I am from a true gourmet city, and yet, I am astonished by the Taiwanese night market food, once again.

Beef noodle, in spite of being high-carb, is served as an appetizer. The main courses include, but are not limited to, Taiwanese sausage with sticky rice, grilled squid, deep-fried chicken cutlets, salt chicken, and braised pork knuckle. Last but not least, desserts are grass jelly, mochi, mango shaved ice, snowflake ice, and adzuki bean with milk ice.

Don’t get me wrong, these foods were consumed by the KuCoin delegation attending the Asia Blockchain Summit 2019 — there were four of us.

I still remember last time when I traveled around this beautiful island alone, and I had to choose no more than two options (three at most) from dozens of tasty foods every dinner. Too bad I am not a food fighter. So frustrating.

But not this time!

We shared so that we could all try the various delicacies, so there was absolutely no need to make tough choices, just like the staking solution KuCoin’s new product line Soft Staking offers.

Fine, this is another hard-sell advertisement. However, it’s one that offers a pretty decent investment return, with quite loose terms. Let me elaborate.

In my last Staking piece posted on May 31, we discussed the major feature of Staking — very much similar to the fixed-income asset in the traditional financial world.

“Fixed” is the keyword here: a) the investor is not supposed to move the asset from where it’s kept in custody; b) the investor will be paid a pre-determined interest income; c) for a pre-decided period of time.

Most of the current Staking schemes are not much different from that. Pretty tough terms, huh?

That’s why we tried to soften it: a) users can withdraw their tokens stored in the Soft Staking scheme whenever they choose to; b) they can still get the interest income on a daily basis; c) no minimum staking period, so users can make the deposit today and withdraw the tokens tomorrow.

With that, users’ demand of trading for capital gain and staking for dividend are perfectly taken care of.

Now you might wonder, with such generous terms on withdrawal, what interest rate could it possibly offer? A demand deposit account holder is offered 0.35% of the annualized rate in China, for your reference.

Well, some projects in our Soft Staking Program are able to offer 6% to 12% of the annualized return rate, while Poloniex offers 3% to 10% return rate within a similar package.

But wait, some might find the 6%-12% ROI not satisfying enough, and still aim at potential capital gain by trading their tokens when the market revives, just like our CEO Michael said at the Asia Blockchain Summit 2019 in Taipei:

“The reason that Staking is so popular, I think, is partly because in a rather bearish market, the investment options for users are limited. Frankly, I don’t know for how long this momentum would last.”

True, it’s very hard to hold up to a play-safe and risk-averse appetite, especially in the recent market recovery.

Thus, when users find themselves in the mood for trading, the anytime-withdrawal service that Soft Staking offers gives them a chance to make some gains between fluctuations — or, maybe the chance to learn an expensive lesson. Lol. Sorry.

Despite the slight uncertainty about the future of the Staking economy, Michael is (as we all are) affirmatively optimistic on the influence of this model from a profound perspective:

“Innovation, no matter in technology or business model, are always helpful to attract more attention to the crypto world from the outside, and that will ultimately lead to fundamental improvement. We might see killer blockchain applications sooner than we expected.”

In this sense, I see every reason for us to make this innovation based on the Staking economy. And there is genuine demand from the market that we should make no hesitation to cater to.

Plus, as I mentioned in my last Staking-related post, when we escrow our tokens to others, individual or institution, we want someone trustworthy in terms of both morality and security technology. Dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars worth assets every day, I cannot think of a more secured staking pool than an exchange.

Therefore, the tokens are in good hands. You can enjoy a stable dividend income, while still having the liberty to take them out anytime.

So yes, you can have your cake and eat it too. Isn’t it a thoughtful product we offer?