else
like those big centralized exchanges,
as I said, which then draw down on the APYs.
Obviously, you said funds in infrastructure,
but also the businesses, they want to make money.
I understand that too.
But as I said, it's never been simpler
or easier than it is these days
without having that huge knowledge.
Ethereum was mentioned by Excel before
and also what is required to run a candidate node for ontology.
There are consensus or there are valid data nodes as well,
but to run a valid data node, you've got to have quite a fair bit staked,
it's your own stake, but for the candidate node,
it's around 10,000 ONT tokens
you need.
And as it was mentioned with the current campaign, you would be able to get reimbursed the 500
ONG you need to actually activate your node, which is fantastic.
So yeah, that's just my take on it.
As I said, we've come a long way in the last few years and people picking up on it.
I do agree also with the use.
You know, we might need a little bit more use
regarding just to stake and generate APIs.
But, you know, if you're in a Web3 space
and like ontology, privacy focused,
you might be able to issue SOBA and tokens on chain.
As I said, it's zero knowledge proofs
and orange protocol, you know,
tied in here.
And on the idea,
the whole ecosystem is there.
We just have to push it out,
you know, and make people
actually understand and see
the value of this ecosystem,
of those products, you know,
particularly these days
when countries get enforced
having their digital identity
and more and more of your privacy
is actually going out of the window again.
That's amazing.
Also, I'm going to highlight one more thing here
because I think that this,
literally the conversation we're having now
is exactly, in my opinion,
one of the value points to node operators
and the differentiated value that they create.
Because we were talking about like,
what can you do that goes beyond just yield, right?
And it's education.
You know, again, one of the things that I felt very strongly
about what we were doing as node operators,
you know, with Sesame Seed was we learned the network.
We created the tools and the educational materials
for people to learn about how the network works,
how you can run your own node.
And literally the last five minutes here listening,
I'm understanding more clearly
how to become a node operator myself
and everybody here who's interested in learning more.
I would say, first of all,
I'm sure, you know, they'd be open to it, but like DM this account, the Ontology AU account,
because you will learn more about how to become a node operator yourself, how to participate in
this campaign, right? How you can earn more than just yield, but also rewards from Ontology directly.
And if you have ONG, I mean, I personally am going to do this.
I'm going to go and move my delegation to Ontology AU
because I've seen the value that they're creating
beyond simply hosting a node, right?
Which also, you know, it's not as simple, right?
Because you also need to maintain the
node which if there are changes you need to update your node so it's really also important to support
the people who are already operating their nodes and supporting the ecosystem
uh i'll tell you i think you have your hand up so
yeah just just one lost um lost note um i see i mean i've been out and checked pretty much every
day i'm on the ontology note page and as that's that I'm involved, obviously, in the project and those yields, to earn those rewards, you know.
And we do have also node operators out there.
They do use that generated ONG reward then to support projects, okay.
So as I said, we have one other Holbinger.
He just now for Christmas, he gets out there and he does exchange some of those rewards for school books for kids, you know, and for schools and things to provide education, which otherwise they wouldn't be able to generate passive income otherwise and would be able to sort of support all those projects, you know.
And for me, that is amazing.
So this is something we're going to plan for next year as well.
We will probably set up a second note,
and all those rewards will go towards some projects
where you support kids and people in need.
So it's another great, great way to support
and get also people involved.
So yeah, just want to bring this up as well.
And at this point, we're getting to the top of the hour,
so I want to make sure that I wrap this up
and give everybody an opportunity
just to kind of their own personal calls to action.
And again, from my end,
thanking Alex and Jeff and Vince.
And I didn't catch your name,
the anthology, Australian Note Opera.
Give it to me one more time.
Dan, Dan.
Daniel.
Dan.
And Dan as well for coming up here and speaking and educating us.
This has been a wonderful space for me.
I think last week's looking at, you know, the community campaigns that were being run
and having those community authors.
I see some of them still in the audience.
Proxima ICU, you know, RTD,
and just a handful of folks
that are participating in some of the community campaigns.
Thank you for coming back.
Also, you know, just this week with staking
and next week with tokenized communities.
And the week after that,
talking about decentralized identity
and bringing some of our friends from that space.
It's been really fun just to reconnect with a lot of you
into the end of the year and, of course,
hopefully early and continuing the conversation next year.
But since at least on my screen, Alex here next to me,
let's start with you.
Any last words, anything you want to call the community to action here?
Well, I think initially I just planned to wrap this up
with some specific conclusion, but it turned out that during this conversation, we came up to the same conclusion.
So I'll just paraphrase it. I'd like to tell that the future of staking is not always necessarily about who gives the highest APR.
It is actually also about the accessibility and about the convenience.
about the accessibility and about the convenience.
And I'm really happy that Xolix plays a big part in that,
in allowing people to actually do very, very convenient
and at very good rates, their swaps, cross-chain swaps
from any network to ontology and basically proceed there
with the flawless solutions provided by ontology with regards to staking.
Excellent. Thank you so much.
And yes, absolutely.
There's more than just yield.
Next would be Dan again.
So go for it, Dan.
Any last words that you'd like to share with us?
Yeah, just want to say thank you for having me today
and kind of feeling me at ease as well,
making me feel it easier.
As I said, I don't speak very often.
Just thanks to everyone,
and I wish you a good holiday for us.
And yeah, that's about it.
Thank you very much.
Amazing.
Thanks for joining us, honestly.
You said you had never spoken before,
but you're incredibly eloquent,
and you were able to communicate a lot of these very complicated topics super easily.
So I appreciate you definitely joining us, and please don't let it be the last.
Hopefully, maybe next Tuesday you can join us, because I think it's a very similar conversation.
Vince, anything else you'd like to add?
Yeah, I mean, I agree. Thank you so much for having us on.
This has been a lot of fun.
And I think kind of,
as we look to the future of crypto,
the future of staking,
I think we need to continue to have fun with it.
It needs to be accessible.
But man, let's get creative.
Let's get weird.
Let's do something that's kind of like out of the norm
to make it more interesting
and bring more people into the fold.
I love weird. Thank you for saying that.
There's a city and a project that I've considered to be weird.
At least at one point, this city was weird. That was Austin.
And their slogan was keep it weird.
There's another project that I joined called Nouns and their whole mantra at one
point was like fun things that are weird. So for me,
I appreciate you saying weirdness because I love projects that like, advocate and encourage
the weird, which I think, you know, let's be honest, crypto is weird to begin with,
from the traditional financial standpoint. So let's keep running experiments. 100% agree with
you.
Last but definitely not least,
my co-conspirator, Jeff.
Any final words you want to add here?
Getting a lot.
I've really enjoyed the space.
Thank you, everybody, for being here.
Dan, thank you for eventually giving in to me,
nagging you to come up and speak with us. So I really appreciate you taking the time to do that.
One thing I would say is,
I think Vince said earlier that it's,
I never thought about staking as being something that gave somebody something to do that. One thing I would say is I think Vince said earlier that it's, I never thought
about staking as being something that gave somebody something to do. But that's exactly
why I got into it in reality as a noob in crypto. So just to reiterate, let's keep building stuff
for people to do, right? Let's just keep giving people opportunity to do some cool stuff. And if
that's weird, all the better, right? Yeah, 100%.
I know for us, you and I,
I know we, Jeff and I, excuse me,
we've had this conversation with Ontology.
We need things to do.
So let's build
things for people to do.
Staking definitely is, and let's make it easier
and let's work with our partners
much more closely to make that happen.
So thank you again, everybody.
I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend.
We'll be back next Tuesday at the usual time.
But then again, Thursday, we're trying to do a four-episode series
and we're trying to do it before my own holiday break.
So next week will be two spaces.
And I hope you join us to talk about staking or excuse me, tokenized community on Tuesday
and talk about decentralized identity
on Thursday.
And for everybody who was on our panel,
you're definitely invited back to those.
We'll see you again.
We'll see you soon, everybody.
Have a good weekend.
Bye-bye.
Thank you for hosting. Austin.
