1. Overview of StakeStone
StakeStone is a cross-chain liquidity infrastructure. Unlike POS staking pool and restaking pool protocols, this platform focuses more on building liquidity distribution for ETH, BTC, and stablecoins. Whether helping assets earn interest through dynamically adjusted underlying strategies or providing cross-chain liquidity for multi-chain ecosystems.
Its vision is to become the foundational layer for cross-chain liquidity distribution, driving the next phase of evolution in DeFi and LSDFi (liquid staking derivatives finance).
2. Core Issues and Challenges
Liquidity is the lifeblood of the blockchain ecosystem, akin to oil in the traditional economy, driving innovation and supporting the operation of decentralized systems. However, current blockchain liquidity faces the following key challenges:
Liquidity Fragmentation
Current Situation: Assets are trapped in isolated blockchain networks such as Ethereum, Mantle, BNB Chain, etc., leading to low capital efficiency.
Impact: Users need to manage assets across different chains and pay high bridging fees; emerging chains struggle to develop ecosystems due to a lack of liquidity.
Case: Ethereum serves as a liquidity hub, dominating most DeFi activity, but liquidity pools on other chains are small and dispersed, resulting in poor price discovery and high slippage.
The Dilemma of ETH Holders
Problem: After the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade, staking has become easier, but users must weigh staking returns against participation in DeFi.
Limitations: Traditional liquid staking solutions rely on rebase mechanisms, increasing smart contract complexity, and are often limited to a single chain, with cross-chain operations introducing security risks and efficiency losses.
The Dilemma of BTC's DeFi Integration
Current Situation: Bitcoin lacks smart contract functionality, and existing wrapped BTC solutions create fragmented derivatives across different chains, resulting in dispersed liquidity pools.
Challenges: Cross-chain price consistency is difficult to maintain, capital utilization is low, systemic risk is high, limiting BTC's potential in DeFi.
Liquidity Bottleneck of Emerging Chains
Problem: New chains (such as Scroll, Berachain) have innovative technologies but lack sufficient liquidity to support ecosystem development.
Current Situation: Traditional incentive models rely on token subsidies, making the economic model unsustainable and harming long-term value; cross-chain bridging operations have high delays and depend on complex oracles.
Core Pain Point: The blockchain ecosystem lacks an efficient, chain-agnostic liquidity distribution layer, leading to billions of dollars in capital being trapped, missing out on yield opportunities, and facing high costs and complex processes for users and protocols.
3. StakeStone's Solutions
StakeStone redefines the way capital flows within the blockchain ecosystem through its cross-chain liquidity protocol. Its comprehensive solutions—STONE, SBTC, STONEBTC, and LiquidityPad—provide a unified, efficient liquidity framework for users, developers, and emerging ecosystems, addressing fragmentation issues and promoting sustainable growth.
STONE: Yield-bearing liquid ETH
STONE is the core product of StakeStone, a non-rebase, yield-bearing ETH token designed to innovate traditional staking and liquidity mechanisms through adaptive staking networks and dynamic yield optimization.
Core Mechanism:
Modular Architecture: STONE separates token minting from yield strategies, allowing the protocol to adapt to different consensus mechanisms (such as PoS, restaking) while maintaining the stability of the DeFi ecosystem.
Dynamic Staking: After depositing ETH into the StakeStone Vault, it is dynamically allocated to high-yield strategies (such as stETH staking, EigenLayer restaking) through the OPAP (Optimized Portfolio and Allocation Proposal) mechanism.
Cross-chain Liquidity: Through LayerZero, STONE can seamlessly circulate across chains such as Ethereum, Mantle, Base, supporting DeFi transactions, lending, and stablecoin minting.
SBTC and STONEBTC: Unlocking BTC's potential
SBTC: A fully cross-chain tokenized version of BTC, supporting cross-chain liquidity, allowing users to use BTC in DeFi ecosystems (like Uniswap, Aave) without the complicated processes of traditional wrapped assets.
STONEBTC: Yield-bearing BTC derivatives that combine DeFi, CeDeFi, and RWA (real-world assets) strategies to provide sustainable returns for BTC holders.
Innovation: Through BTC Connect, SBTC supports native BTC wallets (such as UniSat) to operate smart accounts directly on L2, breaking down the integration barriers between BTC and DeFi.
LiquidityPad: Cross-chain Liquidity Engine
Function: LiquidityPad is a cross-chain liquidity issuance platform that connects Ethereum's deep liquidity with the needs of emerging chains (such as Scroll, Berachain), providing customized fundraising solutions for projects.
Mechanism: Users provide liquidity through STONE-Fi Pools to earn LP rewards; locking LP tokens can earn veSTO or STO incentives.
Impact: Reduces the liquidity bootstrapping costs of emerging chains and promotes sustainable ecosystem development.
Technical Highlights
Cross-chain Liquidity Layer: Through LayerZero and PMM lending pools, StakeStone provides a low-slippage, instant withdrawal cross-chain experience without needing to deploy dedicated liquidity pools for each chain.
Adaptive Staking: The OPAP mechanism allows community governance to optimize yield strategies and dynamically adjust funding allocation.
Security Assurance: Non-custodial design, multi-signature (in collaboration with Cobo, Coincover), on-chain transparent operations ensure the safety of funds and user trust.
4. Ecological Achievements and Market Performance
Scale: TVL reaches $627 million, over 300,000 users, with a cumulative processing of 20 million operations and trading volume exceeding $2 billion.
Ecosystem Integration: Supports 70+ chains, integrating protocols such as Aave, Morpho, Lido, etc., assisting in the DeFi ecosystem construction of emerging chains like Scroll and Berachain.
BTC Breakthrough: SBTC and STONEBTC have supported mainstream BTC L2s (such as Stacks, Rootstock), promoting BTC's application in DeFi.
5. Financing and Endorsement
StakeStone has raised a total of $22 million:
2023 (Seed Round): Binance Labs invests and provides incubation support.
2024 (Strategic Round): Binance Labs invests again.
November 2024 (Series A): Led by Polychain Capital and Nomad Capital, with participation from HashKey Capital, OKX Ventures, Amber Group, and others.
6. Future Outlook
StakeStone is committed to becoming the cornerstone of cross-chain liquidity, connecting DeFi, GameFi, RWA, and payment scenarios:
Q1 2025: Launch LiquidityPad, supporting cross-chain liquidity rewards.
Q2 2025: Collaborating with Monad and WLFI to launch the veSTO governance DAO and develop AI-driven payment products.
Q3 2025: Optimize STONEBTC (CeDeFi, RWA) and launch the Pebbles payment application (supporting EIP-7702, AI financial analysis).
Q4 2025: Expand RWA and high-performance chains, develop AI smart account experiences.
7. Summary
StakeStone is a pioneer in cross-chain liquidity, breaking down the barriers of liquidity fragmentation in DeFi through STONE, SBTC, STONEBTC, and LiquidityPad. With a TVL of $627 million, 300,000 users, and a trading volume of $2 billion, this is just the beginning.