Kraken Acquires Staked in Fifth Acquisition of the Year

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Crypto exchange Kraken has announced that it has acquired Staked, one of the earliest staking-as-a-service companies.

Kraken Acquires Staked

Kraken has announced its acquisition of Staked, an early staking-as-a-service company.

“We are excited to add Staked to our portfolio of yield products, which has seen great uptake by a growing population of crypto investors,” Kraken CEO Jesse Powell stated.

Kraken’s acquisition will allow customers to stake crypto while maintaining direct control over their funds. By contrast, its existing service held custody over users’ staked funds.

Kraken introduced Tezos staking in December 2019. It has since added support for other assets, including Algorand (ALGO), Polkadot (DOT), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), and several others.

Staked, which was founded in 2018, was one of the earliest companies to focus on staking-as-a-service, long before major exchanges began to offer similar services circa 2019.

Kraken did not disclose the amount of money involved in the acquisition. The deal is its fifth acquisition of the year and follows earlier acquisitions of Crypto Facilities and Bit Trade.

The Staking Trend

Staking allows users to lock their coins for a period of time and earn interest. Though Proof-of-Stake blockchains allow users to stake from their own wallet, exchanges can simplify the process for users.

Other exchanges, including Coinbase and Binance, have also added staking features, as have trading apps such as eToro.

Staking has existed since as early as 2012 as a feature of early coins like Peercoin. However, the trend has been popularized by coins such as Tezos (XTZ) and Cardano (ADA) in recent years.

According to Messari research, Proof-of-Stake-based blockchains currently have roughly 58% market cap dominance.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies.

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