Here’s the August’23 budget for the Stader ecosystem. This post shall give a summarized breakdown of estimated SD emissions for user rewards across supported chains and respective platforms.
Since the SD token has no “utility” on the other chains, it may make sense to wind down emissions entirely (over time - 6-18 mo) unless the token can have a purpose other than governance. It looks like Hedera has zero emissions but still has a decent amount of native tokens staked.
BNB emissions seem a bit high relative to the total amount staked compared to Polygon. I only compare and contrast these two chains since they are more established and unlikely to see significant growth like Ethereum.
The factor that you are perhaps missing is the ‘time since the LST was launched in chain X’.
When we assign SD rewards to each of the 7 LSTs we have, we do so considering the following factors:
the amount of TVL we have (higher value means higher SD emissions)
time since the LST was launched in chain X (higher value means lesser SD emissions)
exceptional events such as a new DeFi integration, or the overall sentiment of LSTs in chain X.
Our Hedera LST has been live for the longest time among all LSTs, and we have definitely found product-market fit (we are the first protocol in Hedera by TVL), hence there are no SD emissions any more.
Our BNB LST was the #6 to launch, it is the newest after ETHx. BNBchain has tremendous potential for us: it is a chain whose native coin (BNB) has a tremendously high market cap, but liquid staking is very small there. We are by far the best LST in BNB, and we have the highest number of unique wallets and the highest TVL. It makes strategic sense for us to spend a little bit more SD there than in other chains, because it it could be a multi-bagger in terms of TVL in the months and years to come. Check this BNBx Dashboard for more insights.
I hope this answers your questions! Definitely Stader is committed to long-term viability and sustainability, and this means SD rewards will not always be there!
Thank you for the detailed and well thought out answer. I know things are quite busy and appreciate you taking the time to respond.
The fact that Stader is thoughtful about the use of the SD token is readily apparent. I believe the roll out of ETHX was one of the best uses that I have observed of incentives that were not only reasonable but targeted at current and potential users of the protocol.
Personally, I have used BSC in the past and do like the chain for its ease of use and low transaction fees. In the future, I don’t see BSC becoming decentralized in the same manner that both l1’s and l2’s like polygon and arbitrum seem to be moving.
For this reason, I could definitely see a use case for the SD token on other decentralized chains as a utility token, but I’m hard-pressed to see a use case on BSC. Without a use case for the token, those earning SD rewards on BSC are more likely to dump them instead of holding/bonding/staking. On the other hand, I can see the point regarding the opportunity for large TVL and revenue to offset the token issuance.
I’ll withhold judgment for now and we can see how the thesis plays out over the next few months/years. I would be curious to see if you have any milestones in mind that could change the thought process and course of token issuance.
I know Ethereum is great and the community is the best, but BNBchain has a big potential.
Swamp, bear in mind this:
Stader is the best of the 3 LSTs in BNBchain, no discussion possible. Ankr and pStake combined have less users than Stader.
Stader is not invested by Binance Labs (unlike those two) and therefore SD is not listed on Binance.
However… what will happen if Stader keeps doing this great job and furthering the gap between the two?
My take is that Binance might enter in the captable, stake some double digit millions with us, and list SD in Binance. And that would be a ‘before and after’ for Stader.
BNBx just got listed in Venus barely a month ago. I think this is why the team keeps spending on BNBchain, and I am patiently awaiting positive results.
I know all this is difficult to buy from an (increasingly realistic) Ethereum-L1-maximalism view, but just wanted to give my two cents.
P.S: thanks for your insights both here and on Discord!
It’s undeniable that SD major utility is and will always be attached to ETHx, and highly doubt there will ever be any more organic usecase than this bond to secure ETHx from slashing or misbehaving from NOs.
On the other hand, as it has already been mentioned by Mariella, BNBx is clearly the superior LST in BSC due to many reasons. And this has not been reflected in TVL yet, whatever the reason is.
I feel maintaining the SD spendings in BSC for some more time could be highly rewarding for Stader overall if the situation in BNB Liquid Staking ecosystem ends up following the logical path.
