Chainlink Staking v0.1 to launch on Ethereum mainnet, details inside

• Chainlink announces a new update regarding its staking
• Even though its social engagements and mentions grew, Chainlink’s weighted sentiment declined

Through a tweet on 1 December, Chainlink announced that the network would be launching v2 of their staking protocol earlier than usual. This decision came after a consultation with their community.

1/ With Chainlink Staking v0.1 launching on Ethereum mainnet on December 6th, we’d like to provide an update on our iterative approach to building future versions of Staking beyond this initial release and how that will affect important attributes like the lock-up period.

— Chainlink (@chainlink) December 1, 2022

Read Chainlink’s [LINK] Price Prediction 2022-2023

The network further added that in the new version of staking, users would be able to release and migrate their staked LINK and rewards.

Word on the street

Well, the hype around Chainlink‘s staking could be one reason for the spike in the network’s social mentions and engagements. According to LunarCrush, a social analytics firm, Chainlink’s social mentions increased by 18.3%, while its social engagements grew by 5.2% over the last week.

However, despite the growing engagements and mentions, the weighted sentiment towards Chainlink remained negative throughout the last week. This indicated that the crypto community had more negative than positive things to say about the token.

Source: Santiment

Looking at Chainlink data

Alongside the declining sentiment, Chainlink’s velocity decreased over the last few days, indicating that the frequency at which LINK was being transferred amongst addresses had fallen.

Furthermore, LINK’s development activity also took a hit. Thus, suggesting that the number of contributions being made on the network’s GitHub had dwindled.

However, despite these factors, Chainlink’s network growth witnessed appreciation, as the number of new addresses exchanging LINK increased.

Source: Santiment

It wasn’t just new addresses that had an interest in LINK; Ethereum whales continued to show faith in the token.

According to WhaleStats, an organization dedicated to tracking crypto whales, the top 500 ETH whales were holding $33 million worth of LINK at the time of writing.

🐳 The top 500 #ETH whales are hodling

$76,578,704 $SHIB
$50,282,855 #UnknownToken
$45,314,877 $UNI
$36,226,257 $BIT
$35,413,060 $BEST
$33,090,827 $LINK
$32,887,986 $LOCUS
$31,112,000 $MOC

Whale leaderboard 👇https://t.co/tgYTpOm5ws pic.twitter.com/9ATG4ys061

— WhaleStats (tracking crypto whales) (@WhaleStats) November 30, 2022

One reason for this growing interest in Chainlink could be its increasing collaborations. For instance, Chainlink played a key role in the Fantom Foundations ecosystem, expanding its use of dApps, NFTs, and the DeFi space.

At the time of press, Chainlink had capitalized on its momentum and captured a larger share of the crypto market. According to Messari, Chainlink’s market cap dominance grew by 7.76% over the last seven days and the token captured 0.41% of the overall crypto market.

Coupled with that, its volatility decreased by 0.24% over the same period, which made buying LINK a little less risky.