With the Plaza core protocol launch fast approaching, it’s time to share where Plaza is going.

Plaza’s mission is to create a free, fair, and efficient financial system owned and governed by the people, where no one has to trust banks and institution to access high-quality investment products. Here is how we’re getting there…

Launch of Plaza Core Protocol on Base (April 28, 2025 @ 12 pm ET)

Plaza’s novel core protocol launches on April 28th, 2025, introducing ETH Programmable Derivatives:

• bondETH: A high-yield, stable asset offering USDC yield, ideal for risk-averse investors.

• levETH: Liquidation-free leveraged ETH exposure, perfect for long-term ETH believers.

This is an evolution of staking and restaking: the underlying ETH assets are staked and restaked to provide economic security to ETH and applications, and users get liquid tokens to use across DeFi. Programmable derivatives offer all of the benefits of liquid staking and liquid restaking protocols, with the added benefit of better return profiles tailored to investors’ needs.

This is the culmination of months of building and testing, and is an important milestone for Plaza and the decentralized financial system. Humans everywhere will be able to permissionlessly access high-quality decentralized assets for preserving and growing their wealth, without having to trust banks or institutions, all while earning returns for providing economic security to Ethereum and the applications built on top of it.

Seamless Cross-Chain Expansion with LayerZero (Q2 2025)

The next step for Plaza is to take bondETH and levETH everywhere. We achieve this through our partnership with Layer Zero. There remains a single pool of ETH LSTs and LRTs on Base backing all of the bondETH and levETH in existence, and bondETH and levETH can be bridged to or swapped on any chain and used across DeFi.

Over the remainder of Q2 2025, Plaza will roll out in stages the ability to bridge bondETH and levETH to chains beyond Base. Your assets should not be constrained to a single chain or platform, they should be free to move everywhere.

With each chain Plaza adds support for, bondETH and levETH holders accrue value through added utility - the ability to further refine their target risk-return profile by using bondETH and levETH in other DeFi applications, the ability to earn incentives from other applications and ecosystems, and an expanded holder base with deeper liquidity.

You can expect to see a continuous flow of announcements throughout Q2 of new chains supported and new DeFi integrations with bondETH and levETH. The first chains Plaza will add support for are Arbitrum, Ethereum Mainnet, and Optimism.

Bitcoin Programmable Derivatives: The Best Structures on the Best Asset (Late Q2/Early Q3 2025)

Bitcoin is the benchmark asset for the decentralized financial system: it has the highest market capitalization, the widest holder base, and the most institutional adoption. Bitcoin has truly become digital gold. Bitcoin DeFi is growing quickly and is under-penetrated relative to the murky but deeply traded Bitcoin derivatives that trade over the counter between banks and institutions. Humans everywhere deserve the ability to refine their BTC exposure while continuing to support BTC-secured applications. Bitcoin is the best asset for creating programmable derivatives and is the next big frontier for Plaza. This expands the Plaza ecosystem with a new wave of partnerships and integrations.

Plaza will launch bondBTC and levBTC to expand the on-chain utility of BTC and democratize access to better risk-reward profiles on BTC. BTC programmable derivatives will expand the economic security of applications in the BTC ecosystem and will be asset-backed and cross-chain composable.

Plaza Token Launch: Empowering Community Ownership (Q3 2025)

Plaza is committed to true decentralization and community governance. Plaza will distribute tokens to those who contributed to the development of the platform: developers, investors, testers, depositors, traders, holders, and other stakeholders. The Plaza Token will further decentralize the Plaza core protocol and establish a foundation for disintermediating the global investment banks from risk structuring.

Plaza will release full tokenomics before the token distribution. The benchmark is the biggest community distribution ever done.

Core Protocol v2: Disintermediating Banks from Risk Structuring (Q4 2025)

Programmable derivatives can be expanded to create any risk-reward profile on any asset without fragmenting liquidity, and while maintaining composability with the broader decentralized financial system. Plaza is working on v2 of the core protocol to expand the array of risk-return profiles available in the decentralized financial system.

Banks earn billions in fees every year for being the middlemen who structure asset-backed securities on trillions of assets per year. They gate-keep structured finance to only the largest asset holders and originators through fees and access, while providing no fundamental value: the real value is created by asset creators and investors. This is unacceptable, and the people deserve a free and fair system without extractive middlemen.

The next iteration of the Plaza protocol will enable anyone to create any structure on any asset and get paid through fee redistribution, rather than pay an investment bank. This inverts the dynamic between asset originators, investors, and the banks. Why would anyone pay a bank to structure risk when they can get paid to have their risk structured on a permissionless protocol?

Plaza is shooting the first arrow in the war against extractive middlemen in the global financial system.

The Financial System Humans Deserve (2026 and Beyond)

Decentralized assets that provide stability and yield, like bondETH and bondBTC, provide a foundation for things like decentralized insurance, where insurance providers need income-producing assets to hold against their liabilities. Decentralized assets that provide safer capital appreciation, like levETH and levBTC, enable wealth creation, democratizing access to growth. They bring us closer to the financial system we deserve: efficient, fair, transparent, by the people and for the people.

Plaza will continue to launch products that bring us closer to the financial system humans deserve. Core protocol launch, cross-chain support, BTC derivatives, token launch, and protocol expansion are not the endgame for Plaza, but rather the beginning. We’re just getting started.

Stay Connected

• Website: plaza.finance

• Docs: docs.plaza.finance

• Twitter/X: @plaza_finance

• Discord: discord.gg/plazafinance