With Bitcoin nearing all-time highs, Katana offers a new way to ride the momentum

Katana, powered by KAT and designed to ship deep liquidity in Morpho (lending), Sushi (spot DEX) and Vertex (perpetual DEX), and to maximize yields by means of 5 distinct sources of yield, will give degens, whales, and institutional traders a radically completely different DeFi expertise, bolstered by strategic companions similar to Conduit, Chainlink, and Blockworks.

Could 28, 2025 — The Katana Basis, a non-profit group devoted to creating the most superior DeFi expertise, at present introduced the personal mainnet launch of Katana, a DeFi-optimized blockchain that goals to improve every asset’s productiveness by means of larger yields and deep liquidity. Katana aggregates all liquidity into a choose set of protocols and faucets each obtainable supply of yield to energy a self-sustaining DeFi engine constructed for long-term progress. As of at present, customers could make pre-deposits to earn KAT for getting in early. The general public mainnet launch is slated for June.

Katana is the results of collaboration between GSR and Polygon Labs, and is backed by a number of top-tier strategic companions, together with Conduit (the main rollup platform with over USD 4 billion in TVL), Chainlink (the most generally adopted decentralized oracle community), and Blockworks (the premier crypto media and information agency).

Katana is engineered to ship worth for each kind of person. Whereas the majority of on-chain exercise stays in DeFi, this platform allows each high-risk and conservative contributors to obtain higher yields and experiment with modular “DeFi legos” in an optimized yield setting. On Katana, each asset works tougher, unlocking latent worth inside a unified ecosystem that generates sustainable yields superior to these on different platforms.

As DeFi matures, institutional participation grows, but challenges stay, fragmented liquidity and worth leakage proceed to restrict market depth and asset productiveness. Katana addresses these points by concentrating liquidity to reduce slippage and stabilize borrowing and lending charges.

Strategic Assist from Business Leaders

Inside Katana, GSR will deal with liquidity administration and cross-chain transaction assist, in addition to determine and incubate new DeFi protocols. GSR’s President, Jakob Palmstierna, expressed satisfaction in the agency’s involvement:

“Our position displays our rising dedication to incubation and advisory. We’re not simply deploying capital; we’re serving to to design accessible, sustainable DeFi ecosystems. With Katana, we convey our market experience to bear on actual yields and concentrated liquidity.”

In the meantime, Polygon Labs has offered technical steerage, strategic assist, and ecosystem coordination in the early phases by means of its Agglayer Breakout Program. Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, acknowledged:

“DeFi customers deserve ecosystems with lasting liquidity and persistently actual yields. Katana’s user-centric mannequin turns inefficiencies into alternatives, creating a positive-sum setting for each builders and contributors.”

Katana’s infrastructure is constructed on cdk-opgeth, a customized stack derived from the OP Stack and related to Agglayer, which makes use of ZK proofs to guarantee safety and quick transaction finality. These proofs are generated by Succinct’s SP1 verifier, a production-grade zkVM using Polygon’s Plonky3 proving system. The community runs with Conduit’s assist and its high-performance G2 sequencer.

Deep Liquidity for Everybody

Katana consolidates liquidity throughout main DeFi protocols, providing effectivity, low slippage, and aggressive charges. Key ecosystem contributors embody:

• Morpho: optimized lending and borrowing
• Sushi: deep spot liquidity and aggregator-powered buying and selling
• Vertex: capital-efficient perpetuals buying and selling

On prime of those foundations, hundreds of purposes might be constructed, benefiting from consolidated liquidity and the simplicity of an ecosystem whose power fosters new tasks. The identical liquidity-concentration technique applies to functionally equal belongings similar to stablecoins, BTC, and ETH. Notable issuers embody:

• Agora: native stablecoin AUSD issuance
• Lombard: LBTC, a liquid-staked, yield-bearing token backed 1:1 by BTC
• Ether.Fi: weETH, a wrapped, yield-bearing model of eETH that accrues staking rewards and extra yield through native restaking
• BitVault: institutional-grade, BTC-backed cash

For a really unified DeFi ecosystem, customers shouldn’t want to depart the chain to commerce blue-chip belongings. Common will usher in tokens like XRP, SOL, and SUI, not natively on Katana, permitting direct buying and selling and delivering larger yields than on their native chains, thanks to Katana’s superior yield choices and techniques like looping, arbitrage, and farming.

Superior, Sustainable Yields

To deal with DeFi’s largest challenges, Katana depends on 5 core pillars:

VaultBridge. Bridged belongings earn yield on Ethereum after which compound additional on Katana, guaranteeing productive liquidity from the second of deposit. All WBTC, ETH, USDC, and USDT bridged to Katana generate Ethereum yield that’s distributed again to customers by means of the core apps and their derivatives. Customers win.

Community Charges. A portion of community charges and software revenues is reinvested immediately into Katana’s DeFi ecosystem, funding person incentives, deepening liquidity, and supporting long-term progress. On different chains, operators hold these revenues; on Katana, they’re recycled for the neighborhood’s profit. Customers win.
AUSD Income.  AUSD is a stablecoin backed by institutional custody (VanEck, State Road) that shares treasury funding positive factors with Katana customers as a substitute of retaining them for the issuer. This immediately boosts yields. Customers win.

Core App Emissions. Emissions from every core protocol drive the yield engine, rewarding Katana customers with larger yields and deeper liquidity. By allocating their tokens to incentives, these apps strengthen person loyalty and additional improve yields. Customers win.

KAT Emissions. With Katana’s launch comes the creation of KAT. KAT holders govern how future emissions are allotted throughout DeFi swimming pools, aligning the pursuits of apps and holders. Customers win.

These pillars energy a sustainable yield engine that grows as bridged belongings, AUSD deposits, and sequencer charges improve. Katana’s profitability scales with its exercise. Customers win.

Ecosystem power additionally relies on sustaining secure liquidity depth: chain-owned liquidity reserves, funded by sequencer and protocol revenues, scale back reliance on short-term incentives and act as a backstop throughout volatility and liquidity shocks. Core apps, removed from focusing solely on their very own earnings, reinvest their earnings into the broader ecosystem. Customers win.

Energetic, Productive TVL

Katana’s TVL by no means sits idle. Belongings are actively deployed throughout lending, buying and selling, and yield methods to maximize capital effectivity and person returns. In contrast to ecosystems the place bridging belongings can inflate self-importance TVL metrics, on Katana each deposit works to generate actual worth. Functions earn income from that exercise, enabling them to additional improve the person expertise. Customers win.

KAT: Possession, Incentives & Sustainable Development

The Katana Basis additionally unveiled KAT, the native token designed to align customers with the community. Constructed on a vote-escrow (“ve”) mannequin, KAT provides holders governance energy over worth flows inside Katana.

After pre-depositing ETH, USDC, USDT, or WBTC, customers obtain KAT in a free lootbox. Following up to a nine-month lockup, after which the Basis might unlock KAT and it robotically turns into obtainable, holders can lock KAT to acquire veKAT, gaining voting rights over how KAT emissions are allotted amongst core apps. This vote-escrow mannequin aligns incentives with the protocols that drive actual liquidity and community progress.

KAT goes past governance: it powers Katana’s progress loop by channeling emissions to productive TVL and deepening chain-owned liquidity, guaranteeing incentives reward long-term worth reasonably than short-term hypothesis.

Pre-deposit at present to begin receiving KAT in your lootbox.

Personal Mainnet Now Dwell 

Katana’s personal mainnet is now operational, providing builders and early adopters entry to its core purposes. To start constructing on Katana, go to katana.community.

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