Unlocking the full potential of DeFi with Stake DAO NFTs

Stake DAO
4 min readOct 28, 2021

Earlier this year we unveiled the vision of Stake DAO, a one-stop shop that unlocks the highest-yielding and most sophisticated components of DeFi for anyone and everyone.

Stake DAO NFTs are imagined as one of the pillars of this, and with the recent influx of new Herd members, as well as the success the NFTs have been seeing at auction, we thought we’d explain the idea behind them and some of the ways they can be used!

Why Stake DAO NFTs?

The NFTs are key to unlocking the full power of Stake DAO — a piece of art, a loyalty reward, and an ownership model, all in one. While they may be most-known for the exclusive, high-yield features they unlock on Stake DAO(covered below), it’s important to understand the larger philosophy behind them, and how they benefit all stakeholders in the DAO.

Importantly, they are a mechanism to strengthen revenues for the DAO: encouraging users to direct liquidity to the most profitable strategies, to acquire and stake SDT, and ultimately provide more rewards for SDT holders—they are designed to optimize rewards for both the individual, and the collective.

To date, DeFi users have had little way to be rewarded for loyalty to their favorite platform other than simply staking a governance token. With Stake DAO, we wanted to add new dimensionality to this model, distributing prized NFTs to those committed to staking SDT for an extended period of time.

What can you do with Stake DAO NFTs?

Each NFT grants its holder access to an exclusive strategy, power-up, or other privilege on Stake DAO, depending on the type of NFT and its rarity. Just four NFT types (Pythia, Leviathan, Tempest, and Tamiel) have been released to date, with more to come.

These unreleased NFTs will be made available as new exclusive features are launched on Stake DAO, ensuring that our most committed community members benefit first.

For now, let’s dig into what you can do with the four existing NFTs!

Weekly Bonus Rewards

With Weekly Bonus Rewards, you earn additional SDT every single week with no extra work.

The system acts as a rewards booster by calculating the amount of revenue your deposits across the platform bring to the DAO, and then distributing an amount of SDT proportionate to this figure. So far, our highest-ever earner took home 571 SDT ($1700) in bonus rewards in one week! See our blog post on Weekly Bonus Rewards for details of how the system works.

To gain access to Weekly Bonus Rewards, you will need a Pythia or Tempest NFT (see below for information on how to acquire one). Note that the rarer your NFT, the higher the ‘boost’ will be.

Avalanche Arbitrage Strategy

Another core goal of Stake DAO is to reward our most committed users by offering them a selection of premium, highly profitable strategies. The Avalanche Arbitrage Strategy is one of the first arbitrage vaults in DeFi, offering users the ability to earn triple-digit yields on SDT (274% APY, at time of writing).

Stake DAO has partnered with quantitative hedge fund Stake Capital on this strategy, allowing users to deposit SDT and receive rewards on Ethereum L1, with all the magic happening behind the scenes (more information here).

To gain access to Weekly Bonus Rewards, you will need a Tamiel or Leviathan NFT (see below for information on how to acquire one).

How can Stake DAO NFTs be acquired?

As the NFTs are intended as a loyalty reward, the bulk of Stake DAO NFTs can be acquired by anyone that has earned enough points staking xSDT in the Palace.

To start earning bonus points, the first step is to acquire SDT by staking in any number of strategies on Stake DAO, or swapping for SDT on UniSwap.

Once you have SDT, stake it in Governance, and then deposit your staked SDT (xSDT) into the Palace. You can also simulate how many points you will earn based on your deposit stake. This thread also has plenty of alpha on how to acquire bonus points!

(APYs not current)

The other way to acquire a Stake DAO NFT is via auction on OpenSea — we announce these periodically on Twitter and Discord, so stay tuned!

Herd, this is just the beginning. As Stake DAO continues to scale and push the boundaries in DeFi, the NFTs will become a pillar of our platform and an ownership model never seen before in the space. You can view the collection here.

Find us

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StakedaoHQ 🕊️

Stake DAO: https://stakedao.org🌐

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