What is Stader?
Stader aims to offer simple staking delegation for individuals that will support decentralisation. The non-custodial platform will offer curated vaults for various categories.
Stader has targetted five major chains to deploy on and will begin with the Terra ecosystem. Stader will first offer one-click staking to groups of similar validators. This includes lowest commission validator vaults, blue-chip validator vaults and community developer vaults.
Beyond that, Stader also intends to build financial products utilising staking products. This is part of its aim to become the default for staking across chains.
Why is Stader needed?
Decentralisation has been the key goal since the beginning of cryptocurrency. Many modern blockchains have adopted delegated proof-of-stake (“DPoS”). Individuals can delegate to a validator removing the need to operate their own nodes. While it is arguably more efficient and democratic, it has resulted in greater stake centralisation.
Stake centralisation is dangerous for any chain and has two significant effects:
- Less parties need to collude to attack the chains; and
- It makes it much easier for large validators to pass proposals that benefit them.
The $NEB airdrop on Terra aims to reverse stake centralisation. Those who delegate to smaller validators will receive a greater proportion of rewards. It will also punish delegators to the five largest validators. This centralised decision has had benefits but should not become the standard response.
Delegators on DPoS chains also struggle from:
- Limited information available about the nodes and their performance;
- Re-delegation can often be a tedious process in finding suitable validators; and
- Delegators have to invest effort in tracking, monitoring, and re-staking their rewards.
This results in a general sentiment that staking needs to be simpler. Delegators want to spread their coins with ease and have their yields maximised on their behalf.
Who is in Staders team?
Amit Gajjala is the founder of Stader Labs, the development company behind Stader. Amit was AVP at Swiggy, an Indian business valued at $5bn during his tenure. Before this, he served as AVP at Zapr Media Labs, a startup funded by Walt Disney, Star India and Flipkart. Amit has a consulting background with an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management. He has also worked as a consultant at A. T. Kearney.
Sid Doddipalli is the co-founder of Stader Labs. Sid's background is in IT with over half a decade as a Senior Data Scientist. He has served clients including NBCUniversal, Verizon FiOS and MediaCom. He also has knowledge in building and managing mining pool optimisers.
The wider team comprises a team of five developers, product engineers, and designers. These include Microsoft, PayPal, and Comcast alumni.
What is the function of the STADER Token?
The native cryptocurrency on the Stader dApp is $SD; its primary functions are:
- Delegators and Validators can stake $SD in insurance pools to get a share of protocol revenue;
- Delegators have access to yield farming on liquidity pools and cross-chain pools;
- Third-parties can create custom validator pools by staking $SD and earn a share; and
- $SD is the governance token for the application.
How are the tokenomics of the Stader shaped?
There are 150,000,000 $SD distributed as follows:
- DAO Managed Fund (governed by community): 37.5%
- Reward Pools: 30%
- Team: 20%
- Private Sales: 12.5%
The price that private sale tokens is not public knowledge yet.
What does Stader have in plan post-launch on Terra?
Stader aims to be present across most prominent blockchains. They are prioritising the launch on Terra whilst also building on Solana. By the end of the year Stader aims to have launched on Cosmos, Polkadot & NEAR.
Stader also intend to build financial products that utilise staking products. This includes:
- Yearn-style strategies on staking rewards;
- Time/risk-based products;
- Liquid staking solutions; and
- Derivatives on staked assets.
Conclusions
Stader Labs are fighting an important battle in enabling decentralisation.
The comprehensive staking service gives Stader a significant customer base to target. This is in line with their vision to attract one billion delegators.
This is still speculative as Stader is still in beta and has a significant roadmap after their launch on Terra.
Sources:
https://medium.com/terra-money/project-spotlight-stader-labs-2a7689110758
https://blog.staderlabs.com/introducing-stader-labs-c33cc15d28e7
https://blog.staderlabs.com/stake-decentralization-terra-400f843fb071
