Interchain Foundation Invests in Stride’s Next Chapter: Stride Swap, The Cosmos Hub’s IBC DEX
The liquid staking protocol expands its product suite built on the Cosmos Hub, with a DEX custom-built for IBC Eureka, enabling multichain swaps and laying the foundation for Cosmos DeFi.
Zug, Switzerland, 29 April 2025 — The Interchain Foundation (ICF), is excited to announce that it has invested in Stride, the liquid-staking protocol. The investment will enable the protocol to evolve into the first IBC Eureka-powered DeFi platform on the Cosmos Hub.
Stride will build a DEX on the Cosmos Hub, Stride Swap, that will act as the foundation for the expansion of IBC Eureka and multichain DeFi in Cosmos. The Stride Labs team will be optimizing its DEX for Eureka, and other products on the Cosmos Hub built by the Interchain Labs team.
The Liquidity Engine of IBC’s Expansion
The new DEX, Stride Swap, will act as a liquidity engine for all of IBC Eureka’s growth needs. As new Eureka assets appear, liquidity in Stride Swap will enable users to instantly swap assets like ETH, SOL, and USDT with Cosmos-native tokens like ATOM and USDC. This is also key for Eureka’s expansion when it comes to Ethereum L2s and other chains without instant finality — for which Stride Swap will also provide the liquidity that solvers and fillers need to provide instant onboarding and transfers to users, capitals, exchanges, and more.
With Eureka’s new bridging rails and Stride’s smart liquidity infrastructure, the Cosmos Hub becomes a frictionless economic center of a truly multichain Internet of Blockchains. This marks a major inflection point for Cosmos DeFi, offering a user experience that rivals centralized platforms — but fully decentralized, composable, and chain-agnostic.
From Liquid Staking to a Multichain DEX:
The DEX has begun development and is set to release in the following months. Stride Swap will be complementary to Stride’s current liquid staking features, which will remain as a standalone product. Additionally, Stride Protocol will retain STRD as their sole governing token.
The protocol will implement features such as:
- The best trade execution on Eureka routes
- Support for all chains, tokens, and wallets used by IBC Eureka
- Advanced trading features
- Permissionless, customizable hooks
- Multichain swaps — no need to deposit / withdraw
- Vertically integrated liquid staking
- Professional market-making
- Liquidity pools
- Built-in vaults
- White glove token deployments
- Dynamic fees
Its close relationship with the Cosmos Hub will benefit the DEX with multichain access to liquidity and easy connections to hundreds of chains through IBC, including the recent addition of Ethereum.
Powering the Cosmos Hub’s Service Layer with Multichain Liquidity
As the first multichain service on the Cosmos Hub, Stride Swap will deliver efficient routing and liquidity across all Eureka-connected assets — establishing a foundational DeFi primitive for the Hub. This liquidity layer is essential for building and scaling the Cosmos Hub’s emerging application and multichain service ecosystem.
Stride will collaborate with Interchain Labs as a key design partner for the Hub’s upcoming permissionless VM, which will enable developers to deploy multichain applications and services that tap into Eureka’s distribution and Stride’s liquidity infrastructure.
The Synergies Between Stride, Cosmos, and the Interchain Teams
Stride has proven its expertise in decentralized finance in Cosmos and the IBC ecosystem; its liquid staking protocol deployed in 2022 quickly became one of the core application blockchains on the network. Stride provides Liquid Staking Token functionality to networks and users that today total over 136,000 users and over $35 million in total value locked.
Maghnus Mareneck, Co-CEO of Interchain Labs, said: “Stride represents one of the most talented teams in the Cosmos ecosystem, and we are excited to work together to bring a core primitive for DeFi to flourish in Cosmos: an IBC-native DEX, directly on the Cosmos Hub. While IBC Eureka provides the rails and routing to access any protocol anywhere, Stride will provide a key liquidity hub to trade multichain seamlessly. We are excited to see the array of new applications this will enable around the Cosmos Hub”.
Riley Edmunds, co-founder of Stride, said: “With Stride Swap, we’re expanding our product suite while narrowing our focus to the chain that’s always been at the heart of our journey. IBC Eureka provides the rails to reach any chain — and Stride will provide the liquidity to trade seamlessly across them. The Cosmos Hub was the first network Stride supported, back in 2022. Today, we’re doubling down to help the Hub realize its original vision — to be the economic center of Cosmos. This partnership with the Interchain Foundation reflects years of earned trust and mutual alignment. When the Hub wins, Stride wins. And when Stride wins, the Hub does too.”
Josh Cincinnati, President of the Interchain Foundation’s Council, said: “The Interchain Foundation is dedicated to the expansion of the Cosmos ecosystem, which includes making Cosmos the best place to build across chains. This collaboration with Stride plants a seed for the new builders and projects to do just that, starting with one of blockchain’s core primitives: finance, now made fully multichain by Stride Swap and IBC Eureka”.
This investment supports an open and competitive environment, enabling other DEX/DeFi options to emerge and compete, while ensuring that a high-quality trusted option, Stride, is available for users of the Cosmos Hub and IBC Eureka.
The First Steps for Stride Swap and its Alignment to the Cosmos Hub
Stride has revamped its brand for this new era. Check out the new website to see a teaser of the upcoming DEX.
Stride will deploy its DEX functionalities on the Cosmos Hub in the coming months. Stride Labs also intends to implement other synergistic dynamics between Stride and the Cosmos Hub that may include ATOM token buy-backs and burns via the Stride protocol’s revenue. Additionally, Stride is exploring moving its other products to be more natively deployed on the Cosmos Hub.
Stride will retain its liquid staking protocol, chain, and STRD token while expanding use cases across its product suite. The Stride team will follow up with an updated roadmap in the coming days.
Forward-looking information:
Certain information set forth above is “forward-looking information”, representing Interchain Labs’ and Stride’s current plans; however, future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements depending on business conditions and technological concerns.
