A little bit of chit-chat
On its latest upgrade, Keplr added support for Ledger on Evmos. However, it’s use will be limited at first because relevant webpages will first need to implement a different technical logic to handle Cosmos transactions when using an Ethereum app.
Sommelier announced two new cellars to the platform. The strategies will be managed by ClearGate and mainly focus on ETH-BTC holders. Both strategies will aim to provide a more efficient way to hold both assets and transact based on the market’s moves.
The ION DAO, which will launch an index fund tracking the Cosmos ecosystem, asked the community about which assets should be included. Community members strongly supported ATOM, followed by EVMOS and JUNO.
Governance is getting hot!
Participants in Stargaze governance have been voting on controversial proposals during the past week. Specifically, proposals 57, 58 and 59 have gotten attention and raised some concerns among community members.
Proposal 57, which passed with 42% for Yes, asked for 3,837,000 STARS to experiment on user acquisition by airdropping STARS and some NFTs to specific Ethereum communities; in this case, the community which will benefit from the exercise will be Rekt Dragons, who previously lived on Terra’s Levana. At the same time, Levana Protocol, which now lives on Juno, will be in charge of generating engagement with this community through various activities.
Proposal 58 came with a similar take on bridging Ethereum NFTs users to Stargaze. However, the community rejected the proposal. In Prop 58 it was claimed that the Stargaze team would partner with RektDAO and MintDAO. However an official statement by the core team assured they have no partnership in place and were not part, in any manner, of the creation of the proposal.
As a reaction, Proposal 59 asked the community to raise the deposit amount to 50,000 STARS to discourage people from posting proposals on-chain without following community guidelines (posting it first on Commonwealth to have a discussion) or without serious intent.
Liquid Staking Series: Stride
As part of our series on Liquid Staking in Cosmos, we sat down to chat with Vishal Talasani, co-founder of Stride, to talk about the progress they have achieved so far and their plans for the future. Read the latest article on the series about Quicksilver
Q: How are people using stTokens in Cosmos?
A: Currently, it’s primarily in stXXX/XXX pools on Osmosis, so users can liquidly move in and out of staking. We’ve already seen this happen; some ~$50k+ “unbondings” are happening on the AMM (as well as ~$300k unbonding through Stride’s web app). However, this is mainly because we’re in the early days, and many other DeFi protocols will integrate with stATOM soon.
Q: How is Liquid Staking on Stride impacting decentralisation in Cosmos?
A: Our total TVL is ~$6m, which is still relatively small and hasn’t had a significant effect on decentralisation yet. But we’re currently working with Informal Systems to develop some top-tier validator rankings. We’re hoping these rankings can guide Stride’s validator selection on different chains to ultimately help increase ecosystem health and decentralisation.
Q: You mentioned during your talk at Cosmoverse that Stride will focus on partnerships. How are these partnerships going?
A: We’re talking to several teams (like Shade on SCRT and Kujira) about how we can use stTokens in their protocols. These should come online in the next 1-3 months, but we expect there will be a lot of demand for stTokens as collateral. Otherwise, your collateral loses out on tons of staking rewards, making it prohibitively expensive. On the Shade Protocol side, users will be allowed to use their stTokens as collateral to mint Silk privacy-preserving stablecoin.
Q: There is a lot of buzz around Liquid Staking, especially after ATOM 2.0 was unveiled. How do you envision the space with so many players coming in?
A: I think it’s not a zero-sum game. We see plenty of space, and each player brings their unique proposition to the table. We’re still in the early days of Liquid Staking, not only in Cosmos but in general. Regarding our positioning, we’re a minimalist liquid staking protocol, meaning we will only do liquid staking. This will allow us to be neutral, more security-focused and work on integrations.
Q: Is there any alpha?
A: We will deploy a dual liquid staked tokens pool, which will probably be one of the first dual liquid staked assets pools in the whole crypto sphere. Also, we will be working with Umee to deploy stAtom as collateral there.
Q: Is there any fun fact you would like to add?
A: One exciting stat, ~90% of stATOM is deployed in Cosmos DeFi, but only ~40% of stSTARS! 60% of stSTARS is just sitting in wallets. This is probably because the stSTARS yield is higher than just staking STARS on Keplr (because stSTARS auto compounded every 6 hours). Juno has only been live for a few days, so it’s a bit early to say, but I suspect the same fact will be true there.
Airdrops List
Wrap Up
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A little bit of intergalactic music for you