Gate.io AMA with Stader-Bring 1 BILLION People To Staking and DeFi
Time: Mar 29th, 2022, 13:00 UTC
Gate.io hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Gautam Midha,Head of Strategy & Expansion at Stader in the Gate.io Exchange Community.
Official Website: https://www.staderlabs.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/staderlabs
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Guest
Gautam Midha — Head of Strategy & Expansion at Stader
Q&A from Gate.io
Q1: Can we start with a brief introduction to Stader please?
Gautam: Sure, Stader solves the core problems faced by stakers today. The problems are right across the staking value chain: discovering validators, managing staking rewards, claiming airdrops, finding strategies on staking rewards, etc. We are simplifying and automating all of those with our modular smart contracts. Along with that, we’re creating liquid tokens that can be further leveraged in DeFi protocols to maximize yields.
At the heart of it, we’re creating a staking eco with our suite of staking products that cater to all kinds of stakers - from beginners to degens.
Q2: And what would you say is Stader’s Vision?
Gautam: Stader’s vision is to onboard the next 1B users to staking. We are probably the only multi-product , multi-chain staking platform which is a direct output of segmented approach to staking products.
We will onboard the next 1B users by building key staking middleware infrastructure for Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks that can be leveraged for several customer segments including retail crypto users, exchanges, custodians, and mainstream FinTech players. Stader’s modular smart contracts are built so that, in the future, third parties can leverage their components and incorporate custom solutions.
Stader is building native smart contracts across multiple chains including Terra, Solana, Ethereum, Fantom, Hedera, Polygon, and building an economic eco to grow and develop solutions such as yield redirection with rewards, liquid staking, launchpads, gaming, and more.
Positioning ourselves for long-term growth, we will seek to focus on nurturing third parties to develop several staking applications with Stader infrastructure.
Q3: And can you tell us about the project’s team?
Gautam: Our team consists of some of the most experienced and talented business and technology leaders as well as developers.
Amitej Gajjala, Co-Founder and CEO of Stader Labs has 10+ years of experience in Business strategy, start-up scaling across India, SEA and Europe. On the education side, he is an IIT and IIM alumnus.
He started Stader Labs in the middle of 2021 with Sidhartha, our Co-Founder and CTO, who has a decade of technology and crypto experience. He is an alumnus of Columbia and IIT.
Dheeraj , our third co-founder and protocol lead , has 10+ years of experience in building and scaling technology applications in blue chip silicon valley companies including Linkedin and Paypal.
Apart from the co-founders , the leadership group includes Vijay, our head of product along with Vibin and I who lead our expansion projects. We have 30+ years of combined experience across tech platforms such as Booking.com, Swiggy, i-banking, consulting and investing.
Q4: Ok good to know, seems like there is plenty of good experience among key team members. Let’s talk about Key Products and Market Traction. What has the journey been so far?
Gautam: Yes, and of course running things is a 30+ member team of really talented folks across tech , marketing and product, they are the real stars of the show.
Its been a fantastic ride so for , since launching on November 23, 2021, our solutions have acquired significant traction in Terra’s DeFi eco, we have:
30k+ unique wallets staking
8.5 M+ Luna Staked
1.6 M Luna on LunaX <> Luna LP
60,000+ strong community
We’ve also had a CoinList Sale with a platform high 1.2 million registrations.
Q5: What would you say are some of your long term goals?
Gautam: By the end of 2022, we plan to launch Stader staking contracts and infrastructure across at least 10+ PoS networks. Our contracts across Fantom, Solana, Hedera, Polygon will be launched over the next few weeks. As we expand to other blockchains, we will continue to build loyal users and active community members and grow the Stader fam much bigger.
Beyond the retail segment, several institutional customers (including most of our investors) are already leveraging Stader smart contracts to stake their Luna across Stake Pools, Stake+ and LunaX. We have gone a step further and are building product integrations with custodians and exchanges too.
As we expand our solutions to several PoS networks, the aggregated offering of all networks PoS staking (liquid and stake pools) with a single integration will be a potent and irresistible offering by Stader Labs to institutional/enterprise customers.
Q6: What would you say are the utilities of the SD Tokens?
Gautam: There are going to be 4 major utilities for Stader tokens.
The first, validators will have to stake a minimum amount of SD tokens. The amount of delegations that are going to be distributed to different validators in a pool, will be somewhat proportional to their token stake. At the same time, these SD tokens will be used as an insurance against slashing risks.
Secondly, whoever stakes SD tokens will get a small discount on the fees that we are going to charge across our staking solutions.
The third utility is that Stader token holders can deposit SD-LUNA, SD-UST, SD-liquid LUNA pairs on Stader, and earn rewards for doing that.
The fourth major utility is governance-based. The SD token stakeholders will get a chance to propose and vote for different types of policies like validator addition, exit of validators, setting the thresholds, etc.
Q7: Funding and sustainability for projects is also an important topic. What would you say is the revenue source of Stader?
Gautam: Very important question and I am glad you asked. We are taking a long term view to building Stader, we want to be around for decades instead of months or years. With this goal in mind , financial self sufficiency is really important to us and we have a strong revenue generating model where money flows to the protocol through three mechanisms:
- Commission on reward strategies: 3-10% management fees on staking rewards, if elected by governance stakers.
- Commission on liquid staking tokens: 5-10% commission on staking rewards, if elected by governance stakers.
- Distribution commission from validators: 10-20% distribution fees on validator commissions, if elected by governance stakers.
The distribution of Stader tokens has been planned to incentivize the users and key stakeholders to actively participate in the network while also reserving a suitable portion of Stader tokens to incentivize third parties to build on the Stader platform.
