Sunsetting BNBx: Focusing Stader on High-Impact Ecosystems

Stader DAO is sunsetting BNBx, our liquid staking token on BNB Chain, as part of a broader effort to focus resources on ecosystems where our impact and growth potential are already proven. While BNBx successfully provided a secure staking option, the current market environment favours consolidation, making this the ideal time to wind down operations and refocus resources.

Why BNBx Is Being Sunset

Maintaining a secure, high-uptime LST requires significant technical oversight and continuous integration work, which is hard to justify at the current scale, especially when viewed from the org perspective (BNBx represents ~2% of the Stader TVL). Here are the broad factors taken into consideration

• Operational costs around maintaining the smart contracts, delivering upgrades, managing security audits, oracle maintenance, external monitoring, etc.
  
  
• Risk Mitigation: Each supported chain introduces unique smart contract and infrastructural risks, and by sunsetting the lower-volume LSTs, we reduce the surface area for potential technical vulnerabilities and the broader downstream ecosystem risks when these LSTs are used as collateral.  
  
  
• Consolidation of the BNB DeFi Market: The BNB Chain ecosystem has reached a stage of maturity where liquidity is naturally gravitating toward a few primary protocols, which will make it increasingly harder for smaller-cap protocols to survive by the sheer nature of the industry’s unit economics

When synthesised, these factors indicate that sunsetting is the most prudent and conservative path forward. Given the current trajectory of the DeFi ecosystem, which continues to lean heavily toward Ethereum-centric scaling, the operational risks and resource demands of maintaining BNBx far outweigh the potential rewards. Even under the most optimistic future scenarios, the opportunity cost remains too high, and our focus is better served by reinforcing our offerings in the ecosystems where Stader’s impact and growth potential are already proven.

Why Now, And What’s Next

Stader remains committed to being a Security-First protocol. Sunsetting the product now while market conditions are relatively stable is a proactive measure to ensure all holders can exit smoothly. We would be able to facilitate a controlled redemption process which ensures every user can reclaim their native BNB at the full accrued exchange rate hassle-free

Here’s a detailed timeline of the process and the various actions users can take

Sunset Timeline

• 29th January ‘26 – Deposits disabled:
  
  New BNBx minting/deposits will be disabled as we kickstart the process
  
  
• 29th January ‘26 to 11th February ‘26 – Initial redemption window
  
  The current unstaking portal will remain open for a couple of weeks, allowing BNBx holders to unstake as usual.
  
  Redemptions will follow the standard 5–7 day unbonding period on BNB Chain before BNB becomes claimable.  
  
  
• 11th February ‘26 to 3rd March ‘26 – Contract Pause and Validator Exit:
  
  Post 11th February ‘26, all the BNB will be withdrawn from the validators (at which point the exchange rate freezes and will be final), and all unstakes will be instantaneous.  
  
  But the process to withdraw at such a scale would take 2-3 weeks and requires a contract freeze to do so, post which the instant withdrawal would kick in
  
  
• 3rd March ‘26 to 15th April ‘26 – Subsequent redemptions:
  
  The unstake UI will be active again on 3rd March ‘26 to allow users to withdraw BNB at the final exchange rate
  
  It will remain active till 15th April ‘26, post which the UI will be taken down but users can always withdraw via the contract.
  
  A detailed withdrawal guide will be provided to help users with this 3-step process, which will be active for the foreseeable future

What BNBx Holders Should Do

• During the initial window (till 11th February), use the usual unstaking portal if you prefer the standard flow and are comfortable with the 5–7-day queue.
  
  
• Or you can wait till 3rd March and access instant redemptions for a 6-week period.  
  
  
• If you missed these, you can always withdraw anytime via the contract following the withdrawal guide which will be provided before 15th April.
  
  

To reiterate, a user-friendly wind-down is the utmost priority, and we will ensure all BNBx holders can exit smoothly at the fully accrued rate. As always, feel free to reach out for anything