To start with, I don’t have a lot of ETH on Gemini in the first place. Just some referral rewards that I received in the past and transferred to the Gemini Earn programme.
With the hype surrounding the Merge behind us, it seems that many crypto firms are introducing the option to stake one’s ETH with them for greater rewards than usual. Gemini is one of these firms as it launched its ETH staking program in end September. (More details available here: https://www.gemini.com/blog/ethereum-eth-staking-coming-to-gemini-on-september-29?s=33) Dangling carrots, it pledged to let users like me stake their ETH for free if they “give up” custody of their ETH throughout the month of October. Also, thanks to this fee-less promotion, I will get 15% more rewards on my staked ETH in October.
Let’s talk about the disadvantages of staking my ETH. As clearly stated in the above screenshot, once I decide to stake my ETH, it will not be possible for me to unstake it. So I got to keep my fingers crossed and hope that Gemini doesn’t collapse before the next ETH upgrade. Also, there’s no free lunch in the world, so I have to be prepared to give up 15% of staking rewards as fees from November onwards.
So why did I stake my ETH on Gemini anyway? For one, I was already testing fate by putting it into Gemini Earn program, so might as well stake it, right? The staking program yields 4.25% in interest while Gemini Earn yields 2.53% by contrast. Of course, to be absolutely sure that I would be more well off eventually if I were to go the staking route, I would need to buckle down and do some calculations that take into account the 15% fee and work out the length of time I would need to keep my ETH staked for my switch to be worth it. But as I said, I don’t have a lot of ETH with Gemini, so I’m not that motivated to sit down and do the maths.
Secondly and more importantly, I have to confess that the idea of staking feeds my ego. As in I’m playing an active role to secure the vitality of the PoS blockchain, even if my actual ETH is minimal. Like I’m actually doing more things in the crypto space than just patronising faucets. So that’s why I didn’t bother about the maths. Because it wasn’t really a financial decision. It was a decision that reaped me rewards in terms of my self-concept.
So that’s it for me today! Where are you staking your ETH?
