At the core of any thriving DeFi ecosystem is one simple truth: liquidity makes everything work. Without it, even the most innovative products struggle to gain traction—let alone scale.
As a long-term validator and partner of Lido, our relationship naturally extended into helping bootstrap liquidity across the protocols building within their ecosystem. Through our Credit Fund, we’ve quietly provided early liquidity to several projects—giving teams the initial boost they need to launch, test, and grow their products.
This isn’t about chasing short-term returns. It’s about showing up early, backing builders we believe in, funding product experimentation, and helping ecosystems flourish from the ground up.
In this article, we’ll take a quick look at that work: what we’ve done, how we got here, and why founders can count on us when it matters most.
The Backstory
Our relationship with Lido didn’t start with liquidity. It started with infrastructure.
Through RockawayX Infrastructure, we’ve been one of Lido’s core validators since September 2023. That foundational trust laid the groundwork for what came next.
As Lido’s ecosystem expanded, a familiar challenge emerged: how to help early-stage protocols integrate stETH and wstETH in a way that actually worked for users. Because Lido doesn’t provide liquidity directly, they welcomed a partner who could assess projects quickly, deploy capital thoughtfully, and support integrations that matter—someone they already trusted.
For us, it was a natural extension of our infrastructure role. Lido wanted to see their assets actively used across DeFi. We wanted to support credible teams in building to make that possible. So we started showing up—quietly, but consistently—with early liquidity to help promising protocols get off the ground.
“RockawayX has consistently been a thoughtful and reliable liquidity partner — agile, professional, and genuinely embedded in the ecosystems we care about.”
-McNut, Ecosystem, Lido DAO
Our Role: Strategic Liquidity to Strengthen the Lido Ecosystem
When protocols build with stETH or wstETH, one of the biggest barriers to adoption isn’t the integration itself, it’s making sure there’s a real market for users to engage with. Without liquidity, even the most well-designed product can struggle to gain traction.
That’s where we step in.
Through our Yield Fund, we’ve deployed early capital to help teams get past the cold start problem. These are often newly launched or early-stage protocols integrating Lido assets in meaningful ways, and our support helps ensure they can go live with functioning pools, smoother UX, and real volume from day one.
But more important than the numbers is the approach.
We’re selective. Every allocation goes through internal diligence, and we only commit when we believe the product is credible, aligned with ecosystem goals, and has the potential to scale.
Featured Projects: Where We’ve Deployed Capital
To date, we’ve supported five DeFi protocols with early liquidity to help deepen integrations with stETH and wstETH. These contributions have enabled new use cases for Lido assets while improving access and usability.
GMX v2
We supported the launch of a wstETH/WETH swap-only pool on GMX v2, helping bring deeper liquidity to Lido assets on Arbitrum. This contribution enabled GMX to expand its offering of highly correlated asset pairs, improving the trading experience while keeping risks like impermanent loss to a minimum.
CCIP Fast Stake
We deployed capital across Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base to support Lido’s Fast Stake architecture, allowing users to instantly convert ETH to wstETH via on-chain liquidity pools. The entire process is rebalanced using Chainlink’s CCIP and automation infrastructure, which we help manage. Our early involvement provided the liquidity and operational stability needed to test and scale this new staking pathway across multiple L2s.
Balancer
We provided early liquidity to support the launch of a composable stable pool on Balancer, pairing wstETH with Mellow’s liquid restaking token. Balancer’s battle-tested infrastructure made it an ideal venue for onboarding this new asset pair, helping strengthen Lido integrations while offering DeFi users a smoother trading experience.
Mellow
Mellow is building a permissionless restaking layer that empowers curators to actively manage vaults across EigenLayer and Symbiotic. Our capital helped bring early liquidity to its wstETH-based LRTs, supporting the team’s goal of bootstrapping new yield strategies and advancing the next generation of modular staking infrastructure.
SynFutures
We provided early liquidity to help launch the SynFutures wstETH/ETH perpetuals market, contributing to a one-sided pool that enables leveraged trading on a tightly correlated pair. By supporting this low-risk integration, we helped validate new use cases for Lido assets within on-chain derivatives while giving SynFutures the foundation to test and refine its Oyster AMM infrastructure.
Looking Ahead
When we engage with an ecosystem, we don’t just show interest—we show up.
Our focus has always been on helping teams get off the ground by providing more than just capital. In the case of Lido, that meant offering early liquidity to a range of DeFi protocols building meaningful products around stETH and wstETH.
And our approach extends far beyond the Lido ecosystem, across assets and integrations.
We do the work. We run diligence, deploy at critical early moments, and stay close to teams as they battle-test, refine, and grow. Founders know they can count on us to be hands-on when it matters most—and that if we’re active in an ecosystem, we’re looking to help great ideas scale.
If you’re building and looking for early support—from liquidity to ecosystem alignment—reach out to us. We’re always looking to partner with great DeFi teams.
