General News
Crypto Markets Update
Recovery has accelerated for the Crypto markets, with Bitcoin reaching the $24,000 level on Wednesday. However, things cooled down a bit after that, following the announcement by Tesla that they sold 75% of their Bitcoin holdings. While this is probably bad news, it is surprising how little effect it had on prices. Especially taking into account that Tesla buying Bitcoin was the main event that kickstarted the 2021 bull run. Perhaps this is a sign that the worst of the bear market is already behind us. At least the Crypto Fear and Greed indicator finally left the “extreme fear” level where it had been since April, and is now displaying the less ominous “fear” label.
But the main protagonist this week was Ethereum, growing more than 30% thanks to some projections that the merge will finally happen in September. Other sources are less optimistic and think that it is more likely to happen towards the end of the year. Either way this is huge news, as the merge will transition Ethereum to Proof of Stake, and is one of the most anticipated events in Crypto.
StakeCube in Numbers
StakeCube had a great week as well, with a huge weekly growth of 26.7% for SCC and a sizable increase in our Pool Value. Exchange volume also exploded thanks to a very unusual uptick in volume for the SAPP/BTC trading pair.
- User Count: 145,636 +0.22%
- Pool Value: 647.20 BTC +6.27%
- SCC Price: $0.256 +26.73%
- SCC Market Cap: $2,776,000 +26.69%
- Daily Exchange Volume $199,081 +380.12%
- Daily SCP Transactions: 14 -41.67%
Top 5 Gainers
Many listed coins had good results, but it is particularly impressive that Ethereum; the top 2 by market cap, was also the top 2 performing coin this week. We are also happy to see SCC reach the top 5 gainers once again.
- DOGEC +33.4%
- ETH +30.0
- PNY+28.1%
- SCC +26.7%
- PIVX +21.7%
Earn Statistics
We have received frequent questions through our social media channels regarding the inner workings of the Earn system. As you know the Earn system combines rewards from staking and masternodes, and credits them daily to users. But how do we decide how many coins to keep staking and how many to move to masternodes?
Essentially our goal is maximizing earnings for the user. Masternodes and staking do not have the exact same profitability, which implies that we can reach an optimal situation by balancing the coins correctly between the two. In order to do this, we need to be able to compare staking and masternode earnings. If staking is more profitable, there is no need to maintain any masternodes, whereas if masternodes are more profitable, we can increase ROI for the users by moving coins to masternodes.
To calculate staking and masternode profitability, we do not rely on any third party services. Rewards can fluctuate greatly over short periods of time, and in order to make decisions we need always the most current data. To get the most accurate picture possible, we simply compare how many rewards our staking wallets and masternodes generated over the last 2 weeks. With this information, we are able to calculate the respective ROIs of staking and masternodes and can proceed to balance the number of coins accordingly. If our staking wallets have outperformed masternodes, we will uninstall masternodes and put the coins to stake; whereas if it was masternodes that outperformed, we will move coins from staking to masternode collaterals.
But there are other variables we have to take into account. Moving coins too much will restart the maturing period and can cause staking rewards to fall as a consequence. Moreover, our own moving of coins from staking to masternodes can affect masternode profitability as well, as the more masternodes are running for a given blockchain, the less profitable they become. Therefore, adjustments have to be done little by little and with a reasonable frequency.
The following table contains the extrapolated yearly ROI of Staking and the Earn system based on the rewards obtained over the last 2 weeks. This calculation is not an estimate, these are the real yearly ROIs calculated from the rewards that were generated and then credited to our users.
As you see, the Earn system has provided a higher ROI than staking for most of the coins involved in it over the last two weeks. But our optimization of this system is far from over. As we continue to collect data and refine our methods, you can expect these results to improve even further. In future editions of this newsletter, we will continue publishing this table so that you can monitor the evolution.
Input Size Staking Optimization
The size of inputs inside our wallets also has an effect on staking profitability. If the inputs are too fragmented, it becomes very unlikely that they will solve a block, whereas too large inputs have the issue that coins need too long to mature again after obtaining a reward. Therefore, there is a sweet spot for input size that generates the most rewards, and by dividing the coins in our wallets into inputs of those sizes, we can improve staking profitability.
However, inputs are not immutable, and get fragmented as the wallet continues to transact. Because of this, our technical team needs to periodically recombine these inputs using coin control, so that they are the right size to provide the most staking. At the moment we are working on some statistical methods that will help us determine the optimal input size for all of our staking coins, as well as the optimal coin control periodicity. Once these are ready, we will be able to improve staking ROIs even further!
NodeCube
This week saw some disruption to NodeCube that caused delays in deploying new nodes. Fortunately we managed to identify the problem and worked hard to upgrade key infrastructure and software elements to prevent it from happening again. Meanwhile, we are catching up with the backlog of masternode maintenance, and continue to invest in our infrastructure to bring a better user experience to you all.
KYDC Hot Nodes
Unfortunately KYDC hot nodes had to be stopped due to some problems we experienced with the wallet. Users that do not have the 1000 SCC lock period contract were refunded the credits they spent for the last month.
KTS Wallet
After hours of work from multiple StakeCube staff members, a custom version of the KTS wallet has been released. This version finally seems to work, and has allowed us to take the coin out of maintenance. We are hopeful a new official release will address the various remaining issues soon.
XLR Online and FinaChain
The XLR wallet is back online, after we managed to fix the connection issues we were experiencing with the new wallet version. StakeCube will also be listing the upcoming project FinaChain, and therefore, we will also support the swap from XLR to the Fina token. To know more about the new chain, swap and other details, please consult with the Solaris team through their social media. This is their Discord channel:
https://discord.com/invite/wMcqapP
KYDC and CTSC
As we announced last week, we are communicating with the KYDC and CTSC teams regarding the possibility of a swap to an SCP token. Although there has been some progress in these talks, at the moment we don’t have more information. We will let you know once we reach a decision.
SMART Rewards
Due to some issues with one of our SMART wallets, there has been a gap in Smart rewards. Fortunately we have managed to solve these issues and rewards are being generated once again.
Graphene Airdrop
The fifth Graphene airdrop to Phore holders has been released and can now be claimed, but unfortunately we have experienced a problem with the claim page. To circumvent the issue, we forwarded a verification file to the Graphene team. However, before sending us the tokens the will have to check the file manually, and this could take some time. Once they send us the tokens we will proceed with the distribution as usual.
MeaTec Maintenance
MeaTec maintenance on the miners will continue until the 23rd of July. This was their official announcement:
Nevertheless, as we communicated a few weeks ago, our miners would either way not be profitable given the situation with a great proportion of the machines having the status “damaged”.
Development News
V3 Alpha Discord Channel
Over the last few months we have published several sneak peeks of different pages of StakeCube V3. Now we have created a new channel on our Discord server where we will be posting more images and videos so that you can see the progress yourself. The channel is called #V3-Alpha, and you can find it under the “Let’s Build” section. At the moment it includes a video of the Markets and Trade pages, and another one showing the Deposit/Withdrawal functions.
There are also some screenshots of the holdings page, user settings, and a page for contests/events. If you haven’t seen these yet, go check them out now!
Wallet Maintenance News
Wallet Updates
We updated the following wallets:
DOGE
Previous version: 1.14.5.0
New version: 1.14.6.0
FIRO
Previous version: 0.14.10.1
New version: 0.14.11.0
Security Notice
Please read the following information regarding the security of your account and funds:
The StakeCube.net team will:
- Never contact you first
- Never ask you to send them or move coins to some other address
- Never ask you for remote access or to install any third party software
- Never ask you for your password or 2FA codes
- Never provide support using direct messages
If you observe any of these listed behaviors, someone is trying to steal money from you. This applies to all of our social media channels. Our team will post official messages in the appropriate channels, and we only offer support through our ticket system on our support email:
support@stakecube.zohodesk.com
Please, also take into account the following measures to keep your account secure:
- Enable 2FA in the account settings
- Enable IP verification in the account settings
- Use a strong password
- Change the password regularly
- Never share your password with others
- Never allow remote access to your devices
- If you require assistance, use only the official channels
- Download software only from verified sources
SCP Wallet is now signed with JSKitty’s public PGP key. This allows users to verify that the wallet has been cryptographically signed and approved by him. Even if our GitHub is compromised, the downloads are still safe as long as the PGP verification confirms that the files have not been tampered with. If you download SCP, please verify the binary against our developer’s public key:
Social Media and Other Important Links:
- Discord: https://discord.gg/RTJKjdwEsY
- Telegram: https://t.me/Stakecube
- Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/964396784312480
- Facebook Fan Page: https://www.facebook.com/StakeCubeEcosystem
- Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/stakecube
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stakecube/
- SCPScan: https://scpscan.net/
- SCC Explorer: http://79.143.186.234/