The State of ATOM Staking: October 2022 Report

5 min readOct 26, 2022

ATOM is the shining star for Cosmos Hub, fueling and helping secure the network to ensure all activity and operations run smoothly. Throughout the bear market, the token has continued to thrive and maintain strength for the Cosmos ecosystem as a whole.

October saw a decrease in adoption and sentiment, with numbers dropping across the board after a blockbuster month in September.

Read more below to get the latest stats on ATOM staking over the last month.

ATOM Overview

Below are key data points surrounding general ATOM token statistics:

Total Market Cap: $3.4B+
24-Hr Trading Volume: $155M+
Unique Wallet Addresses: 1,365,930
Circulating Supply: 292M+

Cosmos Hub Overview

Below you can find a summary of key data points detailing IBC activity on Cosmos Hub over the last month:

IBC Volume (30D): $181M+
IBC Transfers (30D): 295K+
Active Zones (30D): 48
Block Height: 12,586,494

Staking Market Cap

In October, Cosmos Hub (ATOM) dropped to the 9th ranking compared to other cryptocurrency assets in terms of its staking market cap — in September, it was ranked 7th. At the time of writing, ATOM’s total staking market cap lies at $2.3B+.

Staking Ratio and Stats

We’ve witnessed a fairly significant drop in the ATOM staking ratio from September to October, now equaling 63.96% (a ~3.67% drop). A major reason for this could be a fall in the overall cryptocurrency market sentiment and a potential decrease in hype following Cosmoverse 2022 and the ATOM 2.0 release from last month.

Currently, 200,494,499 ATOM tokens are bonded relative to its total supply of 313,486,985 ATOM.

ATOM Delegates

The number of unique ATOM delegates helps determine the level of adoption for ATOM staking on Cosmos Hub. At the time of writing, there are a total of 533,918 unique ATOM delegates (~1.85% increase). Although the overall staking ratio fell since last month, this data demonstrates that more users are still staking their ATOM on-chain to secure the network.

ATOM Liquid Staking Ecosystem & Stats

pSTAKE, StaFi, and Stride still stand as the current 3 protocols providing an ATOM liquid staking solution. StaFi’s rATOM and pSTAKE’s stkATOM token have a TVL of $478K and ~$1.1M, respectively.

The adoption of liquid staking, including the release of ATOM 2.0, will also have a positive impact on ATOM’s staking ratio and other metrics. With the launch of pSTAKE’s new ATOM liquid staking solution (on the Persistence Core-1 Chain) coming soon, big things are brewing for our ecosystem and Cosmos.

Validator Stats

Cosmos Hub has a total of 448 validators, 175 of which are currently active. These validators are essential to helping power and secure the network.

The top 22 validators now cumulatively hold over 67.1% of all staked ATOM (governance consensus threshold) — this number is higher than September’s, where 24 validators had a similar share of all staked tokens. This means that the concentration of ATOM is steadily increasing amongst the top validators over time.

Nakamoto Coefficient

The Nakamoto Coefficient is the concentration of stake across a blockchain’s validator set, signifying the lowest number of validators required to come together and negatively affect the network.

If the coefficient value is larger (relative to the total number of active validators), this means that staked assets are more equally distributed across network validators — therefore, the chain becomes much more decentralised and secure.

ATOM’s Nakamoto Coefficient has decreased to 6 in October from 7 in September, meaning the network has become slightly less decentralised and secure. This is the first move down over the last several months.

Closing Note

The pSTAKE team wants to extend our thanks to the community for reading this report. Our efforts are always aimed at providing in-depth and valuable insights into the ecosystems surrounding our liquid-staked assets — we hope this gave you more information and knowledge of ATOM staking and Cosmos Hub.

Make sure to follow our blog and social media channels to receive the latest ATOM staking information.

About pSTAKE

pSTAKE is a liquid staking protocol that unlocks liquidity for your staked assets. With pSTAKE, you can securely stake your Proof-of-Stake (PoS) assets, participate in protocol improvements and security to earn staking rewards, and receive staked underlying representative tokens (stkASSETs) which can be used to explore additional yield opportunities across DeFi.

At present, pSTAKE supports Binance Chain (BNB), Cosmos (ATOM), Persistence (XPRT), and Ethereum (ETH) networks’ native tokens, with a view to support more chains and assets in the future (SOL, and AVAX). pSTAKE will soon be launching stkATOM on the native Persistence Core-1 Chain.

Developed by Persistence

Persistence is a Tendermint-based, specialised Layer-1 network powering an ecosystem of DeFi applications focused on unlocking the liquidity of staked assets.

Persistence facilitates the issuance and deployment of liquid-staked stkASSETs, allowing users to earn staking rewards while participating in DeFi primitives, such as lending/borrowing and liquidity provisioning on DEXs.

Persistence aims to offer a seamless staking and DeFi experience for PoS (Proof-of-Stake) users and enable developers to build innovative applications around stkASSETs.