Announcement

Introducing Nucleus: Enabling Yield by Default for Networks

An overview of Nucleus, its design, and the stakeholders involved.

Written by

Chunda McCain

Published on

August 27, 2024

Overview

The team behind Ion Protocol is excited to introduce Nucleus — The default yield provider for networks. Nucleus stands to revolutionize the way users interact with networks by removing the opportunity costs of exploring new ecosystems via embedding yield at the network layer.

Nucleus enables networks to create a new yield generating primitive that is embedded at the base of the network’s ecosystem. Users are able to generate yield by default on a wide variety of assets just by bridging to the network. These assets will allow users to earn more while exploring all of the unique applications in the network’s ecosystem.

As of the writing of this article, Nucleus will be providing yield by default to 20+ different networks over the course of the upcoming months.

What Assets Are Supported?

Users are able to earn yield by default by interacting with networks that are supported by Nucleus. Nucleus networks enable users to earn with their ETH, BTC, and USD while within their ecosystems.

Users can deposit the following assets into Nucleus-integrated networks:

  • ETH-based assets
    • ETH, LSTs, LRTs, and more

  • BTC-based assets (coming soon)
    • BTC, LSTs and more

  • USD-based assets (coming soon)
    • USDC, USDT, DAI and more

  • Any ERC-20 (coming later)

How It Works

  1. Visit the bridge interface of any Nucleus-supported network or the Nucleus frontend.
  2. Deposit your preferred assets and select the network asset you want to mint.
  3. Earn while you explore new applications in the network ecosystem!

How the Yield Is Generated

Nucleus is focused on bringing yield by default to every network in the crypto ecosystem. This mission requires an extremely large emphasis on safety, security, and sustainability of any revenue strategies that Nucleus utilizes.

That is why all of the revenue strategies that will be enabled for ETH & BTC-based assets for the first phase of Nucleus’s rollout will only generate yield by securing network infrastructure. This enables Nucleus to minimize user risk while ensuring sustainability of returns to networks at scale. An example of some of these revenue strategies include:

  • Ion Protocol’s price-agnostic lending markets
  • ETH staking rewards
  • Restaking infrastructure
  • LRT rewards
  • Cross-chain intents
  • And more to come…

The Nucleus Ecosystem

If you’re building an interesting rollup or app-chain and you want to enable yield by default in your ecosystem, please reach out!

If you’re thinking about…

  • How to increase your users’ yield
  • How to enable fast finality for your network
  • How to diversify your network’s revenue streams
  • How to empower and fund your ecosystem builders
  • How to bootstrap a DeFi ecosystem in your network
  • How to unlock new business models for your ecosystem applications
  • How to incentivize new and exciting builders to enter your ecosystem

We’re excited to meet you!

No matter the identity of your ecosystem, be it DeFi, Social, or an application-specific network, we want to hear more about what you’re building.

The Road Ahead

This is just the beginning of a new era of exploring the crypto ecosystem.

Keep a look out for our first deployments which will be live in just a few weeks.

To learn more about Nucleus and all of the primitives built around Nucleus, follow us on Twitter and visit our documentation for an in-depth breakdown here.