Stride temporarily shelves plans to convert STRD to ATOM

This decision comes after a week of public discussion, nine days after the initial idea was announced at Cosmoverse, Istanbul

by Bessie Liu /

October 13, 2023 12:47 pm

David Esser/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

Cosmos’s liquid staking blockchain, Stride, will pause plans to convert its native token STRD to the Cosmos Hub’s ATOM token.

This decision comes just nine days after the co-founder of Stride Labs, Vishal Talasani, proposed at Cosmoverse in Istanbul that the liquid staking zone should merge with the Cosmos Hub, the core blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem.

“After a week of public discussion, the Cosmos Hub + Stride communities have paused the STRD → ATOM conversion,” the Stride team wrote on X. “Consider it shelved, but not completely abandoned.”

Stride is one of the largest liquid staking providers in the Cosmos ecosystem. It has a total value locked (TVL) of $33.84 million, with staked ATOM making up over 80% of this number, according to information available on DeFiLlama.

In a forum post discussing the conversion, the team at Stride notes that it was always the project’s intention that discussions about the merge and the conversion of tokens happen in an open, transparent way.

“Regarding the feasibility of the conversion idea, judging by the reaction of both the Cosmos Hub and Stride communities there is currently too much division and not enough consensus,” the Stride team wrote. “Perhaps that will change at some point in the future, but currently, we feel it would be inappropriate to move forward to working on concrete details about the conversion.”

Though the conversion conversation has been momentarily tabled, the Stride team said it will continue to focus on providing its liquid staking services.

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