Chainlink Staking Program Quickly Pulls in $600M, Hitting Limit; LINK Jumps 12%

Chainlink, the biggest blockchain data-oracle project, saw a powerful uptake for its expanded crypto-staking program, pulling in over $632 million worth of its LINK tokens and filling up to the limit just six hours after the start of an early-access period, the company said in a press release.

The "V0.2" community staking mechanism opened for early access from 12 p.m. ET, and within 30 minutes, some 32.8 million LINK had been staked; six hours later, the community pool had hit the new, higher capacity of 40.875 million LINK.

The price of LINK was up by 12% over the past 24 hours to $16.72, according to CoinDesk data.

Overall, the expanded staking pool capacity is 45 million LINK, up from 25 million under v0.1, a figure that includes the community pool allocation as well as a separate node operator pool.

According to a Chainlink spokesman, there are currently 1.8 million LINK in the node operator pool, out of a capacity of 4.125 million.

Some 21.9 million LINK migrated over from the earlier version of the staking program.

Staking is part of what the company calls Economics 2.0 that is meant to help secure the Chainlink system.

Chainlink staking enables node operators - which help engineers fetch external data - and community members to support the performance of oracle services with staked LINK. People can also earn rewards.

"Staking v0.2 introduces important new security features and sets the system up for even further growth in the year to come," Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov said in a press release.

Read more: Sergey Nazarov: The Crypto Oracle