🐘 Stake DAO Documentation Portal

Welcome to the Stake DAO Documentation. This portal offers a comprehensive guide to Stake DAO, a platform that utilizes governance tokens from top blockchain protocols to maximize the potential of these tokens.

💎 What is Stake DAO? 

Stake DAO is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform launched in early 2021. It has evolved with the rise of Curve and other DeFi products, and the advent of innovative veTokenomics. The platform's goal is to shift the focus from monetary gain to power, enabling various protocols to monetize their governance and transform utility into an additional cash stream.

🚀 Why Stake DAO?

Stake DAO addresses the limitations of current DeFi protocols by offering a solution that doesn't force users to choose between voting power or yield. With Stake DAO's Liquid Lockers, users can boost their yield, maintain liquidity, exercise governance power, and access cross-chain functionalities. This is achieved through a combination of products centered around veTokens and Liquid Lockers.

🧩 How Does Stake DAO Work?

Stake DAO operates through a suite of products, all centered around veTokens and Liquid Lockers. These products work together to provide users with boosted returns while maintaining their voting power. The key products are:

Liquid Lockers

Liquid Lockers allow users to lock their tokens in exchange of sdTokens, which are liquid versions of the locked tokens. Users can stake these sdTokens on Stake DAO to earn rewards while maintaining their voting rights, or just use them on the underlying protocol as a liquid token.

If they are not interested, they can use their votes for vote incentives. Holders of the Stake DAO SDT token, if locked, can enhance their sdToken voting power.

Strategies

Strategies / Boosted pools are designed to boost user LP tokens returns. They operate in conjunction with Liquid Lockers and are implemented across multiple blockchains. Essentially, tokens staked on strategies (i.e., on the gauges of the underlying protocol) are boosted due to the veToken balance of the corresponding Liquid Locker.

Votemarket

Votemarket is an on-chain platform that allows incentivization of underlying veToken votes. It enables protocols seeking votes for their liquidity gauges to offer tokens as incentives in exchange for votes. This mechanism encourages more participation in the voting process, leading to increased reward tokens for the underlying protocol. Users can claim these rewards once the voting period they participated in ends.

🗳️ Governance

Stake DAO is a protocol that is governed by the holders of a token known as veSDT. These token holders have the ability to propose changes to the protocol, enact them, and direct the SDT inflation to Stake DAO gauges. In addition, through the use of sdTokens vote replications, all sdTokens holders have the ability to vote on proposals for the underlying protocol. This includes both gauge allocation votes and governance proposals.