AscendEX Review: Is It Worth It?

AscendEX offers a staking service for several tokens, but what is staking, and what innovative solutions does AscendEX provide to support staking users?

Staking is a way to reap digital asset mining rewards without investing in expensive hardware or having maintenance to worry about. It is a convenient way to generate passive income from holding digital assets on an exchange.

In this article, you will learn the basics and review AscendEX’s solutions to staking pain points before getting started with staking your digital assets on AscendEX.

When staking tokens, a user locks their tokens into their chosen Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain. These tokens are used to achieve consensus, which is necessary to keep the network secure while validating every new transaction on the blockchain. By staking, users can diversify their income stream and monetize their idle funds on AscendEX.

By offering up tokens, users are rewarded with new coins from the network. These rewards are proportionate to the number of tokens staked; the higher the number of tokens staked, the greater the validation power.

Pain Points of Traditional Staking

Under a traditional staking mechanism, when a user elects to stake an asset, they agree to lock up the asset for an extended period of time. Unlocking the staked asset requires a lengthy unbinding period during which they neither have access to their asset nor are they eligible to receive staking rewards. There are two major pain points associated with traditional staking:

Illiquid Position Management: The user’s ability to trade out of an asset position is limited especially in anticipation of an adverse market movement because the user cannot place orders to sell while the asset is being staked.

Inflexible Asset Management: Users give up the ability to actively move assets from one platform to another in a seamless manner because of the lengthy unlock period associated with unbinding.

AscendEX’s Solution: Instant Unbonding

AscendEX allows users to unstake assets to trade and transfer immediately. To enhance users’ staking experience, AscendEX maintains a liquidity pool of assets for immediate access after an asset is unstaked. “Instant Unbonding” allows users to manage staked assets at their own discretion even when delegating to a network with a lengthy unbonding period.

AscendEX allows users to trade staked assets while earning rewards. To further promote marketplace efficiency, AscendEX allows for staked assets to be used as margin collateral. So, users can go long or short to hedge exposure while continuing to earn rewards. This applies only to assets supported by the platform for margin trading.