Today, we’re excited to reveal the next phase of Shade Protocol’s growth: a roadmap for omnichain expansion that will bring our native stablecoin (SILK) and our Secure DeFi products to even more ecosystems across web3.

Shade Protocol launched in 2022 with a bold vision: build the most secure and inclusive on-chain economy. We’ve already achieved over $1B+ in trading volume across over 1 million trades, as well as millions of minted and circulating SILK. And we’re just getting started.

We are about to experience the most critical years for decentralized finance. And we believe Shade’s core pillars will make its products the most liquid and sustainable over the long term:

• Secure and Trustable: over 87% of consumers refuse to use online platforms if they believe their data may be at risk. The future of decentralized finance must be both secure and privacy-preserving in order to build a foundation of trust and lasting adoption.

• Private and Auditable: regulatory frameworks continue to expand and mature. While they demand transparency for public goods, they also mandate privacy for individuals. Shade’s unique decryption primitives empower individuals to remain compliant while protecting their individual privacy and on-chain activity.

• Stable and Diverse: as global volatility and connectivity continues to expand, the need for a diversified stablecoin — secured by SOV commodities such as bitcoin & gold in addition to sovereign currencies — is obvious for both on-chain commerce and DeFi. SILK is uniquely positioned to solve this liquidity profile gap in the omnichain economy.

In the post below, we’ll expand on these pillars, reveal what’s being built, and explain how you can join and participate in the Shade on-chain economy immediately.

Expanding Liquidity Across the Omnichain

On-chain economies are best measured by their liquidity. Because that liquidity can come from anywhere, Shade must be everywhere as well.

Shade Protocol already includes a number of products we consider to be “omnichain”, including SILK (which is fully collateralized by a basket of different omnichain assets, currencies, and commodities) and our yield-bearing liquid staking derivatives stkd-SCRT and dSHD. These liquid staking derivatives are highly capital efficient, making them attractive assets to spread across the omnichain.

In this new growth phase for Shade Protocol, we will continue to expand via:

• Expansion of outposts: by cross-deploying Shade protocol applications on more L1s and L2s — especially those with native security features like FHE, ZK, and MPC — we will expand access and unlock new primitives that build on our extensive experience developing secure DeFi applications.

• Expansion of bridges: we will be expanding both our IBC connections and our bridge support for external ecosystems — including Solana and ETH L2s — in order to maximize access to both SHD and SILK.

• Expansion of products: we will launch the ShadeX money market, driving additional steady demand for SILK. Additionally, we will pursue improvements to UX and connectivity to these products.

• Expansion of SILK & SHD on external liquidity venues: we will seek to support SILK & SHD pools on as many L1s, L2s, and cross-chain protocols as possible, supporting the launch of money markets and collateralized stablecoin integrations.

• Expansion of SILK FinTech integrations: a strong on-chain economy should support real world utility. More and more Fintech companies are entering into the onchain economy (such as Stripe). Demand for stablecoins to connect DeFi to daily commerce is an increasingly large use case. Part of our current FinTech expansion plans involves exploration of an acquisition / merger with a FinTech x DeFi product.

Instant Entry: Introducing “The Button”

One of the biggest challenges facing users of on-chain economies is simply knowing where to begin. How do you bridge into a new economy? How do you get support? How do you easily provide liquidity or mint assets?

If it isn’t dead simple to enter Shade’s on-chain economy, Shade won’t grow. If users can’t easily mint SILK or access products like the Shade DEX or money market, Shade won’t grow. That’s why UX has always been a huge focus in our ecosystem, which has powered our innovations around viewing keys and query permits as well as powerful analytics and auditing tools.

Now we are introducing a new innovation: “The Button.”

The biggest complaint from prospective users who embrace Shade’s vision is that it is still too challenging to enter the on-chain economy. How do they get SHD and begin contributing to pools or minting SILK? How do they instantly become part of the community and movement?

When you hit The Button, users have the opportunity to buy SHD with zero slippage and 0 trading fees (minimum $1k size) with a 24 hour waiting period for claiming the SHD.

After using The Button, users will have the opportunity to join an exclusive chat with other Button users!

The following are supported assets of The Button:

• USDC.nbl

• USDC.axl

• wETH.axl

• ATOM

• SCRT

We expect more assets to be added over time!

After a user presses The Button, the protocol re-routes the deposited purchase amount and buys SHD on ShadeSwap, ensuring that direct buy pressure is applied to SHD. The Button is a powerful feature that ensures that large buyers of SHD can enter without paying large amounts on slippage and trading fees.

Here’s the catch: The Button can only be pushed a limited number of times!

There is currently only 20k SHD available for purchase for each of the above listed assets. That’s a limited amount of slippage-free liquidity.

This initial liquidity will not be refilled before November 17.

Use The Button → https://app.shadeprotocol.io/swap/buy-shade

SHD Yield Opportunities

After purchasing SHD using The Button, there are a variety of DeFi opportunities for SHD tokenholders to engage with:

Stake your SHD with a 7 day unbonding period, empowering you to passively earn ~8% APY (instantly claimable yield). The more fees accrued on the Shade app, the higher the staking APY, yielding greater than 20% yield during peak activity weeks.

As an alternative to traditional SHD staking, you can also mint dSHD — an autocompounding SHD liquid staking token that empowers you to passively earn staking yield while also putting the LST to work in Shade DeFi and beyond.

Liquidity provide on the SILK/SHD pool, earning ~21.4% APR in SHD rewards for staking your liquidity token. The dSHD / USDC.nbl pool is currently yielding 110%, another excellent opportunity to put your SHD to work.

Shade <> Fintech Thesis

Permissionless and cheap transfer of stablecoins directly into commerce is a massive growing market for crypto. This market is projected to grow by 612% by 2031.

For nearly a decade, crypto yield was sequestered and isolated from real world purchases — forcing users to bridge back to crypto exchanges, back to banks, to finally be able to make purchases “using” crypto. This UX was fractured, expensive, and not Web3 native.

We believe that Shade is uniquely positioned with both its privacy posture and SILK to aggressively integrate with payment rails to drive the adoption of Shade’s products. Users from around the world are in desperate need of a diversified reserve currency (i.e. SILK) to reduce their sovereign currency risk.

So Why Shade? Why SILK?

There are many on-chain economies today. In the coming years, we project there to be countless more. The key question is: which ones will be sustainable, and which ones can truly create lasting value for end users?

We already mentioned the core pillars that underlie development work for Shade: secure and trustable, private and auditable, stable and diverse. All of these pillars support sustainability.

One of our scarcer beliefs — compared to other on-chain economies — is our belief in data security. True adoption of DeFi hinges on robust data security measures. To attract billions in liquidity, both institutions and individuals will expect their onchain positions and asset movements to be encrypted by default, but auditable as needed. At Shade, we believe that in the near future the total transparency of blockchain will be looked at with suspicion in the same way that a lack of data security would be viewed within our traditional financial markets.

Another belief we have is in innovation through diversity. This doesn’t just mean a diversity of products built for a diverse set of global users. It also informs the approach behind SILK and its diversified collateral base. As on-chain economies grow, we all benefit from more experimentation with different compositions and use cases for stablecoins. We see tremendous synergies between SILK, dollar-backed stablecoins, other sovereign stablecoins, and commodities like BTC and metals.

Our mission is to integrate all of these beliefs into a seamless, omnichain economy that is secured by diverse assets and that powers off-chain and on-chain global commerce. While we are incredibly early in this mission, the years we’ve already spent developing these protocols, economic approaches, and beliefs gives us confidence that the Shade community is better positioned than any other to work towards and achieve this goal.

We have many announcements, partnerships, and products yet to be revealed, but if our mission and approach excite you, today the ask is simple: join us.

Join the Shade community: https://t.me/ShadeProtocol

Hit The Button: https://app.shadeprotocol.io/swap/buy-shade