In today's video I'm going to show you the six best ways to take your ethereum or ether tokens and I'm going to break each method down by difficulty reward and risk so let's not waste any time and Jump Right In I'm going to start with the easiest ways to stake eth 2.0 andThen work my way up to the most difficult and as you can probably guess the reward or Roi or percentage APR that you'll get on your eth staking generally tends to increase as the difficulty increases although it's not exactly linear and there's a couple exceptions which I'll show you so the first andEasiest way that you can stake your eth tokens is through a centralized exchange so for example your coinbases or your finances but obviously not your ftx's now the reason this is the simplest way to stake eth is that you purchase it and stake it in exactly the same platformAnd it's only a couple of clicks and you're done so for example with coinbase once you've purchased it you'll have an opportunity to stake it and the same thing applies to binance once you purchase eth on the platform you can stake it easily with just a few clicksNow obviously this method of Eve staking is not without its risks so for example if what happened to FTX over the past week happens to coinbase or to binance then you could be at risk of losing the money that you stake with them with your ether token and that's definitely a riskYou take if you stake with any centralized staking service where you're not in control of your own eth tokens you're basically giving it to someone and they're staking it for you and you have to trust that they're actually going to pay the percentage return that you're supposed to be getting and thenAlso be able to return the full amount of the eat that you staked whenever you want it as opposed to going belly up and not having enough money if there's a bank run which is exactly what happened with FTX so that is the major risk withThis method of staking and then when it comes to the rewards of this method of staking you're going to take home slightly less than you would if you staked completely by yourself for example because of course the coinbase validators are going to take a small percentage of the staking yields andIt's important to say at this point that if staking yields are actually variable and it depends on how many people are staking eat at any given time and also on how many people are using the network because as people complete transactions then those people give small tips to thePeople that are validating the transactions which comes through in the yield as well and so it does vary currently it's approximately 5.3 percent APR but like I said even though it is a variable rate you won't get the full amount if you stake through coinbase for example they will take a smallPercentage of it so you'll get slightly less than 5.3 or whatever the variable rate is at the time when you stake your eth the second easiest way to stake your eat is to purchase something called a liquid staking derivative now that sounds complicated but the beauty of liquid staking derivatives is that youExchange ether for State ether tokens which represent the value of ethereum and they actually increase in value over time as the rewards for staking accrue to them so one perfect example is Lido and they're the largest by far of the providers of the service but there's others including rocket pool steak wiseSteak fish and so if you give one eat to Lido then they'll give you one eat back in exchange and then over time the value of that will actually accrue and it'll be worth more than one ether and the benefit of this taking model is that youCan actually sell your staked eth tokens whenever you want whereas if you're actually running your own validating note for example you can't currently withdraw the eth that you're putting up as collateral to be a Staker so this method allows you to be liquid hence the liquids taking derivatives now in termsOf how easy it is it's pretty simple you can either purchase these tokens on an exchange or on a decentralized exchange or you can go to the page like Lido and you can even access this through the Ledger app or the trezor app if you're using a hardware wallet and you canExchange your eth for State eth tokens in those places so it's pretty simple all you have to do is have ether in an ethereum wallet and it takes a couple of clicks and you're done in terms of the reward it's kind of similar to staking through a centralized exchange likeCoinbase and obviously the Lido validators are taking a percentage of the staking yield and then you're getting you know slightly less than the full amount and according to stakingrewards.com currently if you stake with rocket pools liquid staking you can get 4.42 per year but if you stake with lydo's liquid sticking youCan get 4.72 percent per year so it's approximately the same as for example staking through a centralized service but the risks are slightly different whereas when you give your eth to coinbase or binance you have to trust that they are actually going to uphold what they're promising to do which isPay out the rewards and then give you back your eth whenever you want it well in this case you have to trust that these smart contracts that are set up for you to exchange eth for State eth won't break that there won't be a hackAnd that someone will be able to come in and steal all the money also in the case of Lido there's a limited number of validators in a validating pool and so you also have to trust that those validators are going to be honest it's better than giving them to oneCentralized service provider like coinbase but is not as good as a fully decentralized model and so actually on this chart here you can see some of the different staking providers that offer liquid staking derivatives and Rocket pool is actually one of the best in terms of being open source and beingPermissionless and trustless whereas Lido is slightly not as good because like I said there is that limited pool of validators that you do have to trust and one final risk at least currently with this staking method is that eth and staked eat whatever it's from could actually depeg and this is because somePeople could be trading it at a discount because they're trying to factor in the risk that for example ethereum's taking withdrawals are not actually enabled at any point in the future or at any point in the near future because obviously if that doesn't happen it means everybodyThat staked their eth won't be able to actually withdraw it which would be a massive problem so sometimes you do see State eth trading at a discount to eat and for example in this screenshot here you can see that it was trading at 0.987 so you know a 1.3 discount to whatIt should be however these discrepancies should go away once eth staking withdrawals are actually enabled which is supposed to happen at some point in 2023. all right so the third easiest way to take your ether tokens is actually to do leveraged staking with liquid staking derivatives as well and just by the nameYou can probably already tell that this is going to be much higher on the risk factor and also higher on the reward Factor but it is pretty easy it's very similar to purchasing Lido steak eat or rocket pool staked you can purchase leverage stake ease tokens with serviceProviders like index Co-op that offer apis in excess of 20 percent currently ice is paying about 24 percent per year but while it is relatively simple to get this leveraged State eth and the rewards are pretty attractive of course that does not come without risk now how thisWorks basically is that ice or index Co-op eth is taking ethereum and then is taking a loans against that ethereum and then purchasing staked eth with that and then repeating the process several times creating this compounding effect and the loans are being paid off partially with the return that comes from the ethStaking and so this token ice is staked at a 3.1 X leverage now the main risks with this method are first of all there is smart contract risk so for example if the code is somehow not up to standard and it's hackable then there is thatRisk there and then of course there is the liquidation risk so for example if there's too much price volatility or if it gets too over levered or if staked depend from regular eat for any significant amount of time and any significant margin then there is the risk that overall there could be aLiquidation event also if too much eth gets deposited into the eth staking ecosystem then that brings the staking yields down and it could make it more difficult for the interest on the loans that are occurring on this leveraged model to be paid off so there's also aRisk with the yield rate of the state ethereum so there's definitely a few risks here all right next up we have the fourth easiest method which is eth as a staking service now basically what you need for this is 32 each so there is some difficulty in that sense and thatYou have to have a pretty significant amount of capital to actually participate in it but once you have that the beauty of eth as a staking service is that you don't need to actually purchase equipment and run the validator node yourself you don't have to handle all the software and anything like thatAll you have to do is have the 32 eth and earn the yield from that according to stakingrewards.com you can earn approximately 4.79 per year with this method so slightly more than if you were just purchasing Lido state it or rocketpool steak eth and again relatively simple you don't have to dealWith equipment or anything like that there's different options for staking providers with different trade-offs in terms of decentralization or being open source and so the risks depend on which you choose but generally I'd say the risk level is pretty similar to if you were just purchasing a Lido State ethorRocket pool steak token you have custody of your own assets but there is smart contract risk and potentially some open source issues and the decentralized versus centralized trustless versus non-trustless risks that you have to weigh off right the fifth easiest way to take urethra tokens and now we'reGetting into the realm of the more difficult where you actually have to purchase equipment and download software and deal with that aspect of things but you can actually be a validator in these staking pools that I've been talking about so for example if you wanted to validate with rocketpool as opposed toJust holding rocket pool staked eth what you need to do is get your hands on 16 ether tokens also some rocket pool RPL token collateral and then rocket pool gives you 16 eth which has been pulled from other people and then with that you can actually spin up your own validatingNode and you have to pay out the rewards to the other 16 eat that you've collected from the pool and then you get whatever's left over now this is much more complex because you actually do have to purchase equipment and run the software the validating node on thatHardware equipment in your home so you do need to have an energy source and a reliable source of internet now the reward for this generally if you have good up time on your node is going to be better than if you were just holding the rocket pool State eth token because youDo get additional rewards in exchange for actually having to deal with the equipment and the software on the other hand if you're not a reliable validator and you have for example a lot of downtime then you run the risk of getting less rewards and also even of having your collateral slashed so thereIs risk in that sense also as with most of the other methods here there is smart contract risk right so the sixth and final way that you can stake your Ethan this is in my opinion the most difficult is to be a solo validator which means you're not getting pulled eth fromAnyone else you have to put up all your own collateral so you need at least 32 each and you have to have the equipment and you have to have the software and you have to have again a reliable internet connection and of course a steady source of power and once you haveAll of these things then you can actually spin up your own validator node now this is the best actually for the ethereum network because you participate in validating transactions but you're not beholden to anybody else so you're upholding the decentralized nature of the network now of course the mainBenefit of this method of staking is that you get all of the rewards all of the tips all of the money so depending on whatever the variable rate is of ethereum staking you get 100 of that which is great now on the risk side currently you can actually withdraw thatAnd this isn't a liquid staking derivative method so that means that your 32 eth and whatever eth you're making as a validator in terms of your rewards is locked in the contract until there's a hard fork and withdrawals are enabled which could happen sometime next year but it's not necessarily guaranteedAnd that is really the main risk of this method of staking if for example ethereum goes down or if they don't enable withdrawals soon enough then that is a risk so you have to weigh whether or not you think vitalik and all of the other ethereum core developers areActually going to deliver on what they're promising because if they do then there's little risk here but if they don't then of course you're probably screwed anyways those are the six best ways that you can stake your ether tokens ranked by level of difficulty from easiest to hardestHopefully you found this useful and I'll see you in the next video foreign