Astroport upgrade unleashed: Governance, staking and fee share

Hello, world!

Astroport governance, staking and fee share has arrived. It will debut in two phases:

• Phase 1, which is live now, includes staking and fee share alongside preliminary governance processes.
• Phase 2, which is expected to launch in approximately 2 weeks, will see the full launch of governance via the Astral Assembly.

Astroport is designed to become a digital commons that is owned, controlled, operated, maintained and updated by the community of its users and builders. ASTRO is the tool that distributes value of and power over the Astroport protocol/code.

Ultimately, xASTRO holders assume responsibility for governance and upgrades to the protocol. This will happen through open discussions on the already-active Astroport governance forum and via advanced governance tools, which will be enabled by the launch of ASTRO staking. These tools are expected to go live in the next 2 weeks.

ASTRO holders can stake their ASTRO in the xASTRO pool and receive xASTRO tokens. xASTRO is a CW20 token that rewards ASTRO stakers with additional ASTRO and can be unstaked at any time without a cooldown period. These ASTRO rewards are intended to incentivize community stewardship of the Astroport protocol.

The Staking Flow

Every trade that happens on Astroport requires a fee (as shown in the chart below). A portion of that fee is used to periodically purchase ASTRO on the open market and deposit it into the xASTRO pool.

As time passes, each xASTRO token will then be worth more ASTRO. This means that when you unstake ASTRO, you should receive more ASTRO than you originally staked.

ASTRO rewards in relation to xASTRO are based on total fees collected and the amount of xASTRO outstanding; there is no need to claim and/or restake your ASTRO rewards.

Since Astroport’s launch on Dec. 28, 2021, the protocol accumulated more than $12 million in fees. Those accumulated fees have been used to purchase ASTRO, which will be deposited in the staking pool.

The initial $ASTRO purchases were done in large blocks since they are designed to happen permissionlessly via an on-chain function call that anyone can make. A maximum buyback parameter with a cooldown period would have added unnecessary complexity and resulted in only marginally better trade execution.

Delphi Labs executed the original buyback function calls and intends to continue executing them every 6 hours to convert new fees to ASTRO for the staking pool.

To date, more than $12 million in fees have already been converted to ASTRO, and that ASTRO is ready to be distributed to stakers.

This newly purchased ASTRO will be distributed to the staking pool at random intervals over 740,571 blocks (approximately 60 days assuming a 7-second block time). That means that users who stake in the coming days will benefit from all the fees the protocol has already accumulated and converted to ASTRO tokens.

Staking will launch with a 1:1 ratio for ASTRO:xASTRO but each xASTRO will quickly be redeemable for more than 1 ASTRO as previously accumulated ASTRO is added to the staking pool. Stakers will also receive any new fees from additional trading activity.

Note that 100% of trading fees will flow to xASTRO holders for now. However, a portion of those fees will eventually flow to vxASTRO holders when vxASTRO launches later this year.

The xASTRO token address is terra14lpnyzc9z4g3ugr4lhm8s4nle0tq8vcltkhzh7: https://finder.terra.money/mainnet/address/terra14lpnyzc9z4g3ugr4lhm8s4nle0tq8vcltkhzh7.

For this release, the xASTRO token and xASTRO staking contracts were redeployed. Several mainnet contracts have been deprecated and will not be used anymore. Here are the impacted contracts:

• Deprecated xASTRO staking contract: https://finder.extraterrestrial.money/mainnet/address/terra1nq4aszdm82wujstxwpjxtvckg7ghu63mqkey33
• New xASTRO staking contract: https://finder.terra.money/mainnet/address/terra1f68wt2ch3cx2g62dxtc8v68mkdh5wchdgdjwz7

If you’re already staked in the old contracts, you’ll need to unstake your ASTRO tokens and re-stake them in the new staking contract.

The new Maker contract where Astroport’s fees accumulate underwent a security audit by Halborn, which is available here: https://github.com/astroport-fi/astro-audits/tree/main/halborn.

The release of ASTRO staking takes us closer to the vision of Astroport as a digital commons, but it’s just Phase 1. Staking enables the deployment of advanced governance tools, which are expected to go live in the next 2 weeks (stay tuned for more) and vxASTRO locking capabilities, which will be activated in the coming weeks or months.

In the meantime, ASTRO holders can beam up to Astroport now to begin their staking journeys: https://app.astroport.fi/staking, or read-on for a how-to guide.

How to stake ASTRO

Visit https://app.astroport.fi/staking and click Stake ASTRO:

Enter the amount of ASTRO you’d like to stake and click Stake ASTRO:

Confirm the transaction, and that’s it!

You’ve successfully staked your ASTRO and received xASTRO in return. This xASTRO should be reflected on the staking screen:

You can unstake ASTRO at any time. When doing so, your xASTRO will be burnt (or destroyed) and you’ll receive back your proportional share of the pool as denominated in ASTRO.

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DISCLAIMER

This article does not constitute investment advice. Before interacting with Astroport, review the project disclaimers here.