Today marks the one-year anniversary of Sturdy’s launch. One year of enabling DeFi’s best yield farmers to lever up on their positions while offering best-in-class lending yields on ETH and stablecoins. Sturdy’s unique approach of using ib-tokens as collateral has succeeded in taking the PvP out of lending markets to create a positive-sum relationship between lenders and borrowers.
It has been an absolutely wild ride; building relentlessly throughout the bear market, and working with some of the most well-established projects in DeFi to enhance our yield offerings. Despite the tumultuous market conditions, Sturdy kept working as intended while growing a tight-knit community of users and partners. To date, Sturdy has amassed a TVL of ~$30 million between stablecoin and ETH markets, airdropped a token to over 3,500 users, and worked with a wide range of prominent partners- from EPNS and Unstoppable Domains to Synthetix and Balancer-just to name a few.
Let’s run through some of the major milestones to celebrate how far Sturdy has come and get amped for where it’s headed!
Fantom Launch
Initially, Sturdy launched on the Fantom network. However, just as the first iteration of Sturdy was preparing to launch, Fantom seemed to be falling apart. Central members of the ecosystem, including prolific developer Andre Cronje, announced they’d be leaving the industry. The ecosystem seemed to be in dire straits, yet Sturdy soldiered on. The protocol managed to attract a group of loyal users interested in leveraging their LPs despite their plummeting prices. Sturdy’s release and relative success amid the Fantom fallout was the first indication of just how.. Well, Sturdy, the platform could be.
Mainnet Launch
A few months after the initial launch on Fantom, Sturdy began the migration over to the Ethereum mainnet. The Ethereum mainnet launch enabled Sturdy to partner with major names in the space and begin to establish itself as a new DeFi primitive. Partnering with Curve and Convex to lever up Curve LP tokens shoved Sturdy into the spotlight.
The platform was providing a substantial value-add to users of popular stablecoin LPs, facilitating profitable leveraged farming opportunities. As a result, the TVL shot up to over $10 million shortly after launch, an impressive feat for a still nascent protocol. Despite the setbacks experienced by the larger crypto industry in 2022, Sturdy managed to experience consistent growth. By frequently adding new collateral assets and yield opportunities, we welcomed a wider range of DeFi users into the Sturdy ecosystem.
Leveraged Liquid Staking Market
After several months of expanding the stablecoin market, working with battle-tested partners like Convex and Yearn, and providing consistently high yields to users, Sturdy set its sights on another rapidly emerging market. Liquid Staking Derivatives(LSDs) had become a focal point within DeFi as Ethereum prepared for the merge and the imminent transition to Proof of Stake consensus. Sturdy’s mechanic of accepting ib-tokens as collateral positioned the platform to take unique advantage of LSDs, and offer users the ability to lever up on what was becoming the hottest yield opportunity in DeFi.
Early this year, Sturdy released the leveraged liquid staking market, enabling users to leverage their LSD LP tokens to earn outstanding yields with relatively low risk. Sturdy users could now borrow WETH against their LSD LPs for use in the wider DeFi markets, and liquidation risk was limited to a major depegging of stETH from ETH. at max leverage, it would take a ~10% depeg to liquidate a borrower on Sturdy, creating quite an attractive risk-reward ratio. This addition to Sturdy captured one of the most prominent narratives emerging in 2023, enabling users to lever up and ride the LSD wave like never before!
$STRDY
Most recently, Sturdy has launched its DAO governance model and token, $STRDY. Many protocols launch a token shortly after releasing their product as a means of getting eyes on their project and bootstrapping liquidity. However, this strategy has its pitfalls. These platforms rely upon token emissions to attract users, who ultimately sell the tokens or move on once emissions dry up. Consequently, causing the token to plummet and nullify most of the momentum that the platform had acquired. Sturdy is here for the long haul and wanted to establish product-market fit prior to releasing a token. Thus ensuring the protocol was capable of standing on its own legs without being propped up by emissions.
Given Sturdy’s proven ability to garner users, amass a respectable TVL and continue to innovate during tumultuous market conditions, it was time to release $STRDY. It will serve as the governance token for the Sturdy DAO as the protocol transitions to decentralized governance, in line with the ethos of crypto the protocol was founded upon. The release of the token and the beginning of the Sturdy DAO marks the beginning of a new chapter for the protocol. Born out of the ashes of the 2022 bear market, Sturdy is now prepared to fly to new heights.
Sturdy airdropped tokens to early users of the platform, as well as users of value-aligned protocols across the ecosystem, in the name of collaboration and true decentralization. The first governance proposal is currently live to enable liquidity mining, so don’t forget to cast your vote! With over 60% of the total token supply held by the treasury, the future of the protocol is in the hands of the community. Stay tuned for more info on the governance process and goals for our open tokenomics structure, which will be coming to the blog soon.
Sturdy has come a long way over the past year; the platform survived a deadly bear market, provided users with consistent and compelling yield strategies, continued to innovate and collaborate with like-minded protocols, and put the community first when designing the tokenomics and decentralized governance. If you’ve been sleeping on Sturdy, there’s no better time than now to hop aboard. If you’re already a devoted user, then strap in and enjoy the ride as we continue to build the next evolution of DeFi lending markets.
