More Thoughts on FIO

As I mentioned a little while back, I'm kind of excited about the Foundation for Interwallet Operability's protocol. It makes it easy to send, receive, and request cryptocurrency (and attach explanatory memos to transactions) via a single, human legible address (mine is knappster@edge).

The protocol isn't perfect. As I understand it, it maps to one, and only one, particular address for each blockchain, so if you value anonymity it's not for you. But people are a lot more likely to adopt cryptocurrency if it's easy to use, and this makes it easy to use.

Then there's "staking" of the FIO token, which "rewards users for participating in blockchain governance."

I've got a bunch of the token staked, and am earning the rewards, but as for participating in governance, that appears to be doable only via one wallet -- a wallet I don't use (Anchor Mobile Wallet). I may look into that at some point.

Anyway, there's a rewards pool, into which a fraction of every fee earned on token transactions goes, and if you have tokens staked you earn a portion of that pool.

At the current token price, it looks like I've earned about $20 USD since late February, when I first started participating. My total amount staked is in the mid-three-figures in USD, and most of that was staked more recently, so I can't complain about the rate of return. If it continues as it has (including the token price holding steady around 10 cents -- I've noticed it as low as 7 and as high as 15, IIRC), I'm guessing the return will be about 20% over the course of a year. Not bad, although not the currently "estimated" 34.9%.

The only problem I have with staking is this: You don't get the rewards until you un-stake the tokens that are earning them. I'd really like to see an option for automatically staking the rewards themselves without having to un-stake other tokens to get at them.

I haven't decided on the circumstances under which I'll un-stake, collect my rewards, and go on my merry way. I might just get tired of having tokens (that I can sell) tied up, with a seven-day waiting period after un-staking before I can sell them. Or the price might take a huge jump and I might un-stake and see if I can dump my tokens before the price falls again even with that waiting period. Or I may just let it ride for a long, long time. I can see a lot of reasons why I might do any of those things.