With Bitcoin nearing all-time highs, Katana offers a new way to ride the momentum
News Publisher May 30, 2025 14:22
Katana, powered by KAT and designed to deliver deep liquidity in Morpho (lending), Sushi (spot DEX) and Vertex (perpetual DEX), and to maximize yields through five distinct sources of yield, will give degens, whales, and institutional investors a radically different DeFi experience, bolstered by strategic partners such as Conduit, Chainlink, and Blockworks.
Katana, powered by KAT and designed to deliver deep liquidity in Morpho (lending), Sushi (spot DEX) and Vertex (perpetual DEX), and to maximize yields through five distinct sources of yield, will give degens, whales, and institutional investors a radically different DeFi experience, bolstered by strategic partners such as Conduit, Chainlink, and Blockworks.
May 28, 2025 — The Katana Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating the most advanced DeFi experience, today announced the private mainnet launch of Katana, a DeFi-optimized blockchain that aims to enhance each asset’s productivity through higher yields and deep liquidity. Katana aggregates all liquidity into a select set of protocols and taps every available source of yield to power a self-sustaining DeFi engine built for long-term growth. As of today, users can make pre-deposits to earn KAT for getting in early. The public mainnet launch is slated for June.
Katana is the result of collaboration between GSR and Polygon Labs, and is backed by several top-tier strategic partners, including Conduit (the leading rollup platform with over USD 4 billion in TVL), Chainlink (the most widely adopted decentralized oracle network), and Blockworks (the premier crypto media and data firm).
Katana is engineered to deliver value for every type of user. While the majority of on-chain activity remains in DeFi, this platform enables both high-risk and conservative participants to achieve better yields and experiment with modular “DeFi legos” in an optimized yield environment. On Katana, every asset works harder, unlocking latent value within a unified ecosystem that generates sustainable yields superior to those on other platforms.
As DeFi matures, institutional participation grows, yet challenges remain, fragmented liquidity and value leakage continue to limit market depth and asset productivity. Katana addresses these issues by concentrating liquidity to minimize slippage and stabilize borrowing and lending rates.
Strategic Support from Industry Leaders
Within Katana, GSR will handle liquidity management and cross-chain transaction support, as well as identify and incubate new DeFi protocols. GSR’s President, Jakob Palmstierna, expressed pride in the firm’s involvement:
“Our role reflects our growing commitment to incubation and advisory. We’re not just deploying capital; we’re helping to design accessible, sustainable DeFi ecosystems. With Katana, we bring our market expertise to bear on real yields and concentrated liquidity.”
Meanwhile, Polygon Labs has provided technical guidance, strategic support, and ecosystem coordination in the early stages through its Agglayer Breakout Program. Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, stated:
“DeFi users deserve ecosystems with lasting liquidity and consistently real yields. Katana’s user-centric model turns inefficiencies into opportunities, creating a positive-sum environment for both builders and participants.”
Katana’s infrastructure is built on cdk-opgeth, a custom stack derived from the OP Stack and connected to Agglayer, which uses ZK proofs to ensure security and fast transaction finality. Those proofs are generated by Succinct’s SP1 verifier, a production-grade zkVM employing Polygon’s Plonky3 proving system. The network runs with Conduit’s support and its high-performance G2 sequencer.
Deep Liquidity for Everyone
Katana consolidates liquidity across leading DeFi protocols, offering efficiency, low slippage, and competitive rates. Key ecosystem participants include:
- Morpho: optimized lending and borrowing
- Sushi: deep spot liquidity and aggregator-powered trading
- Vertex: capital-efficient perpetuals trading
On top of these foundations, thousands of applications can be built, benefiting from consolidated liquidity and the simplicity of an ecosystem whose strength fosters new projects. The same liquidity-concentration strategy applies to functionally equivalent assets such as stablecoins, BTC, and ETH. Notable issuers include:
- Agora: native stablecoin AUSD issuance
- Lombard: LBTC, a liquid-staked, yield-bearing token backed 1:1 by BTC
- Ether.Fi: weETH, a wrapped, yield-bearing version of eETH that accrues staking rewards and additional yield via native restaking
- BitVault: institutional-grade, BTC-backed money
For a truly unified DeFi ecosystem, users shouldn’t need to leave the chain to trade blue-chip assets. Universal will bring in tokens like XRP, SOL, and SUI, not natively on Katana, allowing direct trading and delivering higher yields than on their native chains, thanks to Katana’s advanced yield options and strategies like looping, arbitrage, and farming.
Superior, Sustainable Yields
To tackle DeFi’s biggest challenges, Katana relies on five core pillars:
VaultBridge. Bridged assets earn yield on Ethereum and then compound further on Katana, ensuring productive liquidity from the moment of deposit. All WBTC, ETH, USDC, and USDT bridged to Katana generate Ethereum yield that is distributed back to users through the core apps and their derivatives. Users win.
Network Fees. A portion of network fees and application revenues is reinvested directly into Katana’s DeFi ecosystem, funding user incentives, deepening liquidity, and supporting long-term growth. On other chains, operators keep those revenues; on Katana, they’re recycled for the community’s benefit. Users win.
AUSD Revenue. AUSD is a stablecoin backed by institutional custody (VanEck, State Street) that shares treasury investment gains with Katana users instead of retaining them for the issuer. This directly boosts yields. Users win.
Core App Emissions. Emissions from each core protocol drive the yield engine, rewarding Katana users with higher yields and deeper liquidity. By allocating their tokens to incentives, these apps strengthen user loyalty and further enhance yields. Users win.
KAT Emissions. With Katana’s launch comes the creation of KAT. KAT holders govern how future emissions are allocated across DeFi pools, aligning the interests of apps and holders. Users win.
These pillars power a sustainable yield engine that grows as bridged assets, AUSD deposits, and sequencer fees increase. Katana’s profitability scales with its activity. Users win.
Ecosystem strength also depends on maintaining stable liquidity depth: chain-owned liquidity reserves, funded by sequencer and protocol revenues, reduce reliance on short-term incentives and act as a backstop during volatility and liquidity shocks. Core apps, far from focusing solely on their own profits, reinvest their earnings into the broader ecosystem. Users win.
Active, Productive TVL
Katana’s TVL never sits idle. Assets are actively deployed across lending, trading, and yield strategies to maximize capital efficiency and user returns. Unlike ecosystems where bridging assets can inflate vanity TVL metrics, on Katana every deposit works to generate real value. Applications earn revenue from that activity, enabling them to further enhance the user experience. Users win.
KAT: Ownership, Incentives & Sustainable Growth
The Katana Foundation also unveiled KAT, the native token designed to align users with the network. Built on a vote-escrow (“ve”) model, KAT gives holders governance power over value flows within Katana.
After pre-depositing ETH, USDC, USDT, or WBTC, users receive KAT in a free lootbox. Following up to a nine-month lockup, after which the Foundation may unlock KAT and it automatically becomes available, holders can lock KAT to obtain veKAT, gaining voting rights over how KAT emissions are allocated among core apps. This vote-escrow model aligns incentives with the protocols that drive real liquidity and network growth.
KAT goes beyond governance: it powers Katana’s growth loop by channeling emissions to productive TVL and deepening chain-owned liquidity, ensuring incentives reward long-term value rather than short-term speculation.
Pre-deposit today to start receiving KAT in your lootbox.
Private Mainnet Now Live
Katana’s private mainnet is now operational, offering developers and early adopters access to its core applications. To begin building on Katana, visit katana.network.
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