The Layer-2 Katana blockchain, developed by Polygon Labs and GSR, officially launched its mainnet on June 30, 2025. This project quickly attracted strong interest from the DeFi community with over $240 million in pre-deposit funds and a commitment to distribute 1 billion KAT tokens as liquidity rewards over the next two years.

Initial deposits and rewards for users

According to the official announcement from the project, over $248 million has been poured into #katana through the pre-deposit feature in just a few weeks. Most of this capital is automatically sent to Yearn V3 vaults to generate yield from day one.

Users participating in the early Katana experience have also been gifted an NFT named "Katana Krates", along with the right to receive KAT, the native token of the ecosystem. Additionally, users utilizing Morpho and Sushi along with other applications on Katana will also be distributed KAT at a specific rate:

Sushi: 400 million KAT (equivalent to 4% of total supply)

Morpho: 250 million KAT (2.5%)

Perpetual DEX, launchpad, and yield tokenization platform (coming soon): up to 350 million KAT (3.5%)

All of these tokens will be locked until KAT can be traded, no later than February 20, 2026. At that time, KAT will officially unlock, and users can stake it into vKAT. From there, vKAT will be used to vote on the direction of the reward pools in the future and earn fees from the pools they support, similar to the veToken system.

Currently, the features on Katana are in beta version, allowing users to bridge, send assets, stake, track yield, and monitor DeFi history in a unified interface. Over 30 protocols have been operational on Katana since the early days, including Morpho, Sushi, Yearn, Spectra, and Gamma.

Long-term "Katana Flywheel" mechanism

Unlike many blockchains that use short-term rewards to attract capital flows, Katana builds a long-term mechanism called "Katana Flywheel" consisting of three main pillars:

VaultBridge: When you send stablecoins or $ETH to Katana, VaultBridge will automatically transfer the assets back to Ethereum and send them to protocols like Morpho to generate profit. This profit is then sent back to Katana and redistributed into DeFi pools, helping you increase yield without needing to move funds out of this Layer-2.

Chain-Owned Liquidity (CoL): Each transaction on Katana will generate sequencer fees. After deducting infrastructure and data costs, the remainder will be reinvested directly into the liquidity pools of the ecosystem instead of being burned or transferred to validators.

AUSD: The native stablecoin of Katana, issued by Agora, helps users earn yield from US Treasury bonds. The profits from this off-chain asset will be reinvested back into DeFi applications on Katana, helping to increase income for users.

Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs and co-architect of Katana, stated: "Katana is the endgame for how blockchains create value in the DeFi space." Boiron emphasized that Katana is a chain designed with a clear intent to build some core financial applications and reduce asset fragmentation, rather than trying to be a neutral playground for all applications.