Ryze Up: Discussing Liquidity Solutions for the Cosmos Ecosystem with Persistence Labs

Introduction

The special guest of this episode is Mikhil, the Chief Strategist of Persistence Labs. Persistence Labs is dedicated to providing liquidity for assets in the Cosmos ecosystem through services such as liquid staking.

The Positioning of Persistence in the Cosmos Ecosystem

Mikhil entered the crypto industry in 2019, inspired by the founder's passion for Cosmos and the vision of bringing real assets onto the blockchain. Currently, he is responsible for the overall strategy and product business direction of the company.

The goal of Persistence Labs is to build a dedicated Layer 1 in the Cosmos ecosystem to serve asset 流动性. Persistence Chain is one of the earliest chains in the Cosmos ecosystem, where users can engage in lending, trading, and issuing liquid collateralized assets.

The reason for choosing the Cosmos ecosystem lies in its unique architecture. Compared to Ethereum, Cosmos is more like a multiverse, connecting multiple blockchains through inter-blockchain communication. Each application can build on its own chain without competing for block space on the same chain with other applications.

In addition, the IBC protocol of Cosmos allows users to transfer assets across chains with minimal trust, which is a trustless and unregulated process, reflecting the unique value of Cosmos.

Advantages of Application Chains

More and more projects are choosing to build their own application chains using the Cosmos SDK. Mikhil pointed out that application chains can achieve things that are not possible on Layer 1. Taking dydx as an example, one important reason for migrating from Ethereum to the Cosmos technology stack is to capture more MEV profits.

In addition, having its own application chain means having sovereignty over the chain. The project party can independently decide the working rules of the chain, profit distribution, parameter operation methods, and block generation mechanisms, etc. Cosmos abstracts cross-chain communication and consensus parts, allowing application developers to focus on the application itself.

Persistence built its application chain in 2019 to achieve higher customizability, including aspects such as the KYC application process and integration between the chain and applications.

Persistence's Liquidity Staking Solution

The Cosmos ecosystem has always faced the problem of insufficient liquidity. Users face a dilemma between staking and participating in DeFi. Persistence has launched the liquid staking product pSTAKE, allowing users to obtain the liquidity token stkAtom while staking Atom.

stkAtom can be traded on Persistence's DEX product Dexter, or participate in other DeFi projects to achieve dual gains from staking rewards and DeFi rewards, greatly enhancing the liquidity of Atom.

Compared to its competitors, Persistence has the following advantages:

1. As the first liquidity staking solution on Cosmos, it has a first-mover advantage and brand reputation.
2. Attach great importance to security and invest a lot of resources in security audits.
3. Focus on user experience, usability is leading
4. Emphasize decentralization, currently having more than 60 validators, which is twice that of competitors.

In the future, Persistence will continue to provide Liquidity staking services for other application chains in the Cosmos ecosystem and explore expansion to other Layer 1 ecosystems such as BNB and ETH.

Asset Security Assurance

Persistence places great importance on cross-chain security. During the development of pSTAKE, the team invested a significant amount of time and effort in auditing the security of fund cross-chain transactions and validators. They also ran a bug bounty program to ensure that everything was thoroughly tested and audited.

Before launching new products, Persistence will conduct comprehensive testing to minimize risks as much as possible.

Future Outlook

Persistence Labs believes that liquidity tokens will become the foundational assets of DeFi, and liquidity staking will drive the next major development in DeFi.

In the future, Persistence hopes to collaborate with more Cosmos applications to expand the support for pSTAKE and Dexter. They will continue to optimize the user experience, strengthen market education, and attract more users to shift from simple staking to Liquidity staking, increasing token utilization.

Persistence welcomes teams with a shared vision to build applications on the Persistence Chain, especially those looking to develop applications related to Liquidity Staking, to jointly promote industry development.