The Alkemi Earn app has been added to the hardware wallet Ledger's Discover area, making decentralized finance (DeFi) lending and borrowing service accessible to Ledger's 1.5 million active customers.
According to a Tuesday announcement, users of Ledger Live can now earn yield on their assets with the Alkemi Earn integration. The goal of the Ledger project is to provide consumers with a method of buying and utilizing digital assets without giving them up to third-party platforms or systems.
"With Alkemi, Ledger users will have more ways to grow their assets while enjoying all the benefits of crypto without centralized custodians," said JF Rochet, the vice president of international development for Ledger.
In February 2021, Ledger launched DeFi efforts with the open-source protocol WalletConnect, allowing users to access decentralized applications (DApps), such as Uniswap, 1inch and Curve.
The blockchain developer platform from Alchemy is being used by various crypto-native applications, including Binance Wallet, CryptoKitties, OpenSea, Gods Unchained and the Opera browser, as well as DeFi providers like Maker, Kyber, and 0x. Alchemy partnered with the Flow blockchain in late March to broaden its presence in the rapidly emerging NFT ecosystem.
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Staking has been on the rise on online crypto exchanges and software wallets, with many trading platforms already adopting it. Some hardware wallet makers have added staking functionality to their portable physical devices. Since launching in 2019, Ledger has been developing crypto staking functionalities.
Staking is the process of delegating crypto to a staking validator in order to help secure a blockchain. It derives its name from the word "stake," which refers to earning crypto profits and an associated passive revenue through a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, as opposed to the Bitcoin (BTC) network's mining-based proof-of-work.