Persistence: Building the Cosmos Ecosystem Liquid Staking and Re-staking Infrastructure

Persistence is one of the earlier application chains in the Cosmos ecosystem to enable IBC, CosmWasm, and liquid staking modules. By continuously focusing on POS and liquid staking related products, it has built a complete liquid staking and re-staking architecture for the Cosmos ecosystem.

Recently, the Cosmos community voted to allocate 600,000 ATOM for the growth of liquid staking for pSTAKE. pSTAKE will share 15% of the liquid staking revenue with Cosmos Hub.

Overview of the Persistence Ecosystem

According to official data, the TVL of the Persistence ecosystem is approximately $14.78 million, with an IBC trading volume of $15 million in the past 30 days and an average transaction cost of less than $0.005. The data shows that Persistence has established 121 channels with 44 other zones in the Interchain network, demonstrating its high connectivity.

Approximately 74.7% of the tokens ($XPRT) in the network are staked, with an annual yield of 16.7%. The high staking rate indicates a higher level of security and active participation in the network. Persistence is composed of 6 nodes and 100 validators, working together to ensure the decentralization and security of the network.

IBC, as the core protocol of the Cosmos ecosystem, enables interoperability between different blockchains. In the last 24 hours, the IBC trading volume of Persistence reached $260,800, with 4,955 transactions, including 616 IBC transactions. There are 932 active addresses, with 86 active IBC addresses. The inflow of IBC continues to be higher than the outflow, indicating that more and more value is flowing into Persistence and participating in stake.

Technical Support

Persistence supports the CosmWasm framework, allowing developers to write secure and interoperable smart contracts using the Rust language. DApps developed with CosmWasm can operate across chains via IBC, achieving cross-chain interoperability for applications and providing convenient, secure, and efficient technical support for liquid staking.

Persistence connects to 54 Cosmos application chains via IBC, enabling trustless communication, transfer, staking, and re-staking of tokens. Utilizing Interchain Accounts (ICA) to achieve ICA Liquid Staking enhances the efficiency and flexibility of staking and re-staking.

liquid staking

In the Cosmos ecosystem, liquid staking includes two roles: validators and delegators. Stakers can choose which validator node to delegate to. Validators run hardware and blockchain applications based on the Cosmos SDK, reach consensus with other validators, and propose and validate new blocks on the chain.

If a validator exhibits negative behavior, the delegator will face corresponding penalties. Minor violations may result in a reduction of the staking deposit by 0.1%, while serious violations such as double signing may lead to a reduction of 5% of the staking deposit. This mechanism prevents malicious behavior and maintains network efficiency and security through economic incentives and potential penalties.

pSTAKE stake

pSTAKE provides a simple staking process for the Cosmos ecosystem. Users can stake by selecting the token and the chain they want to stake on. Once the staking is completed, the protocol issues corresponding staking rights tokens to the users, such as stkATOM for staking ATOM.

pSTAKE offers an automatic compounding feature. Taking stkATOM as an example, users' daily staking rewards are automatically added to the stake, continuing to earn rewards. This results in an increase in the staked ATOM corresponding to each stkATOM, allowing users to receive more ATOM when they unstake.

Unstaking requires a waiting period of 21-25 days, or a 1% fee for immediate withdrawal. When retrieving the stake, the corresponding stk assets are destroyed.

pSTAKE currently supports 5 tokens: ATOM from Cosmos Hub, OSMO from the Osmosis chain, DYDX from the dYdX chain, STARS from Stargaze, and HUAHUA from Chihuahua, as well as those minted on the Persistence chain.

The staking process involves transferring assets across chains to the Persistence chain via IBC, and then calling the liquid staking module to stake the assets. Therefore, regardless of which chain's assets are staked, a certain amount of $XPRT must be held as GAS fees.

Stake Derivatives

The Persistence ecosystem has launched a variety of stk asset derivative products. Users can directly exchange stkATOM for ATOM on the DEX without the need to unstake or pay additional fees. stk assets can also be added to liquidity on the DEX alongside native assets to earn higher returns.

$XPRT stake

As an independent blockchain, Persistence also requires stake to enhance network security. Users can easily stake $XPRT in the official or Keplr wallet and choose a validator node to stake.

stake security

Persistence and pSTAKE are both open-source programs, with 72 developers involved in the development of pSTAKE. They collaborate with several security agencies to provide comprehensive support for the security of staking and liquid staking, including well-known blockchain security audit firms such as Halborn, PeckShield, and Certora.

Re-stake

Persistence is building a Restaking infrastructure in Cosmos that allows users to deposit liquid staking tokens into Persistence for restaking, securing additional chains and earning extra rewards. The restaking module supports staking requests for multiple assets.

Re-stake Alliance

The re-staking module of Persistence is developed based on the Alliance module, allowing assets to be staked from one blockchain to another. The re-staking alliance shares staking rewards, and each asset staker is allocated rewards based on their weight. This mechanism forms a community of interests for re-staked assets, which helps to enhance the security and decentralization of the Cosmos ecosystem.

Source of re-staking rewards

The tokens re-staked by users are locked and proportionally minted into native tokens in the staking module. For example, stkATOM and stTIA are locked, proportionally minting $XPRT and staking it to validators, with the earnings distributed to the stakers.

Conclusion

Persistence provides an effective and secure economic infrastructure for liquid staking and re-staking in the Cosmos ecosystem. Through its innovative re-staking program, Persistence establishes an economic alliance for re-stakers, enhances cross-chain security, and increases the level of decentralization in the Cosmos ecosystem.