Methodology

• Find all the $MATIC transfers to the Staked Matic Contract '0x9ee91f9f426fa633d227f7a9b000e28b9dfd8599' --Staked Matic
• Once we have the cumulative Matic Staked starting 01 July, 2022 we then plot various metrics like amount, number of stakers, amount staked.
• To find the ratio of $MATIC staked vs Circulating Supply, we take the historic data from Messari *
• We look at all $MATIC staked from beginning of time and then filter out starting from 01 July, 2022.

What is Liquid Staking

• Delegating your tokens to a service that stakes for you while maintaining access to your money is known as liquid staking.
• You can still access your money when you're staking it thanks to liquid staking. The money is still in escrow, but unlike with PoS staking, it is not "locked" and inaccessible.
• Coins must be locked away after being staked for a predetermined period of time.
• During which time you are unable to transfer or sell your coins.
• In the event of a market meltdown while your lock period is in effect, you won't be able to react quickly.
• You can add and take money from liquid staking as you please (usually with a trade-off of lower APR)
• Various LiquidStaking derivatives know to Luna Holders is the LunaX by Stader Labs.

$MATIC Staking Metrics

• Till date around 60M $MATIC has been staked in liquid staking.
• The highest amount of $MATIC liquid staked was 11.5M $MATIC staked on July 18, 2022, 11.3 being contributed by and staked to stMATIC Lido.
• Till date 52M $MATIC has been liquid staked with Lido as stMATIC.
  • MaticX from Stader and csMATIC ClayStack are both around 1.3M $MATIC
• The highest number of stakers in a week were seen in the week of July 18, 2022 with a total of 2K stakers.
• The highest number of $MATIC staking transactions were 3.5K transactions on the week of July 18, 2022.
• The number of stakers has seen a downward trend however the number of transactions has seen an up and down trend.

Various Liquid Staking Matic Derivatives[1]

Lido

• Lido, the largest liquid staking protocol, launched support for MATIC in conjunction with Shard Labs in March 2022.
• Derivative: stMATIC
• Withdrawal: waiting period is around 3-4 days
• Fees: 10% of a user’s staking rewards
• Total staked (as of 7/5/22): 22M+ MATIC
• Stakers: 591
• APY: 8.676%

ClayStack

• Claystack, a decentralized platform which operates one of the oldest validators for the Polygon network, went live on the mainnet in March 2022.
• Derivative: csMATIC
• Withdrawal: several days or instant (given sufficient liquidity) with a 0.5% fee 
• Fees: up to 10% a user’s staking rewards (not including 3rd party validator fees)
• Total staked (as of 7/5/22): 1.5M MATIC
• APY: 9.53%

Ankr

• Ankr, a decentralized protocol for Web3 infrastructure, that launched on Polygon in March 2022.
• Derivative: aMATICb (reward earning, 1 aMATICb = 1 MATIC), aAMTICc (reward bearing, 1 aAMTICc = 1.0735 MATIC)
• Withdrawal: waiting period is around 3-4 days
• Fees: user pays a fee in ANKR that starts from 100 ANKR, typical range is 500–3,500 ANKR.
• Total staked (as of 7/5/22): 1.4M MATIC
• Stakers: 689
• APY: 9.55%

Stader

• Stader Labs offers liquid staking of MATIC on both Ethereum and Polygon mainnets.
• Derivative: MaticX
• Withdrawal: waiting period is around up to 3 days
• Fees: 10% of a user’s staking rewards
• Total staked (as of 7/5/22): 12.4M MATIC
• APY: 8.5%

Average Amount of $MATIC Staked

• Now looking at the average amount of $MATIC staked in liquid staking derivatives, LIDO has the highest weekly average, it started around weekly of 292K around Mar 14, 2022, however it has now come down to 136K, it is still strong in terms of weekly liquid staking average.
• csMATIC ClayStack has a strong average as well around 33K $MATIC, quite likely due to high APR.

Week over Week Change

• LIDO stMATIC is clearly the most dominant, however the Week of July 25, 2022 was the one that saw the most dramatic change in terms of change of liquid staked $MATIC week over week.

Conclusion

• LIDO is clearly the platform of choice for $MATIC holders on Polygon for Liquid Staking.
• This is quite likely due to $MATIC holders on Polygon coming from Ethereum blockchain where Staked ETH is already very popular and LIDO was one of the earliest players to introduce liquid staking.