Stride Zone 2022 Review
The liquid staking protocols are coming to Cosmos and Stride Zone entered with a bang. With much anticipation, the team hit the ground running with top notch marketing and promotion. The ATOM and OSMO tokens were integrated right out of the gate. Liquidity pools on the Osmosis decentralized exchange quickly followed.
Stride is different from the other Cosmos liquid staking protocols because of the vision. It focuses more on security, the host-chain validator selection is different from the other liquid staking protocols, and the STRD token was immediately redeemable at launch.
The other liquid staking protocols aim to be DeFi hubs with decentralized exchanges (DEXs). Stride is only focused on liquid staking and doesn’t have plans to incorporate DeFi onto the chain.
Stride just wants to be a liquid staking part of the Cosmos technology stack. The team would rather plug into existing DeFi, like Agoric, Osmosis and Mars. The idea is to keep it simple.
For all the YouTubers out there, check out Stride’s YouTube channel for informational videos and tutorials. For a full overview, click on the video below.
Stride Zone Liquid Staking News: 2022
We’ll give a brief recap of the noteworthy events for Stride Labs that happened in 2022 and give our thoughts for 2023.
So what happened for Stride in 2022? Lots!
1) Not only was the first line of Stride code written in 2022, but the protocol successfully launched it’s “pool party” testnet in mid August and on September 13th the mainnet went live. Since then, Stride has become the Cosmos liquid staking protocol to beat.
Unfortunately, the token hasn’t escaped the gravity of the bear market. The price has crashed from around $1.70 at launch to only $0.22 as of this writing, but we’re still bullish and so is the community.
2) The STRD airdrop went live on November 22, 2022. 4 million tokens were airdropped to over 340,000 unique wallet addresses. Unlike most airdrops, the unclaimed STRD tokens will be clawed back and redistributed to the original recipients. So, those who claimed will get a chance to claim more STRD!
3) STRD staking went live. Want to stake your STRD tokens now? Check out our STRD staking tutorial, or click the button below to stake using Keplr wallet.
4) Liquidity pool incentives went live on Osmosis. Degens can now pair and deposit their stTOKENS into several Osmosis LPs to earn yield.
–ATOM/stATOM
–OSMO/stOSMO
–OSMO/STRD
–JUNO/stJUNO on Osmosis Frontier
–STARS/stSTARS on Osmosis Frontier
5) Stride integrated with Comdex. stTOKEN lending and borrowing will be added gradually. Check out the YouTube interview with Siddarth Patil, Co-Founder of Comdex and Vishal Talasani, Co-Founder of Stride.
6) Stride was integrated with Demex’s order book exchange, Nitron. Degens can now lend, borrow and mint stTOKENS.
7) Stride was included in the IBCX Cosmos index token. This token tracks the aggregate price of the most-used protocols in the Cosmos ecosystem.
8) Stride has hired 5 additional engineers and 4 new people to help with community and grow the ecosystem.
9) Stride has now staked 0.25% of all staked ATOM and 0.5% of all staked OSMO
10) The validator selection council was elected and the first round of ATOM validators was chosen. That group is now up for community review and vote.
The Stride delegations change quarterly, so we hope our friends at Blocks United make it into the Cosmos Hub validator set soon.
Stride Zone Liquid Staking News: 2023
So what’s up next for Stride?
1) stATOM may soon be integrated as a collateral option with Umee money market. This may even happen before the end of 2022.
2) Stride will integrate with Injective, which is one of the fastest blockchains in finance. This will give exposure to additional dApps, developers and builders.
3) Stride will integrate with Mars protocol’s lending market.
4) Stride will integrate with Agoric and its IST stablecoin.
5) Shade Protocol will integrate with Stride and stTOKENS will be the first liquid staking tokens on ShadeSwap.
6) Integration and support for Evmos should come with the next Stride upgrade.
7) User experience improvements are coming, including one-click liquid staking. The Stride app will include more integrations with Osmosis and Umee. LPing will be simpler and will include more statistics, making Stride even more transparent.
8) Adding IBC rate-limiting, which will make Stride even more secure. This sets limits to what can be stolen in the event of a hack.
9) ICS or Interchain Security is coming soon. Each connected chain will control some measure of security. Hence the term, “mesh security.”
10) STRD tokenomics will improve. Staking rewards for early investors and insiders will stop.
The community has also voted to redirect 100% of the protocol’s revenue to stakers. What’s super cool is that host-chain rewards will be paid out in addition to STRD rewards.
That means that STRD stakers will receive STRD, ATOM, OSMO, INJ, STARS, etc. We feel that is an amazing benefit. Stake your Stride tokens with Atlas Staking by clicking the button below.
11) Gas will be implemented for some transactions to limit spam. Currently, all transactions are free.
12) stTOKENS will soon retain voting rights. Currently when token holders liquid stake they lose their voting power. That will change in 2023. That means that if you deposit ATOM on Stride, the stATOM you receive will still allow you to vote on Cosmos Hub governance proposals, etc.
13) The Stride ambassador program will come back by the end of 2023. This will allow degens, influencers and users to get paid in STRD for bringing people into the ecosystem.
Phew, that was a lot! If you have any questions or comments, please let us know.
Liquid staking brings flexibility to ecosystems. It allows those who desire full liquidity to stake and receive staking rewards on their fully liquid positions. They can have their cake and eat it too.
Persistence, Stride, Quicksilver and Lido will be the liquid staking protocols that serve the Cosmos. We believe that Stride is better than the rest and look forward to 2023!
