Sports technology and entertainment company DraftKings announced a new Web3 initiative today that, in collaboration with Zero Hash, will allow it to stake digital assets to support the Polygon blockchain network.
Infrastructure to Help Future-Proof Aspects of the Business
The new collaboration announced by Boston-based DraftKings will allow it to optimize its working capital and liquidity by operating a validator node to Polygon’s governance and network security.
“Participating in validation supports DraftKings’ broader strategy of building out a robust, sustainable, trustworthy and decentralized infrastructure to help future-proof aspects of our business in the Web3 era.”
Paul Liberman, Co-Founder and President, Global Product and Technology, DraftKings
Paul Liberman went on to hail the collaboration with “luminaries like the team at Zero Hash” and Polygon as “essential” to the company’s “blockchain and related efforts moving forward.”
B2B digital asset infrastructure provider Zero Hash recently expanded its offering to companies willing to earn rewards on crypto and fiat holdings by a suite of staking as-a-service products with complete back-end API infrastructure and regulatory framework.
“Zero Hash’s mission is to empower every fintech and consumer business through access to digital assets. We are excited to support innovative companies like DraftKings as they look to stake digital assets as part of their portfolio-management strategy. Zero Hash is proud to be the turnkey technology provider for those looking to enter the PoS space.”
Edward Woodford, CEO, Zero Hash
Offered across several blockchain networks and supporting both B2B2C and B2B use cases, Zero Hash allows platforms to offer the service to their clients, besides earning rewards on owned crypto themselves, relieving the stress of proof-of-stake (PoS) networks, a blockchain consensus mechanism which verifies and adds transactions on a blockchain.
Staking and Staking Rewards
The Rest API implementation in the solution allows native token holders to lock up or contribute their tokens for a specified amount of time to a validator against a portion of the staking rewards generated from the verification of a new block of transactions, a business with over $200 billion in market capitalization of the top 10 PoS protocols at the start of 2022.
On behalf of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal was “delighted to welcome DraftKings as one of the first corporate validators” in the network, outlining the “even more active participant” role the sports technology company would play in the Polygon ecosystem, critical in guaranteeing the “integrity of the blockchain and securing the network.”
With high speed and low gas infrastructure, Polygon is the fastest growing blockchain being integrated by DeFi bluechip dApps such as Sushiswap, Curve, Aave, Balancer, and Kyber. Polygon works in parallel with the Ethereum network to improve functionality and promote the development of infrastructure.
The collaboration with Zero Hash is the latest Web3 initiative announced by DraftKings, following several other launched in the past year, including the NFT Marketplace offering collectibles from Autograph, integration of the NFT Marketplace with Polygon, as well as the agreement with the NFL Players Association for the release of gamified NFT collections.