Introduction

The First Suite Of Karak-Native LRTs, Unlocking Liquidity & Yields For The Karak Ecosystem

Karak Network is a totally unopinionated restaking protocol that allows users to deposit any asset to the platform in order to provide slashable security to various products and services built atop Karak, such as data availability layers, blockchains, oracles, and more. Unlike Ethereum and EigenLayer, where security can be provided solely through ETH for the former and ETH-denominated assets such as LSTs for the latter, Karak already features a basket of DeFi assets such as Pendle positions, EigenLayer-restaked LRTs, LP Positions across Uniswap v3 and Curve Finance, and stablecoins such as Ethena’s USDe.

This flexibility has benefits in the sense that it makes yield-bearing assets composable with restaking, as opposed to staking yield needing to outperform other DeFi yield in order for it to be viable. However, it also has the downside of lacking a single homogenous asset to peg Karak LRTs to. Consequently, restaked holdings on Karak cannot be deployed in further yield-bearing activities and Karak XP (their native points reward) cannot be traded on yield markets and other DeFi applications.

Kernel Protocol presents a solution where it creates Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs) that are composed of indexes for each of the main asset categories on Karak. This mitigates liquidity fragmentation compared to making specific LRTs for each and every individual asset, while also presenting enough variation in asset choice for an end LRT user, reflecting the diversity of restaking opportunities available on Karak.

By creating the first suite of Karak-native LRTs, Kernel Protocol will unlock liquidity and yields for the Karak ecosystem, providing the vital missing piece required for it to become the dominant liquid restaking paradigm for DeFi.