This year started with narrowing down the focus for the Persistence ecosystem to Liquid Staking and DeFi primitives around liquid staked assets.
In the last three quarters, we have advanced on multiple fronts to establish a thriving liquid staking ecosystem. In this article we summarise the key developments and what’s upcoming next in the Persistence ecosystem.
Before we jump into the developments, here is the letter from Founder’s desk shared at the start of the year highlighting liquid staking as Persistence’s primary focus: https://blog.persistence.one/2022/02/07/from-the-founders-desk-mission-2022/
Persistence Core-1 Chain inching towards becoming liquid staking hub
We envisioned decentralising the network and adding capabilities for growing the developer ecosystem. Looking back:
– Increased the active validator set to 100 and maintained 80%+ (avg.) staking ratio
– Grew the network participants by ~2x (~45k wallets)
– Built an active community of 20k+ stakers
– Added Cosmwasm support and developed Cosmovisor environment for easier chain upgrades
– Designed modular liquid staking architecture to rapidly expand support for IBC assets and easier adoption of LSM by iqlusion, ICA, and ICQ
– Robust tooling for the Core-1 chain, including explorers, faucets, analytics – AllThatNode, Big Dipper, Cosmoscan, Smartstake dashboard, and many more
– Grew the IBC connection to 19 Hubs/zones
– Aligned closely with Cosmos Hub/Major IBC chains by adopting 118 coin-type and overlapping validator set
In the growth process, we faced some challenges but persisted, as our name suggests. Some challenges:
– Redesign the liquid staking architecture to eliminate the external dependencies and have better adaptability for upcoming modules such as LSM, ICQ, and ICA. The redesign stretched the timelines for stkATOM on top of the Core-1 chain.
– Chain halt during the Core-1 v3 upgrade. The chain was brought online within 48 hours, thanks to the incredible Cosmos community.
$XPRT poised for exponential adoption
– Accessibility grew significantly through wallet/staking interface integrations such as Omni App, CitadelDAO, Mathwallet, Mycontainer.com
– DEX listing on Junoswap
– XPRT is to be adopted as a base asset by the dapps developing on top of the Persistence Core-1 chain
– Liquid staking for XPRT (stkXPRT) launching in Q4 2022
pSTAKE on a multi-chain journey
– pSTAKE added liquid staking support for Ethereum (Beta)
– Partnered with Binance Labs to launch liquid staking for @BNBChain, and currently, stkBNB is the most integrated liquid-staked asset in the BNB ecosystem.
– pSTAKE for Cosmos (built on Persistence Core-1 chain) is deployment-ready and currently undergoing audits [expected launch: Early November]
– Determined the migration strategy for ERC-20 stkATOM and stkXPRT to Persistence Core-1 Chain
– pSTAKE TVL at peak crossed $50M (Majorly: stkATOM, stkXPRT)
– 7500+ total users to date
pSTAKE grew multi-fold in 2022 but did have our fair share of ups and down. Some challenges:
– stkATOM approved as collateral on @anchor_protocol, but we disabled it owing to $UST collapse
– Roll-back of ERC-20 implementation for stkATOM and stkXPRT needed to be fully secure and fair for the end users, hence delaying the launch of stkATOM on the Persistence Core-1 chain.
– Had to put the stkSOL and stkAVAX launches on hold due to volatile market conditions.
AUDIT.one playing a crucial role in Persistence’s vision to simplify staking
– AUDIT.one expanded the support to 25+ networks
– In addition to the Cosmos-based chains, launched validator nodes on Ethereum, Solana
– AUDIT.one continues to be one of the leading validators for Polygon
– Opted for more targeted focus to better support the networks we strongly believe in
– Increased redundancy for our node infrastructure
The Persistence ecosystem is ready to take off
– Persistence partner with @axelarecore for cross-chain bridging of assets
– Launched a grants program to promote developers building DeFi primitives liquid-staked assets.
– Inviting and Ideating with external teams for liquid-staking focused DeFi primitives such as Interchain DEX, Money Markets, Yield Aggregators, and Index.
While a lot is happening on the liquid staking frontier, the most exciting updates from the Persistence ecosystem are ahead.
We have been working on the following things to fuel the momentum:
– Launch a more comprehensive developers’ grants program
– Community engagement initiatives such as education, events, and creative bounties
– XPRT custody for an easier on-ramp into the ecosystem
– Partnerships and collabs on multiple fronts – infra, DeFi utility, community, and UX
– More concrete utility and functionality for XPRT (XPRT 2.0 coming soon *wink*)
Discover some of the latest discussions and product alphas on our forum:
https://forum.persistence.one
Be ready for what’s coming next. Persistence will be the liquid staking hub you need to maximise the capital efficiency of your assets.
About Persistence
Persistence is a Tendermint-based, specialized Layer-1 network powering an ecosystem of DeFi applications focused on unlocking the liquidity of staked assets. Persistence facilitates the issuance and deployment of liquid-staked assets, allowing users to earn staking rewards while participating in DeFi primitives, such as lending/borrowing and liquidity provisioning on DEXs.
Persistence aims to offer a seamless staking and DeFi experience for PoS (Proof-of-Stake) users and enable developers to build innovative applications around stkASSETs.
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