By @Giv Parvaneh - To be reviewed by —

Problem

Earning staking rewards is a majorly underutilized feature that is akin to a basic income product. Yet, the current onboarding process is far from straightforward. Users first need to purchase ONE tokens, discover the staking dashboard, and understand how validators and delegations work before being able to take advantage of a healthy 8%-10% in rewards.

Proposal

Assuming we have a solution for Fiat Buys, we can create a simplified user experience directly on the main Harmony website to allow users with newly purchased ONE tokens to put their assets to work.

Staking can be an intimidating experience. Understanding validator parameters, uptime, fees, and rewards are not something the average consumer new to the space will understand.

Instead, we can create a simplified user experience whereby we take out several steps to allow users to quickly reap rewards and further strengthen the protocol.

How does it work?

After prompting the user post-fiat-onramp, they will:

1. Specify what percentage of their assets they want to stake
2. We automatically recommend a handful of validators on the user’s behalf, making sure to delegate to smaller validators, too.
3. Sign, and finish.
4. Watch rewards accumulate in a simple dashboard.
1. With liquid/smart contract staking, we can eventually allow the user to enable auto-restaking for compound interest.

Why do we need this?

Staking is a hidden gem in our arsenal. During bear markets, users are more cautious and will opt-in to lower risk initiatives with passive returns. Earning 10% interest of “free money” will be a compelling proposition. Being able to opt-in in less than 1 minute will make this a very popular product.

Additionally, it stops ONE tokens from leaving the network while strengthening the protocol at the same time. By automatically picking validators on the user’s behalf, we are able to fairly distribute staking to smaller/struggling validators and encourage more validators to be created.

Fiat gateway options

1) Simplex

Simplex provides online merchants with fraud-free payment processing and acts as the credit card processor in the crypto world. Simplex charges 3.5% - 5% fee of the transaction value for partners e.g. crypto exchanges. Retail users have to pay 20% ore more surcharge fee when purchasing crypto using credit/debit cards.

2) Transak

Transak is a developer integration toolkit to let users buy/sell crypto in any app, website or web plugin. Harmony ONE is temporarily suspended.

3) Stably

Fiat-to-Stablecoin Gateway for web3 Application. Stablyramp to launch in Q3 2022.

4) Circle

Supports NBA Top Shots NFT Platform and Solana Pay. Peter is the main contact with Circle.

Circle Payments API costs $1k per month. $12k for 12 months.