pSTAKE Secures Strategic Investment from Binance as It Adds Support for BNB

Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of Binance – the largest crypto exchange by trading volume – conducted a strategic investment in pSTAKE, a liquid staking protocol built by Persistence. Binance hopes that the investment will bring liquid staking and more DeFi innovation to the BNB ecosystem.

pSTAKE enables users to stake Proof of Stake (PoS) assets while generating yield in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Users can stake PoS tokens through pSTAKE while receiving fully-backed representative tokens (stkASSETs) that can be put to work in DeFi for additional yield.

Binance’s native token, BNB, is also a PoS asset, and pSTAKE is adding it to its growing list of supported tokens. Soon, users will be able to stake BNB through the platform developed by Persistence to earn more yield.

Ken Li, Executive Director at Binance Labs, commented:

“Binance Labs is excited to support pSTAKE Finance as they launch BNB liquid staking and bring additional DeFi innovation into the BNB Chain ecosystem. We are excited by the quality of the team leading pSTAKE and look forward to partnering closely.”

Persistence founder, Tushar Aggarwal, explained:

“At pSTAKE, we are developing a solution that allows users to seamlessly stake their assets to help secure the underlying networks and abstract the complexities of staking while providing an opportunity to leverage their staked assets within the broader DeFi ecosystem to generate yields on top of staking rewards. We believe liquid staking will become the base layer for DeFi on PoS networks and will play a vital role in bringing more exciting use cases to DeFi.”

pSTAKE Expands Ecosystem

pSTAKE launched more than a year ago, and it has managed to grow at a rapid pace due to the increasing demand for staking and DeFi yield solutions. Today, about $50 million worth of assets are staked through the platform, which started as a liquid staking solution for the Cosmos ecosystem.

The staking platform has supported ATOM, the native token on Cosmos blockchain, and XPRT, the native token of the Persistence network. Today, pSTAKE is getting ready to launch support for Ethereum (ETH), BNB Chain (BNB), Solana (SOL), and Avalanche (AVAX). It recently launched a testnet for ETH2.0 liquid staking, as the second-largest blockchain is upgrading to adopt the PoS consensus algorithm. The full integration of these PoS blockchains will be ready in the coming months, enabling a wider pool of token holders to benefit from staking and DeFi yield solutions.

Last year, pSTAKE secured financing from high-profile institutional investors, including Galaxy Digital, Sequoia Capital India, Three Arrows Capital, Coinbase Ventures, DeFiance Capital, Sino Global, Kraken Ventures, Tendermint Ventures, and Lattice Capital.

How Does pSTAKE Work?

pSTAKE employs a unique model that allows users to stake PoS assets while continuing to benefit from liquidity and put it to work in DeFi.

When users choose to stake ATOM or another PoS token through pSTAKE, they receive the equivalent stkASSET in exchange. These stkASSETs (such as stkATOM) are tokens representing the underlying staked asset, which can be traded or used at will in the DeFi space. Thus, they can maintain liquidity even though the PoS assets are locked for staking purposes. stkASSETs can be used with DeFi protocols to earn additional yield.

Another great benefit of pSTAKE is that users can skip the unstaking process by directly swapping stkASSETs for native assets at any time.

Thanks to the support from Binance and other institutional investors, pSTAKE is poised to expand further to let users make the best of DeFi.