If you’re from the US or Canada and were looking forward to staking your $APE, then I’ve got some good news and some bad news.
The bad news
The bad news is that ApeCoin holders in North America will be restricted from staking their $APE on ApeStake.io. North Korea, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Russia, and the Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine, Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk are also on the block list.
Horizen Labs, the company responsible for delivering the $APE staking program, explained that “unfortunately, in today’s regulatory environment, we had no good alternative”.
The good news
If you’re on the block list, then fear not. Zeneca recently tweeted that those from geo-blocked regions will still be able to stake by interacting with the smart contract directly or using another interface without geo-blocks (i.e. just not on ApeStake.io). Those in blocked regions could, in theory, also use a VPN to spoof their location.
ApeStake.io will go live on December 5, 2022.
If that hasn’t cheered you up, then this might. The ApeCoin DAO has also recently launched its own marketplace to buy and sell NFTs from the Yuga Labs ecosystem.
The marketplace will respect creator royalties while heavily reducing fees. A 0.25% slice of each sale is held in a multisig wallet and used to fund DAO initiatives.
