Rocket Pool, the third largest Ethereum liquid staking protocol by trade value locked (TVL), has joined forces with Coinbase Ventures. According to an announcement on Rocket Pool’s discord channel, Coinbase Ventures will be joining Rocket Pool’s Oracle DAO (oDAO).
Rocket Pool is governed by two decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), with the oDAO tasked with the responsibility of running Rocket Pool’s ETH staking nodes and voting on upgrades to Rocket Pool’s smart contracts. Members of the oDAO are compensated with Rocket Pool’s governance and utility token RPL.
Analysts think that the new partnership could help Rocket Pool gain ground on the current market leader in ETH liquid staking, Lido. According to DeFi Llama, Lido currently has 4.88 million ETH tokens staked via its platform. That compares to just under 360K staked via Rocket Pool.
Coinbase Ventures is the venture capital arm of Coinbase, the largest US-based cryptocurrency exchange. Coinbase is itself the second largest provider of ETH liquid staking services, with 1.042 million ETH tokens currently wrapped.
That’s why analysts think the partnership could help Rocket Pool topple Lido as the top ETH liquid staking service. “Coinbase is a household name and having their engineers securing data gives the protocol legitimacy to some institutions,” said pseudonymous Rocket Pool community advocate Jasper. “Further, the whole ecosystem is getting a boost”, he added.
It is worth noting that, according to DeFi Llama, Lido still offers the most attractive ETH staking yield of 5.0% versus Rocket Pool’s 4.43%. Unless Rocket Pool can close this gap in yield, they may have a tough time closing the gap in TVL.
That may not matter to crypto investors who take a more hard-line
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