With a market cap of $2 trillion, cryptocurrencies are drawing worldwide attention with their bullish performance over the past few months. The sector has seen significant gains following the rollout of crypto exchange-traded funds in the US. 

Last month, 11 BTC ETFs hit the US markets with record inflows and the buzz around them is yet to diminish. While there are still discussions about the legal aspects of BTC ETFs, analysts feel that the excitement around them is unlikely to die down anytime soon. 

Another reason why the sector has seen massive gains is because of the popularity of staking rewards. Cryptocurrencies offering staking services are good cryptos to buy as they help people earn passive income while they do all the heavy lifting. It’s exclusively offered on decentralized platforms that use the proof-of-stake consensus protocol.

Through staking, assets are locked within a platform’s liquidity pools. By maintaining liquidity levels, the staked assets contribute to the blockchain’s growth. Asset owners will earn crypto rewards for as long as the tokens are staked. All one needs to do to earn staking rewards is hold a cryptocurrency.

If you look at the market stats, many top crypto coins offer popular staking rewards. These coins include developer-friendly platforms like Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL), and Cardano (ADA) and those targeting businesses like Cosmos (ATOM) and InQubeta (QUBE). 

1. InQubeta: Leading AI startups to new heights

InQubeta is an Ethereum-based platform that’s designed to help startups deal with growth challenges while working with artificial intelligence (AI). The platform assists budding firms in finding investors, mentors for guidance, brand outreach solutions, and marketing support. 

For crypto users, it serves as an accessible platform where they can invest in startup projects much ahead of their launch. To avail themselves of these services, people have to obtain InQubeta’s native cryptocurrency, the QUBE token. 

The cryptocurrency has a supply of 1.5 billion and more than half of it will be offered in sale to interested buyers. The rest will be used for running the platform and paying for marketing, developers’ contributions, legal fees, and staking incentives.

Its cryptocurrency ICO has so far raised $9.9 million, making it one of the best-performing presales of the year.

InQubeta’s popular offering is its staking service. The platform has maintained a dedicated pool for giving out staking rewards that are funded by on-chain tax collections. The longer that a token is staked with the platform, the higher would be the passive income accruing from the staked assets. 

Apart from being one of the top ICOs of the year, InQubeta has won over crypto users with its decentralized governance structure. Here, the token holders are in charge of decisions regarding protocol upgrades, the introduction of new features, and product launches. The proposals for such changes are put to a vote where token holders participate using their voting privileges. Any proposal is implemented only after the community approves it.

Another impressive feature about the QUBE token is its deflationary model where the asset supply is used to create a shield against market volatility. When the markets are flowing against the tide, factors like inflation can hamper asset returns. 

To counter this, the deflationary model limits the token’s market availability. As crypto buyers struggle to buy QUBE, its price stays stable even when other asset categories are losing out to market forces. If the supply increases, extra tokens in circulation are promptly destroyed by burning them. 

The token burn mechanism is also used for burning excess tokens collected as taxes for taming internal inflation. These taxes are levied when QUBE tokens are bought or sold. 

The team burns 1% of the tax proceeds to bring down internal inflation. The rest are utilized for maintaining liquidity, supporting staking rewards, and marketing.

The QUBE token features in many experts’ list of recommended presales as it facilitates fractional investment in startup projects. The InQubeta team carefully selects startups by checking how their goals fare against the platform’s vision for the AI sector. After onboarding, the startups submit offers to investors which are tokenized as NFTs.

The newly minted NFTs are sold on InQubeta’s online marketplace. These NFTs represent AI projects and crypto users can compare them before making a final decision. They have to pay for these NFTs with QUBE tokens.

The InQubeta ecosystem has a slew of business development services that can augment startups’ growth and branding. To plan their journey, startups need the right kind of guidance. InQubeta can help them find mentors from the AI industry who can guide them through various challenges. If it’s finances or accounting that startups are struggling with, InQubeta can also help. It has a team of financial advisors who can provide them with solutions. 

Given their lack of resources, it might not always be possible for startups to spread awareness about their projects. They can make their marketing efforts more effective by connecting to more people in InQubeta’s community. The community has members from different industries. Plus, the platform also offers social media support to startups.

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2. Polygon to roll out its AggLayer on February 23

Polygon is a developers’ paradise that makes zero-knowledge (zk) technology more accessible. The Ethereum-based network enables developers to create optimistic rollups, blockchains, sidechains, dApps, and app-specific chains with ZK proofs.

Its native token MATIC is among the best altcoins and can be used for staking, swapping and integrations with bridges, in addition to various transactional purposes.

Polygon has a host of solutions for building public blockchains. One of the most popular tools is Polygon Miden which is a rollup using local transaction execution and private data storage for ease of scaling.

Polygon’s popularity today rivals that of new altcoins as the date for the launch of its aggregation layer (AggLayer) approaches. 

Polygon will be unveiling its AggLayer on February 23, 2024, which will take user experience and interoperability to the next level in the Polygon ecosystem. The layer uses ZK proofs for optimizing liquidity and supports glitch-free transactions across blockchains. 

3. Dymension to use Cosmos’ IBC protocol for its RollApps

Cosmos is a modular blockchain that offers solutions for deploying and scaling interchains. It’s powered by the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol and has a native token called ATOM. The Cosmos SDK comes with a diverse range of tools that lower costs, reduce gas fees, and hike the network speed. 

The platform also provides solutions for the maintenance of smart contracts and dApps. Its smart contracts layer CosmWasm is based on Rust programming language. It simplifies the deployment of smart contracts and the implementation of upgrades.

Hailed as one of the best altcoins of 2024, Cosmos was recently in the news after Dymension announced that it would be leveraging the IBC protocol for deploying its RollApps which are app-specific rollups. The integration will standardize rollups while the IBC protocol will simplify their deployment.

4. Solana-supported crypto exchange clocks $1 billion in trading volume

Solana is a Web 3.0 platform where developers can find cutting-edge tools to deploy high-performance dApps. Regarded as one of the top cryptos to invest in, Solana has a lot to offer in terms of developer resources as well. 

Solana has designed easy to use documentation for designing dApps and NFTs, to encourage innovative projects on Solana, and a learning center to explore new courses and hackathons.

Its native token SOL is the official medium of exchange within the Solana ecosystem. These transactions are authenticated by a network of nodes that function independently. The mechanism ensures that the on-chain data remains safe from censorship.

What many people don’t know about Solana is that it has a net carbon impact of 0%. The energy consumption of every SOL transaction is the same as that of a search on Google. 

The surge of Solana’s popularity comes at a time when it is driving global impact with its partnerships and initiatives. Recently, the Solana-based Backpack crypto exchange clocked $1 billion in trading volume in its preseason beta. 

The exchange announced the achievement in a post on X on February 18. 2024. Backpack’s pre-season beat was unveiled on February 13, 2024. The exchange determines its users’ ‘ranks’ based on their trading volume.

The crypto exchange is the brainchild of the team behind Mad Lads NFTs. The exchange has made rapid strides with USPs like fast cancellation and order placement times and trading metrics. 

5. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson’s joyous reaction to stakers’ question

Powered by the Ouroboros protocol, Cardano is an open-source blockchain that provides developers with an array of tools for building dApps. The platform’s native token ADA is used for all transactions on the network and can be staked.

As Cardano processes transactions parallelly, it can scale globally and offers high throughput. Also, these transactions are immutable and recovered.

The public blockchain incentivizes its community members for on-chain interactions. ADA holders can earn crypto rewards by operating as stake pool delegators or operators. As the stake pool rises, the network size scales accordingly.

The platform recently hit the headlines after Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson exhibited his optimism about the ADA token in a tweet. When an X user asked Hoskinson about the expectations from a possible treasury expansion, Hoskinson replied with a joyous animated GIF. 

Conclusion

If you are looking to support your passive income with staking rewards, the five cryptocurrencies are among the best proof-of-stake platforms found in the market today. Leveraging their staking services, crypto users can let their assets work for them and become financially independent. 

As these tokens have strong growth potential, people don’t have to worry about which crypto to buy today for the long term. These assets can fetch passive gains in a sustained way even through staking rewards. 

To keep these gains and their users’ privacy well guarded, these cryptocurrencies have robust security frameworks that have been reviewed by some of the best blockchain audit companies in the world. 

While the crypto market is a lucrative space, people should always exercise caution rather than make rushed decisions. It’s advisable to research cryptocurrencies well to know about any potential risks. 

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