As interest in cryptocurrency rises, ICON community members are constantly developing to make the staking process a more straightforward process. In today’s article, we explore some of the newest and most commonly used staking platforms.

ICONFi

A popular ICX custodial wallet for crypto beginners, ICONFi is also a fully featured savings service that offers a lot of benefits for users of all experience levels. An “Auto Stake” option is available that, if switched on (with just two taps), automatically distributes your stake to generate compound rewards. On top of ICX rewards, users also earn up to 12% APR on BTC, ETH, USDC and USDT deposits, as well as Balanced (BALN) and Open Money Market (OMM) DeFi tokens on their staked ICX.

“Though DeFi is often reserved for advanced crypto users, ICONFi’s user-centric design makes it easy for even beginners to experience DeFi,” said ICONFi CEO Sean Kim in an interview with The Iconist. “And our Flexible Earn and Fixed Earn accounts help users to grow their accounts with interest that compounds six times a day. Users literally see their portfolios grow before their eyes.”

The ICONFi mobile application also alleviates the stress and risk of managing private keys and wallet passwords. If a user ever loses access to their ICONFi account, they can contact the ICONFi support team and receive a response within 24 hours.

You can download ICONFi here.

Hana Wallet (Originally MyIconWallet)

Launched this week by P-Rep team Reliant Node, Hana Wallet is the rebranded version of MyIconWallet. 

Hana Wallet makes for an easy staking experience by providing a short description of each P-Rep team followed by projects they are currently working on. This allows anyone — experienced crypto enthusiasts and beginners alike — to knowledgeably choose which P-Reps to delegate their stake to, hopefully giving lower-ranked P-Rep teams with cool projects an opportunity to acquire higher delegations.

You can download Hana here.

LATOKEN

According to an article introducing LATOKEN, the application “got over 750k downloads on Google Play and over 1,400,000 followers on social media” just after a year from its initial launch. 

With LATOKEN, staking for at least 30 days will give users a 10.48% annual percentage yield (APY). If satisfied with the stakes made, you can set up the “auto-prolongation” option so that rewards will be reinvested into the same stake automatically. You can start staking on LATOKEN exchange here.

VELIC

VELIC is an ICON-powered financial services platform that offers a wide range of financial services for blockchain-based assets. Current services include safe storage, trading, loans, crypto investments and, of course, staking.

One of VELIC’s perks is that users can trade and withdraw their stakes immediately, making it more convenient to participate in real-time staking.

You can access VELIC staking here.

Balanced

P-Rep team BalancedDAO built Balanced as a DeFi platform where ICX can be used as collateral to take out loans.

According to their official website, “your ICX will be staked, and the deposited ICX value will increase over time to reflect your staking rewards. You’ll receive sICX when you withdraw, which you can swap for ICX or unstake from your wallet.”

One of the advantages of using Balanced is liquidity. When users unstake from Balanced, the sICX they receive can be traded for ICX on a decentralized exchange (DEX). However, Balanced warned in a blog post that “if your collateration ratio drops below 150%, you will lose all your collateral, but you will get to keep any borrowed assets.”

In addition to liquidity, users can also earn delegation rights by staking through Balanced. By staking on BALN first, users can earn network fees, participate in the Balanced DAO governance, and delegate stake to ICON P-Reps.

Download the Balanced app here.

If you have a favorite staking method that isn’t listed here, please let us know and we’ll update the article. You can catch us on social media @TheIconistNews or email us at [email protected] — we’re always happy to hear from our readers.

And yes, we know that ICONex is absent from this list. That’s because ICON’s original Chrome browser wallet extension has been deprecated and will no longer be updated. It’s recommended that you switch to a more modern wallet!