What is the Persistence Network? — Simply Staking

Published in

Simply Staking

7 min readJul 13, 2021

This article aims at giving a brief explanation and description of the operations performed by Persistence, whose objective is to build an ecosystem of next-generation financial products ranging from institutional to crypto-native use cases. Moreover, its technology stack is constructed to connect DeFi and traditional finance while expanding DeFi and NFT sectors via the creation of innovative crypto solutions.

Ecosystem

Proof-of-Stake: The Persistence chain follows the Tendermint PoS consensus algorithm and is secured by a decentralised set of validators which collectively secure more than $700 Million worth of assets. The full list of validators can be found here and one of these validators is Simply Staking.

XPRT Token: This is the governance token for the Persistence chain. It also acts as a ‘work token’ and is used to pay for fees. Once the mainnet is launched, token holders will be able to stake XPRT tokens to earn up to 35% annual staking rewards for helping securing the chain by delegating the tokens to some of the top validators in the PoS ecosystem.

StakeDrop: This is a community-focused initiative with the aim of facilitating the distribution of XPRT tokens among token holders of 7 other prominent PoS networks and thus, accelerating the decentralisation of the mainnet once it is launched. 1% (100,000,000 XPRT) of the total XPRT token supply has been allocated for distribution via this mechanism. The other 7 prominent networks whose stakers will be able to participate in this StakeDrop are Cosmos, Kava, Terra, MATIC, IRISnet, Polkadot and Tezos.

interNFT: This is a working group consisting of the leading interoperable projects and protocols to build inter-chain standards for NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and NFT Metadata and to make NFTs interoperable across blockchain networks. One of the active participators in this working group is Simply Staking.

DeFi Products

COMDEX: A trade-tech platform specializing in decentralized commodities trading and trade finance by providing an end-to-end solution for trade processes from genesis and through to negotiations, executions and the eventual settlement and financing. Moreover, the aspects of speed, transparency and trust are kept at the heart of the solution put forward.

pStake: A liquid staking protocol for unlocking the liquidity for PoS assets which is to be launched soon.

AssetMantle: An NFT Marketplace framework witht he aim of allowing NFT interoperability between different blockchains. This is also in the pipeline and expected to be launched in the near future.

pLend: A debit financing solution involving a stablecoin lending platform supported by real-world assets such as invoices. Once again, this is also expected to be launched in the near future.

Benefits of Staking XPRT

The first benefit of staking XPRT is that token holders who delegate their tokens to validators in the PoS ecosystem can earn up to 35% annual staking rewards for the first two years. Furthermore, when economic activity of Persistence dApps (also referred to as ‘pApps’) increases, stakers earn more staking rewards while additional incentives are given to validators. Moreover, the amount of XPRT tokens staked determine the weightage of vote for governance proposals to take decisions regarding the way forward of the Persistence chain.

XPRT Details and Schedule

XPRT Genesis Supply: 100,000,000 XPRT
XPRT Total Supply: 403,308,352 XPRT
All of XPRT Genesis supply will be in circulation by end of year of 2024.
The maximum supply cap is expected to be reached by the year 2035.

How is the Persistence network empowering DeFi?

As of the date of this article, Proof-of-Stake networks’ market capitalization amounts to over $600 Billion, making up more than 30% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. As can be seen in the figure below, over $140 Billion of these are locked in staking, securing these PoS networks, which exceeds the Total Value Locked in the combined DeFi Ecosystem and protocols.

Users that stake their tokens on PoS network have an unbonding time imposed on them, should they want to unlock their funds. Consequently, these locked assets cannot be used for other purposes such as borrowing, lending and depositing into other DeFi protocols.

This is where the Persistence network comes in …

Have you ever heard of a Liquid Staking solution? This solution solves the aforementioned problem by issuing staked representative tokens of the underlying network’s staked assets to the users, who are given an equivalent amount of the underlying staked assets. Therefore, while users yield staking rewards from the underlying staked assets, they can use these issues staked representative tokens to generate additional rewards from DeFi protocols.

Persistence offers the aforementioned liquid staking solution named pSTAKE which unlocks the liquidity of staked assets by allowing token holders of PoS networks supported by pSTAKE to generate 1:1 pegged ERC-20 staked representative tokens for their underlying PoS assets. As was previously explained, these staked representative tokens can then be utilized within the DeFi ecosystem to generate more rewards. Thus, with pSTAKE, Persistence will help in unlocking over $140 Billion staked assets to allow the DeFi ecosystem to continue growing.

How does this work?

pStake uses a Dual Token model so that users can deposit their PoS assets on PSTAKE to create and receive wTOKENs, which are 1:1 pegged ERC-20 wrapped unstaked tokens, representing unstaked tokens on the PoS network.

These wTOKENs can be used in the DeFI ecosystem or users can also opt to burn these wTOKENs to create and receive 1:1 pegged ERC-20 pTOKENs, representing staked tokens on the underlying supported PoS network. When wTOKENs are burned to mint new pTOKENs, an equivalent amount of the native PoS tokens are staked on the underlying PoS network by delegating to highly reputed validators. These pTOKENs generate staking rewards in the form of wTOKENs and then these wTOKENs can redeemed back for the native token at any time.

For example, if Cosmos is the underlying PoS network and ATOM is the underlying PoS asset, a user can deposit ATOMs to pSTAKE to mint wATOMs and then these wATOMs can be used in the DeFi ecosystem or they can be burned to mint pATOMs. Since pSTAKE offers mirrors the workings of the underlying network, additional wATOMs are constantly being rewarded for holding pATOMs since they represent staked tokens on Cosmos. Whenever, the user wants, he/she can unstake these pATOMs and then redeem the wATOMs for ATOMs once again. A tutorial highlighting this example can be found below.

Main components of pStake

pBridge: This is a bridge between Etheruem and supported PoS networks on pSTAKE to mint wTOKENs and to stake the PoS tokens on the bridge which is secured by some of the top valdiators in the PoS ecosystem
pSTAKE Smart Contracts: Smart Contracts on the Etheurem blockchain responsible for minting and issuing wTOKENs and pTOKENs

What are the plans?

pStake launched support for Cosmos Network recently and will be expanding support to other major PoS chains such as Ethereum 2.0, Terra, Polkadot, Solana and more.

Interoperability

Persistence also work on a product named Asset Mantle which aims at facilitating the creation of interoperable NFTs, allowing them to flow between different blockchains and hence, convert between the ERC-721 standard and other NFT standards on different blockchains. This idea arises form the problem that current NFT marketplaces are very centric to Ethereum. Asset Mantle is product of Persistence’s interNFT initiative, in which Simply VC participates.

These ideologies evidently show that Persistence’s aim is that of building and improving on the current tools and being a driving force to the ever-growing areas of DeFi, NFTs and PoS staking.

Brief History

2019
- In Q2, Persistence One was established
- In Q2, Comdex on-boarded
- In Q3, Comdex Testnet was launched
- In Q3, the first set of validators on-boarded
- In Q4, Comdex completed $10 million in trade volume
- In Q4, the team was expanded
2020
- In Q1, the validator set was expanded
- In Q1, additional funds were raised from Validator or Strategic Investors
- In Q2, SDK v1.0 was released
- In Q2, Comdex completed $30 million in trade volume
- In Q2, the first set of advisors were on-boarded
- In Q2, a partnership with Terra was established
- In Q3, the SDK was open-sourced
- In Q3, Protocol Paper v1.0 was released
- In Q3, $3.7 Million were closed in private fundraise
- In Q3, a partnership with MATIC was established
- In Q4, partnerships with Razor Network, Cosmostation Wallet, Trust Wallet and Citadel Wallet and an integration with CosmWasm were created
- In Q4, an XPRT StakeDrop with Cosmos Network was launched
- In Q4, more than 1000 participants staked 30M ATOMs in Persistence’s StakeDrop
- In Q4, Terra and Kava StakeDrop campaigns were launched, attracting $200 Million worth of assets and over 1000 participants
2021 (Up till now)
- In Q1, a public sale was completed
- In Q1, Persistence’s Staking Platform was launched
- In Q1, the initial set of exchange listings were completed
- In Q1, Wallet and Block Explorer Integrations were established
- In Q1, Persistence wallet was launched
- In Q2, the validator set was expanded
- In Q2, IBC transactions were established

Get in Touch

Stay tuned to Simply VC for more Persistence and Proof of Stake related guides: