Prohibitive Staking Costs

I think there needs to be some thought put into ways to decrease the cost of actually staking NXM.

I was attempting to stake only 397 NXM, split across numerous protocols to try to diversify risk. I had everything selected, and when I had to sign the transaction through Metamask, the transaction fee was ~ 0.88ETH (~$1,800 at time of writing).

Needless to say, this immediately turned me off to staking anything, as a roughly 3-5% transaction cost to merely stake would effectively, up-front, wipe away any returns I could expect for the foreseeable future. I also expect that I would have a similar fee when unstaking, though I haven’t done research to know for sure. I imagine I’m not the first, and will not be the last person to be turned off by the fees charged thanks to needing to sign everything on the Ethereum chain.

I’m not sure of the technical feasibility, but I think some serious consideration should be given to using a side-chain / second-layer protocol with de-minimis transaction fees to reduce friction and perhaps spur increasing staking.

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Hi thanks for your post - we’re aware that gas costs are sometimes prohibitive to interact with the mutual for some users. We’re working on a number of efficiencies in the system and have upgraded staking on our roadmap. As for L2 we’re intending to transfer when it’s appropriate for the mutual and be fast followers but we have to take into account the myriad of interdependencies and to ensure that we’re protecting the mutual, our members and our funds.

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Have you explored which L2 makes the most sense of that’s part of the fast follower plan?

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