Whoa, according to AllNodes, Expected ROI for Eth2 stakeholders is 16.6%, which easily beats out almost any other DeFi interest bearing account (typically ~10%)!
Now that the launch has succeeded, I will stake some of my Eth. As more people do that, APR will fall.
Poo, minimum 32 ETH or at current prices $19k. This reinforces my dislike of staking. Only making the already rich richer. Keeping lesser ETH holders out of the profit.
But who am I kidding; if I magically had 32 ETH to stake I'd probably feel differently.
i.e. can an ETH holder somehow delegate a pool to be able to stake with that ETH but not spend it?
The trick is that as the pool leader, you have to put up a 16 ETH stake and other participants pool together to make up the other 16 ETH.
If you misbehave as the pool leader, your 16 ETH is the first to get slashed.
They published a blog post this week talking about how they are pushing back their roadmap until the Eth1/Eth2 merge, though.
Their proof of concept was working great on testnets.
You can't do anything with Eth2 that is locked. Some pool staking services offer a token for each ETH staked, but you can not use the staked ETH.
Using staked ether in the defi ecosystem will be possible once withdrawal and smart contract functionality is enabled. Until then, there are liquid staking services that offer eth2 derivatives that can be used in defi, as you point out.