Bifrost, Coinbase Cloud collaborate to offer cross-chain liquid staking on Kusama

Cross-chain liquidity provider Bitfrost has collaborated with Coinbase Cloud to offer its liquid staking service on the Kusama network, according to a Sept.6 announcement.

Bifrost was built using the cross-consensus messaging (XCM) system which allows for easier transfer of liquidity for assets staked across the Polkadot ecosystem.

The collaboration will see Bifrost leverage Coinbase Cloud‘s staking infrastructure to offer a more stable network performance for Kusama validators. Users on Kusama can stake their KSM to receive the corresponding liquid vKSM.

Bifrost’s Head of Business Strategy Thibault Perréard said that the collaboration will provide the level of support and expertise it needs to scale its operation.

The statement added:

The collaboration brings an extra layer of quality, credibility and publicity to Bifrost and liquid staking overall, bringing more engaged users and creating a trusted network of the liquid staking DeFi community.

Bifrost will extend its cross-chain liquidity solution to other parachains including Polkadot, Moonriver, and Moonbeam in its next release.

Liquid Staking on the rise

Lido Finance has been on the frontline of the liquid staking trend since December 2020. Out of over 13 million ETH deposited on the Beacon chain, Lido accounts for 31% of all staked Ethereum.

Coinbase is closely following Lido with a 15% market share. The crypto exchange recently launched its liquid staking token cbETH. Users who stake their ETH via its platform will receive cbETH which represents the staked ETH with interest accrued over time.

As anticipations for the Merge mount, users are locking more ETH across staking pools. On Sept. 1, 94,000 new ETHs were staked within 24 hours.

On September 1, 94,000 new ETHs were staked in a single day, the largest single-day staked since May this year. At present, the number of staked Ethereum consensus layer contract addresses has increased to 13.522 million, accounts for 11.3%. https://t.co/cZZpQpOkK9

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 5, 2022