July marked another key milestone in the journey toward Persistence DEX V2, our upcoming intent-powered Bitcoin cross-chain swapping solution, alongside continued feature improvements under the hood on Persistence DEX.
The month involved wrapping up the closed beta mainnet and taking steady steps toward opening up the product to the broader BTCfi community, with the community staying at the heart of it through participation and ongoing feedback.
Popular trading platform Cede Hub hosted a 7-day $XPRT trading competition in collaboration with KuCoin, featuring daily reward pools and reduced trading fees, which led to strong participation from both new and longtime Persisters.
Keep reading to catch up on everything that unfolded in July.
Persistence One Highlights
- The community started the month by introducing new pool incentives for Persistence DEX, unlocking additional opportunities for DeFi users.
- The coin-type 750 to 118 migration deadline was extended by another 6 months to give users more time.
- The campaign to enable closed beta mainnet swaps went live, giving early access to whitelisted wallets that actively participated in past testnet rounds.
- This approach helped gradually open up access while keeping the onboarding experience smooth, with broader access set to follow soon for the entire community.
- A range of DeFi opportunities on Persistence DEX were spotlighted throughout July, actively showcasing what’s live across both networks and available through the active pools.
- A Q2 recap was shared later in the month along with a glimpse of what’s coming next for Persisters.
- A set of infographics was released to keep users engaged with the beta mainnet and guide them through claiming testnet rewards.
- The Persistence Intern brought great energy to the community throughout the month, keeping things fun with memes and short video snippets. If you haven’t already, make sure to follow along.
- Midway through the month, we gave the community a hint at the upcoming intent-powered Bitcoin swapping solution.
- July also saw popular trading platform Cede Hub collaborate with KuCoin to host a 7-day $XPRT trading competition, which brought fresh energy and strong participation from both seasoned traders and Persisters across the board.
- In parallel, the deadline to complete participation in the beta mainnet was extended till 31st July, giving users ample time to finish the required steps and become eligible for their claims.
- An infographic was also shared highlighting the ongoing trading campaign by Cede Hub, where a new reward pool went live each day with every epoch. The campaign has since been extended with a larger reward pool and is currently live through August until 1st September.
- July wrapped up with a playful nod to Ethereum’s 10th birthday — or did it?
- The closed beta mainnet, limited to a small set of whitelisted users with capped swap amounts, saw around $6,000 worth of BTC cross-chain swap orders placed and nearly 200 users completing all tasks from the start. We shared some of these stats before the campaign concluded here.
- With the closed beta mainnet now complete, the next phases focus on reward distribution to testnet participants who’ve been with us since day one, and gradually opening access to the broader BTCfi community with limited swap amounts to battle-test the product in an open environment and gather valuable insights ahead of the full launch.
Keep reading further for other key highlights.
Media & Community
Here are some standout moments from the media and community front during July:
- Our COO, Jeroen Develter, spotlighted the importance of having a DEX that can truly leverage Bitcoin’s security at its core.
- Jeroen also consistently shared weekly updates throughout July, outlining priorities and what’s coming up across product, marketing, and growth. If you haven’t followed him yet, now’s a good time to do so.
- Persistence One was also featured in an ecosystem partner’s post around Babylon Genesis, highlighting what it means to be part of the growing BTCfi movement.
- Our COO, Jeroen Develter, also shared his thoughts on why there’s no second best when it comes to Bitcoin and its path to adoption.
- We also ran a quick poll to hear what Persisters think about the future of DeFi — and let’s just say, the results were very orange.
XPRT Governance & Token Highlights
Here are some of the most important governance updates around XPRT from July 2025:
- Proposal #140 was passed to implement ‘pool defunct functionality’ on Persistence DEX, allowing the deprecation of PSTAKE stkASSETS (excluding stkXPRT) and enabling LPs to reclaim their original liquidity.
- Proposal #141 was passed to upgrade the Persistence codebase to v12.0.0 at block height 22,492,000.
- Proposal #142 was passed to incentivise Persistence DEX pools with stkXPRT incentives for August 2025.
About Persistence One
Persistence One is building the BTCFi Liquidity Hub, enabling fast, near-zero-slippage swaps for BTC, BTC-variants, and LSTs on Persistence DEX.
BTCFi’s rapid growth has created multiple BTC-related assets, making fragmentation a big challenge. Persistence One will provide a single liquidity hub, simplifying value transfer across the Bitcoin ecosystem.
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