In January, Coinbase acquired Bison Trails, a startup focused on staking services, to expand into the infrastructure-as-a-service segment. This isn’t just any type of infrastructure, though. Staking is based on a new type of consensus protocol, in which the stakeholders of a network (those that hold the assets) vote on transaction validation and other governance issues. In exchange for locking up their ether holdings, stakers earn a yield. In the case of the Beacon chain, Ethereum’s beta transition towards a full proof-of-stake blockchain, this yield can be as much as 11% annually.
