Summary

Stride is launching Stride Swap, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on Eureka, the Cosmos Hub’s managed IBC deployment. Stride will serve as the native trading layer for the upcoming IBC Eureka framework. Stride’s economic, technical, and cultural contributions to the Cosmos Ecosystem makes us the perfect partners to build a Hub-native DEX.

• Stride is doubling down on its commitment to the Cosmos Hub by building core DeFi infrastructure powered by ATOM and STRD, aiming to make it the economic center of the interchain.

• Stride’s ATOM liquid staking token, stATOM, is already a foundational asset in Cosmos DeFi. stATOM is the second-largest source of collateral in the interchain and is integrated into 16 protocols across 15 chains.

• Stride’s always been a Cosmos Hub early adopter - we were the second Interchain Security (ICS) customer in 2023; Stride was the largest revenue source for the Hub for nearly 2 years.

• Stride has made substantial cultural and technical contributions to the Cosmos Hub - we’ve shipped code to the Hub (IBC rate limiting, callbacks), we sport Bad Kids (and Stride’s treasury acquired them), we’ve evangelized Cosmos on podcasts and IRL for years 

In our latest blog, we announced the upcoming launch of Stride Swap, the IBC Eureka DEX built on the Cosmos Hub. Moving forward, Stride’s primary focus will be to help Interchain Labs and other Cosmos Hub contributors build the foundations for Eureka’s native DeFi ecosystem, powered by ATOM and STRD. 

To understand why Stride is doubling down on making the Cosmos Hub the economic center of the interchain, it’s worth revisiting Stride’s close economic relationship with the Hub to date.

Unlocking liquidity for ATOM

Stride debuted in 2022 with one goal: provide the best liquid staking experience for the Cosmos ecosystem, allowing Cosmos DeFi users to continue to earn staking rewards while keeping assets liquid for use in DeFi. Stride’s launch brought a number of firsts to the ecosystem. Stride was the first fully functional app-specific liquid staking blockchain, the first consumer application to utilize interchain accounts and, most importantly, the first live, redeemable LST for ATOM: stATOM.

stATOM rapidly became a cornerstone of Cosmos DeFi, accounting for millions of dollars in TVL on Osmosis and Astroport and becoming one of the largest sources of decentralized collateral on platforms like Mars, Inter Protocol, Levana, and more. In total, Stride exported stATOM to 16 DeFi protocols across 15 chains in and out of Cosmos, including:

• Osmosis

• Astroport

• Mars

• Levana

• Shade Protocol

• Inter Protocol

• Nolus

• Crescent

• Forge

• Umee

• Kujira

• Camelot

• Quasar

• Composable

• cSwap

• Harbor

Stride played a critical role in the proliferation of ATOM and ATOM derivatives across DeFi.

By early 2024, Stride’s total value locked exceeded $200 million, with stATOM accounting for over 25% of staked assets, underscoring the outsized demand for ATOM in the Cosmos liquid staking space.

To date, stATOM continues to be Stride’s largest LST, accounting for over half of Stride’s staked assets, as well as the largest LST in the Cosmos ecosystem by TVL. Just as ATOM is a critical component of Stride’s economic success, Stride provides a core building block for ATOM DeFi.

ICS: security and economic interdependence

In April of 2023, Stride contributors raised a proposal on the Cosmos Hub governance forums proposing to consume security from the Cosmos Hub via Interchain Security (ICS). In May, Hub governance approved Stride’s integration into the ATOM Economic Zone, making it the second ICS consumer chain after Neutron and the first live blockchain to perform a mainnet transition to Interchain Security. Stride helped write a meaningful share of the official Cosmos Hub code used to help onboard live blockchains to ICS.

ICS replaced Stride’s native validator set with the Cosmos Hub’s ATOM-backed validators, elevating its economic security from $25 million to (at the time) over $2 billion. In exchange, Stride began to pay 15% of liquid staking fee revenues to ATOM stakers and validators. Since that time, Stride has paid out over $200,000 to the Hub from this fee, making Stride the Hub’s largest source of revenue.

In the two years since Stride became a part of the AEZ, the Hub and Stride have enjoyed a mutually beneficial economic relationship. The security provided by the Hub via ICS afforded Stride users the confidence to deploy stATOM liquidity throughout DeFi without worry. Similarly, ATOM stakers benefitted from hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and the proliferation of stATOM across Cosmos DeFi.

Stride’s Technical Contributions to the Cosmos Hub

Stride contributors are also intimately familiar with the Hub’s Codebase, having made numerous technical contributions to the Cosmos Hub and other Cosmos open source libraries in the past. These include:

• IBC Rate limiting: A module that prevents excessive inflows and outflows of tokens over a specified period of time. This module was added to the Hub in mid-2024, and has since been added to other Cosmos SDK chains like dYdX.

• ICS: Stride contributed a meaningful share of the official Cosmos Hub code used to transition live blockchains to Interchain Security.

• Built the first open-source mechanism allowing protocols to snapshot ATOM LSTs across 10+ chains, ensuring ATOM LST holders receive as many airdrops as possible

Stride’s Cultural Contributions to the Hub

Stride has been deeply ingrained in Cosmos’s culture since well before Stride launched. Most Stride contributors have been members of the Cosmos community since before IBC. Stride’s community treasury bought Bad Kids in 2023, and most Stride contributors continue to sport Bad Kids profile pics nearly 2 years later. Stride has also been an active participant in Cosmos conferences, bringing its large and diverse community to Cosmoverse and beyond.

Moreover, Stride additionally brought fresh investment interest to the ecosystem, most notably Multicoin Capital and Pantera. Both of these VCs have since invested in other Cosmos ecosystem projects.

Looking Ahead: Stride Swap and IBC Eureka

IBC Eureka is laying the groundwork for a new Cosmos Hub value accrual mechanism. In the near future, it’s expected to help move billions of dollars through the Hub to connected chains. However, there's still one big piece missing: a DeFi platform that lets users easily swap assets within Eureka’s network. 

Today, if someone wants to send one asset across Eureka and receive another, the assets must leave the Cosmos Hub entirely to complete the swap. This not only means the Hub loses out on potential value capture, but the process also adds extra bridging txs making transfers take longer and degrading the overall user experience.

As a long-time economic and technical contributor to the Cosmos Hub, Stride is perfectly positioned to launch that DeFi platform. Stride Swap ensures that Eureka assets have deep, composable liquidity to trade through. This liquidity will live directly on the Hub and benefit ATOM, ensuring that the Cosmos Hub remains the center of economic activity for the entire ecosystem. The Hub benefits from increased bridge volumes through Eureka, better UX for users, and ATOM buybacks using a portion of Stride Swap revenues.

As a Eureka-native DEX, Stride Swap will also serve as the center of a growing Cosmos Hub DeFi ecosystem. Other ATOM-powered applications built on the Hub will benefit from the massive influx of volume that Stride Swap will bring to the ecosystem. Going forward, all of Stride’s efforts will be focused on bringing the Hub’s vision to life. . If Stride succeeds, the Hub succeeds.

In many ways, Stride’s future and the Hub’s are now deeply linked. With Stride Swap, Stride isn’t just building a product – it’s laying the foundation for a thriving, Hub-native DeFi ecosystem that can fully harness the potential of IBC Eureka. By deepening its commitment to the Hub, Stride is betting that the next phase of Cosmos growth will be built not just around interoperability, but around economic gravity – and that gravity will center on ATOM.