How Did Bifrost Become the Giant Liquid Staking on Polkadot?

In the race to dominate the liquid staking space, each major blockchain has its own "king": Ethereum has Lido, Solana has Jito.

And now, Polkadot has Bifrost 🏆

With over 100 million USD TVL and holding more than 60% of the LST market share of Polkadot, Bifrost was not the first to arrive but has quietly built its own path to ascend to the throne.

So what has brought Bifrost from a latecomer to become the number 1 liquid staking platform of the Polkadot ecosystem? Let's take a look back at this journey.

⚙️ Humble Beginnings on Kusama

Bifrost started in July 2021, when they won the Kusama parachain auction thanks to a crowdloan of over 140,000 KSM. The Bifrost network officially connected to Kusama and launched the Staking Liquidity Protocol (SLP) along with the test token vETH.

This phase is not flamboyant, but it is a very solid foundation.

🚀 Scale Expansion: Transition to Polkadot

From 2022 to 2023, Bifrost won a parachain on Polkadot and began to expand strongly:
Launch of 6 types of vToken: vKSM, vDOT, vMOVR, vGLMR, vASTR, vBNC
Move most activities to Polkadot
Organizing promotional campaigns such as Rainbow Boost
Results? vKSM increased from 50K to a peak of 500K minted tokens. It is currently maintained at a stable level of over 350K and accounts for more than 60% of the KSM LST market share.

🧠 Why is vToken popular?

Most LSTs simply help you with staking while maintaining liquidity. Bifrost is different; they turn vToken into a real, flexible financial product that is deeply integrated into DeFi.

🔒 1. Optimize Profit & Protect Slash

Automatically select the validator for optimal profit
If slashed, Vault BNC will cover the losses for the users.

🗳 2. Maintain Governance Rights

Holders of vDOT and vKSM can still participate in OpenGov voting.
Both staking and having a voice in the ecosystem, the double benefit is here.

🧩 3. Real-World Applications in DeFi

In the Bifrost DApp, you can:
Swap: Trade vDOT ↔ DOT on Moonbeam, Astar, Hydration
Earn: Provide liquidity (LP) and receive farming rewards
Lending: Deposit vDOT on Interlay to earn interest
Borrow: Mortgage vDOT to borrow DOT or iBTC
Loop: Stake → borrow → stake → repeat to amplify profits
Loopstake: Staking leverage up to 4x, with just 1 click
In other words: What DOT can do, vDOT can do all — and even more.

🧬 Ultimate Weapon: Omnichain Architecture

This is the "secret" that helps Bifrost outpace its competitors.
Instead of deploying contracts on each chain, Bifrost chooses to centralize everything on its own parachain. Users on any chain can mint, redeem, and swap remotely without needing to manually switch chains.

This structure is called Omnichain Architecture and brings many benefits:
Smooth, seamless experience
No time wasted bridging
Combine multiple multi-chain yield sources

🧑‍🍳 Typical: vMANTA

When Manta Network launched the 2 chain ecosystem (Substrate + EVM), Bifrost was the only LST provider capable of serving both simultaneously. The result? vMANTA captured over 94% of the LST market share in the Manta HST.

🌍 Next Journey: Beyond Polkadot

Although Bifrost was born from Polkadot, their future is multi-chain.
As cross-chain infrastructures continue to develop, along with the trend of chain abstraction and intent-based DeFi, Bifrost's omnichain architecture will become the ideal foundation for next-generation staking protocols—not only in Polkadot, but also in Ethereum, Cosmos, and beyond.