The DeFi sector on Solana is gaining attention from investors as major exchanges like Binance, Bybit, and Bitget have hinted at the upcoming listing of liquid staking tokens through the Sanctum platform.
On the evening of August 29, the crypto community witnessed announcements from three major exchanges, Binance, Bybit, and Bitget, regarding their plans to support liquid staking tokens on Solana (SOL).
Specifically, Binance tweeted “BNSOL,” implying that this is the ticker for the liquid staking token of Solana’s SOL issued by the platform.
BNSOL
— Binance (@binance) August 29, 2024
Bybit and Bitget followed suit, revealing similar tokens with the tickers BBSOL and BGSOL, respectively.
We are welcoming a new 👶 to the family #bbSOL@Bybit_Web3 pic.twitter.com/G9QTq2KZQH
— Bybit (@Bybit_Official) August 29, 2024
Something BG is coming 👀 #BGSOL
— Bitget (@bitgetglobal) August 29, 2024
It remains unclear whether these moves are interconnected or merely a coincidence of similar ideas.
Liquid staking allows DeFi users to lock up the native token of a network while receiving another token representing the locked amount, enabling further use. Since 2023, liquid staking has become highly popular within the Ethereum ecosystem, with several protocols reaching billions of dollars in TVL, such as Lido, Rocket Pool, and Frax, alongside derivatives like restaking/liquid restaking with notable names such as EigenLayer, Symbiotic, Karak, ether.fi, Renzo, Kelp DAO, Puffer Finance, Swell,…
However, liquid staking has so far been primarily confined to Ethereum and has not yet expanded to other layer-1 networks. This could change with the recent actions of these CEX platforms.
According to data from DefiLlama, Solana’s liquid staking sector currently has a TVL of $4.1 billion, with notable protocols including Jito, Marinade, Sanctum, and Jupiter. This figure is only one-eighth of the $35.3 billion in assets locked for liquid staking on Ethereum, highlighting the potential for growth in this segment on Solana’s network and the possibility of unlocking new use cases to help the network shed its “memecoin chain” label.
The CLOUD token from Sanctum, the third-largest liquid staking protocol on Solana, has surged over 50% in the past 24 hours following news that the project might be a partner for the three upcoming liquid staking tokens from Binance, Bybit, and Bitget.
Price fluctuations of Sanctum’s CLOUD token in the last 24 hours, screenshot from CoinMarketCap at 11:50 PM on August 29, 2024.
