Ankr's staking sits alongside an established RPC and node infrastructure business, which gives it the operational base to support liquid staking on chains where no specialist protocol exists. That coverage is its remaining advantage.
The 2022 incident
A former employee's access was used to obtain a deployer key, which was then used to mint an effectively unlimited supply of aBNBc, Ankr's BNB Chain liquid staking token. The token's value collapsed, associated pools were drained, and Ankr compensated affected users and reissued tokens. No smart contract was broken — the failure was key management and access control, which is the category of problem that should be easiest to prevent.
Where it stands now
Ankr rebuilt its key management, added multisig controls and continued operating. Its liquid staking tokens across several chains function, and there has been no repeat. But an operator that lost control of a deployer key is asking for trust that its processes have fundamentally changed, and the burden of proof sits with it.
Liquidity and integration
Thin across most of its token set, with limited DeFi integration compared with the leaders. Fee around 10%.
Who should use it
Users needing liquid staking on a chain with no better option, at sizes they could afford to lose. For any major network, better-run protocols exist.