Venus Protocol is thrilled to have a tremendous list of launch partners for our release of Isolated Markets. Through a series of interviews, we invite you to learn more about each partner and the value their users bring to our community.

But what are Isolated Markets?

Isolated Markets open the door to creating isolated lending and borrowing pools with individual risk profiles and segregated risk for virtually any token on BNB Chain. This provides previously nonexistent use cases for these assets and will greatly expand the number of tokens available on Venus. Venus Protocol will now safely provide the ability to lend and borrow to the long tail of crypto assets.

Venus would like to thank Stader Labs for partnering with us and taking the time to educate us about their offering.

Stader Labs is a non-custodial multi-chain liquid staking platform that helps users maximize yields on their crypto tokens through staking and DeFi integrations. Stader Labs is currently live on 6 chains with a combined TVL of $150M+.

Who is your target audience, and how would you describe your typical user?

Stader's dream is to make staking mainstream. With that as the underlying vision, we have users across segments, including retail/individual token holders as well as HNW/institutional investors who wish to earn passive income on their crypto holdings and make the underlying networks more robust.

This vision is echoed in the way our platform is designed. We focus on simplicity and convenience for the user while our tech takes care of the complexity and operational aspects associated with staking. We also focus on making our liquid staking tokens very useful through a variety of DeFi integrations. This helps our users find the best yield for their preferred risk level

In which category (Gaming, DeFi, Liquid Staking, Tron, etc) will your token reside, and what’s been happening in that space?

Given that Stader Labs is a liquid staking solution, its token will reside in the Liquid Staking category. With the BNB Chain introduction of liquid staking, users are now able to earn interest by allocating the BNB token to liquid staking protocols and receiving liquid tokens (representing staked BNB) in return.

Liquid staking has been gaining traction across the BNB community. We expect the traction to continue growing at a rapid pace given the manifold advantages that liquid staking has to offer for users as well as the network such as instant liquidity, defi opportunities, securing the network, etc.

What are Stader’s plans for its BNB solution?

Stader has built its liquid staking solution on BNB. While simple staking provides users with passive income, it locks in their tokens, limiting its utility and capital efficiency. Liquid staking helps overcome this limitation.

With Stader’s liquid staking product, when users stake with Stader, they get liquid tokens (BNBx) corresponding to the staked amount of BNB. BNBx is a reward-bearing liquid token i.e. the value of 1 BNBx token vs. BNB increases over time as staking rewards accumulate. At the time of this interview, this rate is more than 1.04. I.e. 1 BNBx = 1.043 BNB approximately.

Also, users can swap BNBx anytime instantaneously for liquidity, through our DEX partners. We have a combined liquidity of $14mn+ for BNBx

BNBx tokens can be used to further amplify yields, as well, by participating in the Defi ecosystem all the while they keep earning staking rewards.

Stader is soon also launching ‘BNBx Portfolios’ - a product that will automate all operational tasks and deploy users’ BNB/stablecoins across staking, lending and other DeFi protocols without the users having to worry about managing multiple tokens across multiple protocols.

What are some of the benefits of Staking BNB with Stader?

Unlike most of the other BNB staking solutions currently present in the market, liquid staking BNB with Stader has 4 main advantages:

Instant Liquidity: When you stake your BNB with Stader, you get back our liquid token BNBx that represents staked BNB. BNBx can be swapped to BNB on a DEX without waiting for the unstaking period.

DeFi Opportunities: With our BNBx tokens, stakers not only get instant liquidity but also have the option of participating in yield farming opportunities to amplify yields based on your choice of risk.

Auto-Compounding: With Stader’s solution, the rewards generated through staking will be restaked automatically. This is in contrast to the traditional staking solutions of BNB where the user has to manually stake their rewards back into nodes. This feature helps investors gain more returns from their BNB.

Auto-Rebalancing: Stader monitors and manages the validators for you, so get a balance between APR and diversification. We constantly monitor key health metrics for all validators like uptime, slashing history, fee, APR, etc, and optimize the BNB allocation across various nodes so that you get the best risk /reward balance.

How does Stader ensure security on its BNB solution?

Security of the liquid staking solution is paramount to us and we achieve this by:

• Continuous review and testing of all code

• Regular audits of smart contracts

  • Audited by top firms Halborn and Peckshield

• Operate with best practices of Multi-sig accounts

• Real-time on-chain security tracking by Forta

What are the DeFi avenues that BNBx holders have?

BNBx holders have a wide range of Defi opportunities to amplify their yields. Users can choose based on the risk level appropriate for their portfolio and choose the right strategy in a completely transparent and permissionless manner. Below is a summary of the strategies available to BNBx holders today

Apart from these strategies we will soon have strategies related to lending with the help of our imminent launch on the Venus protocol’s Isolated Lending markets

Can you describe a use case for how your users will take advantage of Isolated Markets on Venus Protocol?

The Venus Protocol is the biggest and most well-regarded money market on the BNB chain. The depth of liquidity present on Venus will enable the significant growth in the trading strategies that can be applied on BNBx.

For example, users can now place their BNBx as collateral and take out loans in stables to buy other assets. This further increases the capital efficiency of their investment and offers an opportunity to keep earning staking rewards while investing in tokens from upcoming protocols

Furthermore, isolated pools provide an added layer of security to users, where one pool is not affected by other pools in the protocol. Isolated pools also offer a higher degree of choice to the users. Since each pool can have different parameters, users can choose to invest in the pool based on their risk appetite and choice of assets.

With BNBx as collateral on Venus isolated markets, users can borrow against their BNBx with higher pool security and efficiency.

What value can your users find in using Isolated Markets on Venus Protocol?

With Venus Isolated Markets supporting BNBx as collateral, users can unlock several borrowing use cases for BNBx. Let us take the example of a leveraged staking strategy, where users can use their BNBx as collateral to obtain more BNB and stake it again to leverage their position on BNBx , they can do this 3-4 times to build up a high yield on their initial investment

In addition to leveraged staking; users can also borrow other risk assets with BNBx and make several other trading strategies more capital efficient through leverage. All this with efficiency, enhanced security and risk management that comes with the isolated lending model.

Tell us a bit more about your future plans on the BNB Chain?

In the near term, we are very excited by our partnership with Venus and can't wait to see the possibilities that it will bring for our users in conjunction with our existing DeFi integrations

Looking further out; we want to be known as a platform that provides the best yield opportunities, depending on risk levels, to every user segment on the BNB Chain. In order to achieve this, we need to keep expanding our already best-in-class DeFi integrations and take away the operational complexity and steep learning curve associated with deploying DeFi strategies. We hope to achieve this with our new BNBx Portfolios product.

Thank you to our friends at Stader Labs for taking the time to speak with us. Be sure to follow them on Twitter at @staderlabs.