Incentivization of pSTAKE on Cosmos to drive further adoption

The pSTAKE Protocol went live on the Persistence Core-1 chain in Cosmos on 12 January 2023 with the launch of stkATOM, the liquid staked representative of ATOM. Since then, 270,450 ATOM (~$3.4M) have been liquid staked on pSTAKE. stkATOM liquidity in Cosmos sits at ~$2.9M across DEXs such as Dexter, Crescent, & Osmosis. Further utility for stkATOM, such as collateral on borrowing lending protocols like Umee, Mars, Nitron, Bamboo, Commodo, Shade Lend, and Nolus, and for minting stablecoins like SILK, USK, and CMST will usher in the next phase of growth. This utility will also require deeper liquidity for stkATOM in Cosmos.

Currently, Stride & Quicksilver, the two major liquid staking providers in Cosmos, have liquid staking live for ATOM and other Cosmos assets such as OSMO, STARS, JUNO, INJ, etc., These LS providers are giving substantial incentives for bootstrapping liquidity & utility for LSTs issued by them. pSTAKE had initially incentivized the liquidity of stkATOM with ATOM & stkATOM through its treasury. Other projects have followed the same strategy after that. However, a hybrid approach is more feasible from a longer-term perspective. For example, Stride’s constant product stATOM/ATOM pool on Osmosis has $22M in liquidity and 38% APR ($20,000 daily in stATOM & STRD incentives).

With the expected launch of Lido on Cosmos in the coming weeks, liquid staking in Cosmos is expected to be the most competitive it has ever been. Amidst all this, the main focus of pSTAKE on Cosmos remains further adoption of stkATOM and liquid staking chain expansion to Osmosis, Injective, and others. This proposal suggests allocating 10M PSTAKE tokens from the Incentivization & Community Development Fund for the further adoption of pSTAKE on Cosmos for the foreseeable future. The first set of incentives is expected to go live on Osmosis, Shadeswap, Crescent, Astroport, Dexter (in addition to already allocated incentives), Nitron, and ShadeLend, among DeFi protocols in Cosmos.

If this proposal passes, 10M PSTAKE tokens from the Incentivization and Community Development Fund wallet on Ethereum will be reserved and used for the incentivization of pSTAKE on Cosmos.

The following sequence of actions will take place:

1. Withdraw on Ethereum a. The funds will initially be withdrawn to a 2/3 Ethereum multisig address: 0x3fc53e41C2b2BF279C67c4E1494bFBa9Fd942170 b. The multi-sig holders of the wallet are: Mikhil Pandey (pSTAKE Lead) Aditya Vandkar (pSTAKE Marketing Lead) Maajid Nazrulla (pSTAKE on Cosmos Product Lead)
2. Transfer to Cosmos a. The funds will then be transferred to the ‘pSTAKE on Cosmos Incentivization multisig’, a 2/3 Persistence multi-sig address (persistence1jvl06jjwc62454hznp2andmxdkm0a49eafqq2c) via the Gravity bridge. b. The multi-sig holders of the wallet are: Aditya Vandkar (pSTAKE Marketing Lead) Maajid Nazrulla (pSTAKE on Cosmos Product Lead) Puneet Mahajan (pSTAKE on Cosmos Engineering Lead)

The pSTAKE team will ensure that the use of allocated funds is public & kept transparent at all times through the pSTAKE Forum & other channels.

Vote 'FOR' to agree with incentivizing pSTAKE on Cosmos with 10M PSTAKE tokens.

Vote 'AGAINST' to disagree with incentivizing pSTAKE on Cosmos with 10M PSTAKE tokens.

Vote 'ABSTAIN' if you do not want to participate in this proposal.