Sygnum bills itself as one of the “world’s first digital asset bank,” having obtained banking and capital markets services licenses in Switzerland and Singapore, respectively, in August and October 2019.
The company claims that “the large percentage of decentralized goods and services operate on Ethereum,” stating that the DeFi sector’s Total Value Locked (TVL) has increased by over thrice since the beginning of 2021:
“With Ethereum driving the rapid growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) apps, staking is a tempting option for long-term Ethereum investors looking for significant returns.”
Ethereum staking is “a fundamental feature for digital asset portfolios,” according to Thomas Eichenberger, Sygnum’s chief of business units. In November 2020, Sygnum introduced a staking service for Tezos (XTZ), and since March, it has started offering a fixed-term deposit option for its Digital Swiss Franc stablecoin, DCHF.
Several crypto-native staking providers and centralized exchanges, notably prominent US businesses Coinbase and Kraken, compete with the bank. In June the cryptocurrency bank launched regulated banking services for eight prominent tokens, including UNI, MKR, and CRV, to bolster DeFi assets.
Even though only 5% of available Ether has being locked for staking, Eth2 is the second-largest Proof-of-Stake (Pos) eocsystem in terms of staked capitalisation, with $13.5 billion, as per Staking Rewards. Cardano (ADA) commands the highest staked capitalisation, at $31.8 billion, and presently holds 70.7% of supply.