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

Persistence is one of the application chains in the Cosmos ecosystem that first enabled IBC, CosmWasm, and liquid staking modules. By deeply exploring POS and liquid staking related products, this project has built a complete liquid staking and restaking framework for the Cosmos ecosystem.

On December 5, 2023, the Cosmos community voted to allocate 600,000 ATOM to pSTAKE for the development of liquid staking. In return, pSTAKE will share 15% of the liquid staking revenue with Cosmos Hub.

Persistence Ecosystem Overview

According to official data, the total locked value of the Persistence ecosystem is (TVL), reaching 14.78 million USD, with an IBC trading volume of 15 million USD in the past 30 days, and the average transaction cost is less than 0.005 USD.

Data shows that Persistence has established 121 channels with 44 other regions in the Interchain network, demonstrating a high degree of interconnectivity. Currently, 74.7% of the network token $XPRT is in stake, with an annualized staking yield of 16.7%. This high staking rate typically indicates strong security and participation in the network.

The infrastructure of Persistence consists of 6 nodes and 100 validators, collectively maintaining the decentralization and security of the network.

Technical Advantages

Persistence supports the CosmWasm framework, allowing developers to write secure and interoperable smart contracts using the Rust language. DApps developed based on CosmWasm can operate across chains through IBC, providing convenient, secure, and efficient technical support for liquid staking.

In addition, Persistence has connected 54 Cosmos application chains through IBC, enabling trustless communication, transfer, staking, and re-staking of tokens, laying a solid foundation for staking and re-staking in the Cosmos ecosystem.

The project also utilizes Interchain Accounts (ICA) technology to achieve ICA liquid staking, allowing an account on one chain to perform operations on another chain, which improves the efficiency and flexibility of staking and restaking.

liquid staking

In the Cosmos ecosystem, liquid staking involves two roles: validators and delegators. Validators are responsible for running hardware and blockchain applications based on the Cosmos SDK, reaching consensus with other validators, and proposing and validating new blocks on the chain. Delegators choose the validator nodes to delegate to when staking.

To maintain network security, the Cosmos ecosystem has a penalty mechanism: if validators exhibit improper behavior, such as being offline continuously, the staked deposits of delegators will be reduced by 0.1%; if extremely malicious behavior occurs, such as double signing, the staked deposits will be reduced by 5%.

pSTAKE staking platform

pSTAKE provides a simple staking process for the Cosmos ecosystem. Users only need to select the token to stake and the chain they are on to complete the staking. After staking, users will receive the corresponding staking rights tokens, such as stkATOM for staking ATOM.

The characteristics of pSTAKE include:

1. Automatic Compounding: Taking stkATOM as an example, the daily staking rewards are automatically reinvested, gradually increasing the number of ATOM corresponding to each stkATOM.
2. Flexible Unstaking: Users can choose to wait 21-25 days to unstake, or pay a 1% fee for quick unstaking.
3. Multi-asset support: Currently supports staking of various assets such as ATOM, OSMO, DYDX, STARS, HUAHUA, etc.

It is worth noting that regardless of which chain's assets are staked, a small amount of $XPRT is required to be held as GAS fees.

Stake Derivatives

The Persistence ecosystem has developed various stk asset derivatives, such as directly exchanging stkATOM and ATOM on DEX platforms without the need to unstake or pay additional fees. Moreover, stk assets can be combined with native assets to add liquidity on DEX, resulting in higher returns.

$XPRT stake

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

stake security guarantee

Persistence and pSTAKE are both open-source projects, which is an important guarantee of security. pSTAKE has been developed by 72 developers who continue to update it.

In addition, Persistence collaborates with multiple security agencies to provide comprehensive security support for staking and restaking, with partners including well-known security audit firms such as Halborn, PeckShield, Certora, Hexens, Notional, and Trail of Bits.

Re-staking Innovation

Persistence is building the re-staking infrastructure for the Cosmos ecosystem, allowing users to deposit liquid staking tokens (such as stkATOM, stTIA, stkDYDX) into Persistence for re-staking their assets while earning additional rewards.

Re-stake Alliance

The re-staking module of Persistence is developed based on the Alliance module, facilitating asset staking across different blockchains. For example, stakers of $XPRT, stkATOM, and stkTIA can join the re-staking asset alliance of Persistence to share staking rewards.

Stakers of various assets share the rewards according to the reward weight of the assets. The reward weight of $XRPT is 1, while the reward weights of other assets are determined and adjusted through decentralized governance.

Source of re-staking income

The tokens used by users for re-staking will be locked and native tokens ($XPRT) will be minted proportionally, which will be staked to validators, and the staking rewards obtained will be distributed to the original stakers.

Conclusion

Persistence provides an efficient and secure economic infrastructure for liquid staking and re-staking in the Cosmos ecosystem. Through an innovative re-staking scheme, Persistence has established a cross-chain economic alliance that not only enhances security guarantees among participants but also improves the level of decentralization in the Cosmos ecosystem, bringing higher security, asset liquidity, and participation to the entire ecosystem.