Staking and Crypto rewards: behind the scenes

In order to survive and make it, the Hustle life is the life to choose. 

The concept of reward has always existed and in different possible ways. Even children know what it is. It all started when they were little: if they were to do something good like tidying their bedroom they would earn extra TV or play time. Same goes with adults, some people diet whether it is for losing or toning purposes anyway when their goals are achieved often they would reward themselves with a restaurant or a treat. 

The fact is that this concept of rewarding was always known and of course as the world evolves and the technologies advance the rewarding system too. In 2009, the first ever made crypto currencies was released and followed from it are crypto rewards. 

Crypto rewards are basically rewards delivered in crypto. There are many types available and for everyone. Here is a little run down of them. 

Types of crypto rewards available for everyone 

ACTIVE CRYPTO REWARDS

🔍 Staking and Yield Farming 

These are the more technical rewards schemes. Staking is easier while Yield Farming is more complex, but both of them are related to battling interest rates for their own purpose. 

Staking 

In order to get into crypto rewards, the principles of the blockchain, the technology supporting Bitcoin, have to be understood. The blockchain is built by blocks of transactions hashed and linked together. As it is a decentralised system it is a peer-to-peer environment so to get a block sent to the chain the network must accept it.

Bitcoin is built with the ‘proof of work’ principle bearing in mind this is the first ever blockchain done, new ones have been developed ever since. Ethereum is known as the second revolution in the crypto verse for introducing smart contracts and they are now working towards their second version of it that will work with the ‘proof of stake’ principle. 

Within that second version, to get a block on board a node validator will have to validate the transaction and the reward will be delivered when that individual does his role of validator. 

This can sound like a lot of work but this is not as much as Yield Farming, 

Yield Farming 

This crypto reward scheme implies you to ‘play around’ and ‘hunt for liquidity pools’ for the best interest rate possible. It is like trading: you buy and sell at a good price, the only difference is that you do that with crypto and on different exchanges (liquidity pools). It is a never ending process, the aim is to keep on moving from pool to pool as soon as the market evolves with a better interest rate or reward rate. Suffice to say, the crypto market changes constantly. You are basically a liquidity provider: by injecting coins into the pools where you will receive the most interest rate on that specific coin and pool.

This requires a high level of understanding trends but also time and energy. Also, this is an oversimplification of what Yield Farming is and of course the security process and infrastructure deployed to do it are also important - you cannot do this process once a week with a small laptop and that is why individuals entering are usually big investors.  

One of the most renowned platforms is Compound, an autonomous algorithm for interest rate protocol that has more than 11 billion of dollars of assets earning interest across 12 markets. 

Yield Farming seems the more attractive but as more complicated as it is it is also a higher risk. If the platform has been developed with poor code and no audit was done prior to launch, breaches could be found by expert developers and create other protocols that will allow them to steal money without even making the platform react; it is called an ‘exploitable attack vector’. This isn’t the case for staking which has one risk being the speculation whether the subject of their stake will actually be in a bull or bear market and make money. Although, while staking timelocks can be applied for development purposes and that could be a danger in a way that while you stake therefore invest in the technology the team could actually never really finish to develop it and go bankrupt before completion of the vision. 

☝️ You can do it though 

The easier one is the crypto cashback, no brainers - download the app, shop and earn, easy as this. The second one would be staking and before you jump on your horse, the validation process can be done behind the scenes. 

Indeed, as more and more people are getting into crypto and the trickiness of the tech can be quite discouraging, some exchanges have facilitated the process of staking for them. 

This is the case on Kraken: basically you invest your money and they take care of being the validating node. 

Staking with Kraken 

Youtube video on it

Another platform that does an interesting staking model is HollaEx.com. Whether you know about their product or not you can decide to stake their token XHT and they will take care of the validating process. People can use XHT from the official HollaEx Exchange.

Staking on HollaEx projects (projects list)

🔍 Investing 

Similarly to trading stocks, you can decide to invest into specific coins/tokens and let the value gain over time on its own. The most well-known one is definitely Bitcoin which started at $0 to end up at its highest around $65,000!

Although, it is important to note that investing comes with risks, even though Bitcoin went up $65k it is now cut in half at $30k, this is a tremendous dip that may or may not continue. 

There are many coins to invest in, you can find on Coingecko a list of them and you can choose whichever seems interesting for you to invest. 

PASSIVE CRYPTO REWARDS 

🔍 Crypto cashback and Loyalty rewards 

This kind of reward is very simple, it comes when you shop. Put simply, when you make a purchase with this kind of rewards scheme you will get a fraction of the amount of your shopping. Fold and Liquigate are one of the applications providing this kind of services, with Fold once you have done your shopping you get a certain amount of Satoshis (1 BTC = 100 000 000 SAT).

Crypto loyalty rewards are the same; it is like a classic loyalty card. Instead of earning crypto at every transaction your loyalty will make you earn it. Qiibee is a platform that provides such service, amongst their providers Etihad and Lattesso. 

Recently in 2018, the frequent flyer scheme was translated into the blockchain allowing customers to earn crypto at every flight or hotel booking. TravelbyBit is one of the pioneers in this field: when using them you will earn 10% of your hotel reservation in crypto and 1% of your flight. 

🔍 Gaming rewards 

Another way to make crypto is through gaming, when you play you earn credits in crypto. There are many websites offering it and here is a list of them.

Regarding the gaming world, if you were interested in developing or testing games Qudo is a platform that allows you to earn crypto while creating a game but also gaming across their many different games. 

🔍 Questionnaire rewards

Filling questionnaire and get rewards like this one. 

⚡ IN SHORT

Anyone can earn crypto, let’s start hustling!