Sunset BNBx

This is a proposal about sunsetting BNBx liquid staking token. While BNBx successfully provided a secure staking option, the current market environment favors consolidation making this the ideal time to wind down operations and focus resources on high-performing product lines.

Summary Maintaining a secure, high-uptime LST requires significant technical oversight and continuous integration work which is hard to justify at the current scale; especially when viewed from the org perspective (BNBx represents ~2% of the Stader TVL). These are the broad factors that have been taken into consideration

• Operational costs around maintaining the smart contracts, delivering upgrades, managing security audits, oracle maintenance, external monitoring etc • Risk Mitigation: Each supported chain introduces unique smart contract and infrastructural risks and by sun-setting the lower-volume LSTs, we reduce the surface area for potential technical vulnerabilities

• There are also broader downstream ecosystem risks to consider when it comes to low trading volume LSTs. For starters, the token is susceptible to price manipulation, which could lead to bad debts in lending protocols like Venus when used as collateral.

• Consolidation of the BNB DeFi Market: The BNB Chain ecosystem has reached a stage of maturity where liquidity is naturally gravitating toward a few primary protocols. While BNBx remains a stable product for now as further consolidation happens, smaller-cap protocols will find it harder to survive by the sheer nature of the industry’s unit economics

• Prioritizing User Liquidity & Experience: Stader remains committed to being a Security-First protocol. Sunsetting the product now while market conditions are relatively stable is a proactive measure to ensure all holders can exit smoothly. We would be able to facilitate a controlled redemption process which ensures every user can reclaim their native BNB at the full accrued exchange rate hassle-free

Conclusion When synthesized, these factors indicate that sunsetting is the most prudent and conservative path forward. Given the current trajectory of the DeFi ecosystem, which continues to lean heavily toward Ethereum-centric scaling; the operational risks and resource demands of maintaining BNBx far outweigh the potential rewards. Even under the most optimistic future scenarios, the opportunity cost remains too high and our focus is better served by reinforcing our offerings in the ecosystems where Stader’s impact and growth potential are already proven.

Next Steps In case of voting majority, the core team will detail out the next steps and sunsetting milestones in Forum & Social Media.