Kraken Joins Consortium to Support, Build Liquid Staking Protocol

Crypto exchange Kraken has joined a consortium meant to support and build an enterprise-grade liquid staking protocol dubbed Liquid Collective.

Alluvial, the operating company undertaking the protocol development, highlighted that Kraken would join other members in the consortium, such as Acala Foundation, Kiln, Rome Blockchain Labs, BENQI, and Coinbase Cloud. 

Liquid Collective seeks to create an industry-standard offering institutional investors liquid staking options with robust reporting, monitoring, and KYC or AML.

Tim Ogilvie, Kraken’s product director, pointed out:

“There is a need for standardization and, as a result, an opportunity for Kraken to help build the most secure enterprise-grade liquid staking standard.”

The demand for liquid staking has been going through the roof, given that users can earn rewards by locking their tokens on proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains. Ogilvie added:

“Liquid staking grew from 1% to around 30% of the Ethereum staking market segment just this year alone. Demand is growing rapidly and institutional interest is emerging.”

Liquid staking also presents investors with a derivative crypto token, representing the corresponding figure of the underlying staked asset. 

Therefore, Liquid Collective aims to bridge the gap in liquid staking by being a viable option for institutional investors.

Matt Leisinger, the CEO and co-founder of Alluvial, stated:

“With the upcoming launch of Liquid Collective, token holders will gain seamless access to enterprise-grade liquid staking. This effort can only be accomplished through true collaboration across the ecosystem. We're proud to be working with some of the best teams in web3 to launch Liquid Collective.”

Meanwhile, Kraken acquired Staked, a non-custodial staking platform, late last year. This move was meant to propel Kraken’s custodial staking service, Blockchain.News reported.