Blockchain technology has paved the way for the creation of fundamentally new markets, which will transform not only the very structure of the global economy, but also how customers and investors will interact with businesses around the world. Developers of modern decentralized platforms aim to create projects that bring real value to all market participants, taking into consideration the best practices of DeFi and CeFi, combining the qualities of these markets.
In this article, we will analyze the Persistence project, which redefined the paradigm of finance and presented a solution that will help the industry evolve. You will find out what kind of project it is, what its value to the community is, what products are presented by the project and what prospects it has.
How blockchain solves the problem of business lending
The global crisis caused by the pandemic in 2020 has shown how volatile the global economy is. The key rate dropped to a minimum to the point that the interest rates became negative. It has become unprofitable to lend to businesses for institutional investors and private companies.
At the same time, the decentralized finance (DeFi) market has experienced a boom similar to the 2017 crypto rush, but of a completely different nature. This time, the growth of the industry is driven by the recognition of the value of DeFi, and not by the general crypto fever, which subsequently turned into a crypto winter: the cryptocurrency quotes were correcting until 2019.
In just a year, the capitalization of the DeFi sector has grown from $ 850 million to $ 60 billion, which is an increase of more than 70 times. In the context of the crisis and falling yields on loans and other traditional assets, investors needed alternative types of investments, such as DeFi platform tokens.
Such rapid growth, at first glance, seems overwhelming, but the DeFi sector still accounts for only about 0.01% of the capitalization of the global economy, which means a huge potential for the development of the decentralized finance industry. The main reason for such a modest capitalization was speculative interest on the part of investors. Most cryptocurrencies and tokens are still not of real value to the community. To remedy this situation, blockchain enthusiasts are developing platforms that solve modern economic problems by tokenizing real assets. One of these platforms is Persistence.
What is Persistence
Persistence is an open blockchain platform that combines all three key sectors of the economy: Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Open Finance (OpFi), and Centralized Finance (CeFi). In other words, the platform provides next-generation financial products, incorporating the best practices of a centralized and decentralized economy.
Watch this platform video contributed by the Persistence team.
Persistence Journey Towards a New Financial Paradigm (2019-2020)
The global mission of Persistence is to bridge the gap between the traditional economy and the crypto industry and provide investors with access to tokenized products and services. On the one hand, companies will receive affordable loans in digital assets, and on the other, investors will be able to provide capital to businesses at higher interest rates.
This, moreover, will simplify and speed up the process of financing, as well as exchange of assets between the parties. To achieve their goals, the Persistence development team uses blockchain, which has helped implement several key platform functions:
- Instant capital movement without the need to trust and restrictions associated with bureaucratic mechanisms;
- Tokenization of traditional assets into non-tokens (fungible NFTs) such as invoices, letters of credit, bills of lading, as well as gold, silver, oil and other commodities;
- Decentralized trading for the exchange of assets and stablecoins;
- Autonomous debt markets using tokenized assets as collateral.
After the owner of the asset tokenizes it into an NFT, they will be able to freely perform any transactions with it on the Persistence platform, including cross-border payments, lending, financing, storage, and trading. This will reduce the costs associated with using intermediaries who have to pay commissions for their services.
For developers, Persistence has prepared the Persistence Software Development Kit (SDK), which describes and standardizes methods for building platform-based applications. Moreover, these modules allow not only creating new blockchain applications based on them, but also integrating them into existing programs.
How Persistence Can Help Businesses, Financial Institutions, and Investors
Despite the booming DeFi market, businesses still haven't benefited from this growth. Meanwhile, the global market continues to be dominated by inefficient traditional financing. To obtain a loan, companies face unnecessary red tape and other difficulties. In addition, even though companies are forced to go through this entire bureaucratic process, the outcome remains uncertain. The Persistence platform aims to change this situation by allowing investors looking for ways to increase their capital with minimal effort to find companies that need funding.
Investors in traditional assets, in turn, do not receive additional incentives for capital growth and remain isolated from the DeFi sector. While DeFi has achieved a decent capitalization, the lack of decentralized platforms that provide traditional finance with access to DeFi leaves such investors on the sidelines of the crypto industry.
Financial institutions still barely interact with the crypto space, despite its enormous potential for the economy. DeFi and the products being developed by Persistence provide such institutions with access to a wide class of digital assets and expand the opportunities for generating investment income.
Persistence Tokenomics
At the heart of the Persistence ecosystem is the native XPRT token that will be used for various operations on the platform. We will describe to you what opportunities XPRT unlocks for its investors.
Staking
Holders can stake cryptocurrency by launching their own validator nodes or delegating tokens to other validators. Staking is based on the Tendermint PBFT consensus algorithm. XPRT staking yield reaches 35% per annum.
Voting
The Persistence platform operates on the principle of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), allowing its members to vote on proposals to improve and evolve the network.
Asset Tokenization
XPRT holders use the token to pay for all transactions on the Persistence blockchain, including the tokenization of real assets. XPRT is the main driver of the Persistence ecosystem and is required for any network operation.
Funding and Trading
Platform users can trade tokens directly on the blockchain and issue loans to any company using the Persistence infrastructure without any restrictions.
Value
Another of XPRT's roles is being the work token. Each network participant who uses the XPRT token and contributes to its development receives rewards: providers (app developers), validators, delegators, and others.
StakeDrop
The Persistence team has developed an innovative mechanism for distributing rewards among validators called StakeDrop Rewards. Initially, it was planned to distribute rewards based on the Ethereum network, but after switching to their own blockchain, validators were able to use the Persistence network to receive rewards. The team has already run a StakeDrop among the validators and delegators of the Cosmos Network (ATOM), Terra (LUNA), Kava (KAVA) and Polygon Network (MATIC).
Another notable feature of StakeDrop is the ability to stake locked XPRT tokens on the Persistence blockchain, receiving up to 35% per annum. Such an update will allow holders participating in the StakeDrop to use frozen tokens instead of dead weight.
StakeDrop allows you to earn XPRT tokens by securing third-party blockchains, including those listed above. This, in turn, will bring additional value to the token holders of these projects.Seven StakeDrops were scheduled initially to distribute 1,000,000 XPRT tokens, which is 1% of the total emission. Here is a list of networks that will participate in upcoming StakeDrops:
- Polkadot;
- Tezos;
- IRISnet;
Holders will be able to stake DOT, XTZ, IRIS and receive rewards in XPRT tokens. For more information on upcoming StakeDrops, check out the official Persistence blog.
By the way, Everstake is also a validator in the Polkadot (DOT) and Tezos (XTZ) networks. If you plan to participate in Persistence StakeDrop, you can delegate tokens to our validator. Check out our blog for detailed guides on staking XTZ and DOT.
If you have participated or plan to participate in upcoming StakeDrops, then read this article. It includes the steps the holders need to follow in order to receive distributed XPRT tokens. They can be briefly described as follows:
- Create a Persistence wallet for storing and managing XPRT tokens. We described how to do this here: How to delegate XPRT in the Persistence Wallet
- Send a special Magic transaction from a wallet that you have used or will use to participate in StakeDrop, for example for DOT or XTZ. In the memo field, you must specify the address of your Persistence wallet.
After that, wait for the distribution of tokens. The deadlines for sending Magic transactions for past StakeDrops are set:
for Cosmos - from April 20 to May 15,
Kava - from April 25 to May 20,
Terra - from April 30 to May 25
Polygon (Matic) - TBD.
Important! Stay tuned for news from Persistence and don't miss distributions as the time to receive tokens via StakeDrop is limited. Therefore, we recommend subscribing to the Persistence blog in order not to miss the latest platform news.
Persistence Products
The platform ecosystem consists of a range of products designed to meet a variety of needs. Their list consists of 4 main products, not counting blockchain applications that will be launched by third-party developers and the number of which is unlimited. The Persistence infrastructure currently looks like this:
The image is taken from the official Persistence blog on Medium
Over time, the platform infrastructure will expand and new products will get added. Let's briefly describe what these products are.
pStake
pStake, the decentralized application, was created with the aim of increasing the profitability of investors' staked crypto assets. pStake provides liquidity for staked assets, issuing their representatives on Ethereum (other networks for wrapping will be added later) without compromising the security of the PoS network. This happens while the assets remain being staked and generating staking rewards. Network security will be provided by the whitelist validators of the underlying network to decentralize voting power. All staked representatives are fungible in nature and slashing risks are shared across all pStake users. Thus, utilizing pStake users could easily take their crypto assets, including $DOT, $ATOM, $SOL, $ETH, $LUNA to Ethereum DeFi.
Injective, one of the launchpad platforms on the Binance exchange, which financed the project at the start, is featured as the project partner. The total staking market is estimated at more than $ 440 billion, according to analysts. The launch of Pstake is expected in the second quarter of 2021.
Comdex
A decentralized exchange for trading tokenized exchange commodities: gold, silver, oil and others available in traditional markets. The Comdex exchange is designed to simplify and speed up commodity trading and reduce transaction costs using blockchain for transparency. Currently, the platform has already carried out transactions worth more than $ 55 million.
The platform is based on smart escrow - an analogue of smart contracts that perform the function of letters of credit, which ensure the fulfillment of the conditions set by the parties, which are established on the blockchain. The project has already been launched and is available to investors and companies.
Companies can connect and manage trader accounts, defining access rights for each of them. Suppliers and buyers can create trading rooms and invite financiers to them, providing them with transparent access to correspondence and contracts. Investors can quickly get services from underwriters, reducing the risks of insuring their loans.
How the platform works:
Firstly, traders need to register an organization on the platform in the Comdex dashboard with trading rooms for easy management of trading and documentation in a universal interface, as well as pass KYC.
After registering on the platform, they can add products for sale. Traders can choose their own counterparties, as well as accept offers from them.
Bid Trading: Sellers create offers that the buyer must accept in order to start the transaction. To trade with counterparties, it is necessary to send a request to add it to your trading account.
After that, the trader can accept the request from the counterparty in the Pending Requests tab.
After the counterparty has accepted the seller's offer, they enter the trading floor, where they must accept the terms of the transaction before signing the contract. Each transaction condition is accepted separately. Sellers communicate with buyers via chat.
After the negotiations are completed, the participants of the transaction digitally create and sign the contract, which must be uploaded to the trading floor.
pLend
A platform for dApps financing in stablecoins, which investors and companies can use together with Comdex, as well as convert real-world assets into NFT tokens. With the help of pLend, investors will be able to lend to blockchain applications created on the basis of the Persistence Protocol, as well as add their stablecoins to the Comdex liquidity pools and receive rewards. pLend is scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2021.
Asset Mantle
A platform for creating and exchanging NFT tokens. Collectors and creators of non-fungible tokens will be able to create not only individual tokens, but entire markets that will interact with each other, from digital art to e-tickets. The launch of the platform should take place in the second quarter of 2021.
Persistence Perspectives
The DeFi market is almost at the very beginning of its journey and is incomparably young relative to the existing economy, which has existed for more than 4000 years. Currently, the decentralized finance sector only scratches the surface, but as the value and usefulness of the services provided by the Persistence project increases, it will only grow.
The project was founded in 2019, but has already received recognition from users and investors. According to CoinMarkeCap, the platform capitalization exceeds $ 1 billion in April 2021. Venture capitalists that invest in Persistence include such well-known companies as LuneX Ventures, Terra, Interchain, Woodstock Capital, AU21 Capital, 3Commas and Incrypt. The advisors to the project are Polygon (Matic Network) co-founder Sandeep Neilvall, Institutional Business Manager of Aave Ajit Tripathi and Tendermint Investment Partner Sam Sutcliffe. The Cosmos Network has also become one of the largest blockchain platforms to support the Persistence project.
Why did Everstake choose the Persistence network?
Everstake has become one of the genesis Persistence validators, helping the platform improve security and providing the community with the ability to delegate XPRT tokens and generate additional staking income. The Everstake team carefully selects blockchain projects and decides to take part as a validator only in those PoS networks that have prospects and true value for the global community.
According to Everstake, the Persistence platform fully meets these criteria. Our team sees great potential in this project, as Persistence blurs the boundaries between CeFi and DeFi, opening access to liquidity for a wide range of traditional assets on the one hand and the effectiveness of blockchain technology on the other.
Our team believes in the rapid growth of Persistence taking into account an intense roadmap, regular updates and a team of professionals who manage and develop the project.
We look forward to new releases that will expand the platform's functionality while continuing to build a powerful ecosystem for global asset allocation.
Everstake in Numbers
- Our provider maintains and helps maintain the security of over 45 PoS networks;
- More than $ 4 billion worth of assets ;
- More than 231 thousand of active delegates;
- Uptime is almost always ~ 100%.
Everstake servers and backup nodes are located in several data centers distributed around the world. DevOps are dedicated to each network.
XPRT Delegation is already available. You can buy tokens on the AscendEX and Gate.io exchanges right now and stake them in the Cosmostation wallet or Persistence Wallet. We have prepared detailed guides on XPRT staking in these wallets:
How to delegate Persistence (XPRT) in the Cosmostation wallet
How to delegate XPRT in the Persistence Wallet
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