5 crypto staking strategies that can give you 15% returns


5 crypto staking strategies that can give you 15% returns


The wild, three-digit APY gold rush in DeFi might be over, but that doesn’t mean serious returns have vanished.

For those willing to dig a little deeper, finding a solid 15% yield is still on the table. We’re breaking down five different staking methods that could get you there, looking at how they work and what could go wrong.

The Cosmos (ATOM) lock-up play

Want a straightforward way to juice your returns on a major asset like Cosmos? Try locking it up. Some exchanges will give you a sweetened deal on your ATOM if you agree to a “bonded” stake. The base network reward is already solid, often floating around 13.9%, but platforms like Kraken might bump that up to anywhere from 14-21%.

They can offer this because your locked tokens give them a reliable base to run their validator operations. The catch is your money’s tied up. You’re stuck for a 21-day “unbonding” period, making you a spectator if the market tanks. Plus, you’re trusting an exchange not to lose your funds.

Doubling down with Ethereum liquid staking

Liquid staking is the DeFi equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. You stake your Ethereum to earn rewards, but get a token like Lido’s stETH back, which you can use elsewhere. The base ETH staking reward itself, maybe around 2.7%, won’t get you to 15%. The real magic happens when you put that stETH to work.

You could, for instance, add it to a stETH/ETH liquidity pool on Curve to collect trading fees, or go full degen by using it as collateral on Aave to borrow other assets and chase yields in a looping strategy. Be warned: this game has layers of danger.

Source – Ethereum staking stats/CryptoQuant

If stETH ever loses its 1:1 peg to ETH, your leveraged positions could get wiped out. Every new protocol you add to the chain is another potential point of failure.

EigenLayer – Renting out your ETH’s security

EigenLayer introduced a wild new concept – What if you could take your already-staked ETH and use its security power for other new projects? That’s restaking. You’re essentially letting new services, from data layers to bridges, borrow the security of your staked capital. In return, they pay you. This allows you to stack yields on top of your base ETH staking reward, collecting fees from multiple sources at once.

The flip side is a tangled web of risk. A penalty, or “slashing,” on just one of the services you’re securing could cost you a chunk of your underlying ETH.

And as liquid restaking tokens (LRTs) enter the picture, they bring their own economic headaches, including the familiar dangers of de-pegging and liquidation cascades.

Polygon (MATIC) liquid staking with a robot farmer

Think of this as the Polygon version of the Ethereum liquid staking play. You start by staking your MATIC on a service like Stader Labs, which gives you the liquid token MaticX in return. The base MATIC reward isn’t huge, maybe 2.6-4%.

To boost that, you take your MaticX to a yield aggregator, a sort of “robot” investor like Beefy Finance. You drop your tokens into one of their vaults, and it automatically hunts for the best returns across Polygon’s DeFi landscape, whether that’s through lending or providing liquidity, and it auto-compounds your earnings.

You’re facing the usual liquid staking dangers – A smart contract bug on Stader or Beefy, or a scenario where MaticX loses its peg to the real MATIC price.

GMX Delta-neutral fee farm

Here’s one for the pros.

The goal is to farm the juicy trading fees on the decentralized exchange GMX without exposing yourself to the wild price swings of crypto. In GMX V2’s ETH/USDC pool, for example, you’d deposit liquidity to start earning a cut of the traders’ fees. To cancel out your price risk, you would simultaneously head over to a lending protocol like Aave and open a short position on ETH for the same amount.

If done right, this hedge means you break even on ETH’s price movement, up or down. Your profit is isolated to just the trading fees from GMX, which can be massive depending on market activity.

This is high-wire finance – A sudden, violent pump in ETH’s price could liquidate your short position, and you’re juggling the smart contract risks of two separate, complex platforms.

None of this is financial advice; it’s just a breakdown of possibilities. Crypto markets can be brutal and unpredictable. The numbers mentioned here can and will change. Always do your own homework before putting any real money on the line.

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