Deutsche Telekom, the largest European telecommunications company, will launch a liquid staking infrastructure on Ethereum (ETH) as part of a collaboration with StakeWise. The operation will be carried out via its subsidiary T-Systems Multimedia Solutions (MMS), which already operates nodes for Celo, Polkadot (DOT), and Chainlink (LINK).
Deutsche Telekom adopts the Ethereum blockchain
Deutsche Telekom, which is none other than the largest German but also European telecommunications company, is taking another step toward the blockchain world by bringing its infrastructure for Ethereum (ETH) .
The company announced that its T-Systems Multimedia Solutions (MMS) division is working with Ethereum staking platform StakeWise to deploy its own pool. Thus, its customers will be able to participate in a liquid staking activity, avoiding the costly sum of 32 ETH (or more than 42,000 dollars at the current price) necessary to run a node.
Liquid staking consists, in essence, in delegating its cryptocurrencies to a third party so that the latter can operate the role of the validator. In return, the delegator gets a token that they can use in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.
Deutsche Telekom is far from its first attempt: the company already operates a node via T-System MMS for Chainlink (LINK), the largest blockchain oracle network, and has been doing so since 2020. More recently, in April 2021, the German telecom giant invested heavily in Celo as well in order to become a network validator.
A decision motivated by the Merge
Until now, Deutsche Telekom has always chosen to participate in blockchain networks operating under consensus proof-of-stake (PoS). Until very recently, Ethereum worked with proof of work (PoW), more commonly known as mining, a much more energy-intensive method under which Bitcoin (BTC) also works.
However, following The Merge update that took place on September 15, Ethereum switched to proof-of-stake and thus reduced its energy consumption by around 99.95%. Condition sine qua non for the participation of Deutsche Telekom, according to the press release:
Ethereum has recently relied on the proof-of-stake method for consensus, which, in addition to laying the foundation for future improvements for its scalability, significantly reduces the energy requirements of the blockchain. T-Systems MMS maintains sustainable blockchain networks and therefore supports the transition to PoS by operating validating nodes.
Beyond providing staking infrastructure for its many customers, T-System MMS has also joined StakeWise’s Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) “to contribute to the transparency and security of the Ethereum network.”
According to Dirk Röder, the head of the blockchain solutions center for T-System MMS, Deutsche Telekom wants to go further in its involvement with blockchain:
After collaborating with Flow, Celo, and Polkadot, we are now taking another big step into the blockchain world and doing pioneering work here with Ethereum. As a node operator, our entry into liquid staking and close collaboration with a DAO is new for Deutsche Telekom.
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