Chainlink Community Staking Pool Full, Drawing More Than $620M

With nearly 41 million LINK tokens, the smart contract for Chainlink’s v0.2 community staking pool has become the top holder of LINK, according to blockchain analytics firm Nansen.

Chainlink’s recently debuted staking pool for community members reached its maximum limit Thursday evening, drawing in a total of more than $620 million at mark-to-market prices.

With nearly 41 million LINK tokens, the smart contract for Chainlink’s v0.2 community staking pool has become the top holder of LINK, according to blockchain analytics firm Nansen. The second place belongs to an address controlled by Binance, which holds 38 million tokens, while smart contracts labeled as “Chainlink: Non-Circulating Supply,” take up spots #3 to #17.

“Because we are seeing a consistent increase in the amount of value secured by and paid for over the Chainlink Network, it’s increasingly important to improve the cryptoeconomic security of the network,” said Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov in a press release shared with Unchained. “Staking v0.2 introduces important new security features and sets the system up for even further growth in the year to come.”

The community staking pool reached its limit less than two weeks after the initial launch of Chainlink’s v0.2. This comes as several market forces have lifted the crypto ecosystem to a total market capitalization of $1.6 trillion.

Despite its recent success, the value of Chainlink’s staking market pales compared to the total amount of staked ETH and SOL, which are valued at about $68 billion and $26 billion, respectively, based on Unchained’s calculations of data from blockchain explorer Solscan and a Nansen dashboard.

LINK, the native token for the decentralized computing platform, is currently exchanging hands at $15.38, a 7.5% increase in the past seven days, data from CoinGecko shows.