[Proposal] Creator LSTs

Sanctum LSTs
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Creator LSTs: Hold-to-Earn

Hey creators! We think “Creator LSTs” can help you build a strong community while allowing your community to support you financially.

Let us know what you think.

TL;DR

  • If you’re a creator and are interested in launching your own Creator LST, fill up this Google form to indicate interest and we’ll reach out: https://forms.gle/1QaxyxM2GMuMPGQS9
  • We want to help creators launch their own “Creator LST”
  • You get a stream of income while your community holds your LST in their wallets
  • This can be a great tool to empower you to build your community

LSTs 101

A crash course on LSTs. Important for understanding how Creator LSTs can help you.

What are LSTs?

A liquid staking token, LST, is a token that you receive in exchange for staking your SOL to a project or protocol.

For example:

  1. Staking to Jupiter stake pool gives you jupSOL in return
  2. Staking to Helius stake pool gives you hSOL in return

Sanctum has simplified the UX for liquid staking on Solana. Simply swap your SOL for an LST (e.g. jupSOL) on app.sanctum.so, jup.ag or your preferred wallet extension. As long as you hold an LST in your wallet, you’re considered staked to that particular stake pool.

Unlike natively-staked SOL, LSTs are transferrable just like most other tokens on Solana.

LSTs earn staking rewards

You earn staking rewards by staking your SOL on Solana (in the ballpark of 5-8% APY). Traditionally, you get these rewards via the appreciation of the price of your LST against the price of SOL (we’ll circle back to this).

Example:

  • You swap 1 SOL for 1 xSOL in return.
  • xSOL has a 5% APY.
  • If you swap your 1 xSOL back to SOL after a year, you get 1.05 SOL in return.

^ Tx fees are excluded from the above example for brevity.

Staking rewards are denominated in SOL.

Learn more

We highly encourage you to read our deep dive here to learn more about Sanctum and LSTs.

Creator LSTs

LSTs can be a great tool for your community to support you financially with minimal risk. Here’s how it can work.

  1. You launch your own LST, e.g. designSOL.
  2. Anyone can support you by simply holding designSOL (simply swap SOL → designSOL).
  3. But instead of the staking reward accruing to your supporter, we direct the staking reward to you, the creator.
  4. Your supporter is free to stop supporting you at any time by simply swapping designSOL back to SOL.

Example:

  1. Sally wants to support you and swaps 10 SOL to 10 designSOL.
  2. For as long as Sally is holding 10 designSOL in her wallet, the staking rewards will accrue to you (stream of income for you).
  3. Sally can stop supporting you at any time and get her original 10 SOL back.

That’s it! There are a whole slew of fun things that you can build on top of this. Here are some ideas:

  1. You can measure user loyalty by looking at who has held for how long. E.g. Someone that has held 10 designSOL for 2 years is pretty loyal. Imagine the different kinds of engagement/rewards that you can do with this info!
  2. You can drop artworks based on how many LST someone is holding. e.g. certain artworks will be dropped to wallets with >10 designSOL.

Note:

  • We are thinking of friendlier ways to package this for the retail crowd, e.g. “points”, “membership”, etc. LSTs might be too technical.

FAQ

How can we launch our own Creator LSTs?

We will assist you in launching your own LST for now. If there is enough interest from you and the community, we can build a tool for you to launch your own LST directly on our website.

How is this mechanism different from other crowdfunding platforms, e.g. Patreon?

For you the creator:
You get a stream of income (the staking rewards) at the end of every epoch (every 2-3 days). This is different from traditional web2 platforms, where you get a monthly payout.

For your supporters (holders of your LST):
Holding an LST is free – your supporters don’t have to pay anything. In Patreon, your supporters pay e.g. $7/month to support you. They lose this $7 (in exchange for exclusive content of course). With LSTs, your supporters support you by giving up their staking rewards. But, they can always swap out of their LST back to SOL at any time.

If they originally swapped 10 SOL to support you, they can always get their 10 SOL back. (of course, they lose out on opportunity cost of that 10 SOL).

Will my LST drop in value?

Your LST will not drop in value with respect to SOL. i.e. your supporters can always swap 1 Creator LST back to 1 SOL at any time. However, your LST’s price is exposed to the price fluctuations of SOL (as with all other LSTs).

9 Likes
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brilliant idea, once polished for easy marketing to a more retail audience will be great

one additional initial though, we have hausSOL through sanctum already, could we reach out via those connections and do somerthing via their platform for creators (obviously in a way that wouldn’t compete with their own LST)

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It stickier for people to hold SOL rather than pay per month. Goodjob! And let personal LST rise up! :partying_face:

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This is an amazing post, the first part it is exactly what I am looking for to help my best friend understand LST and get him om board. The second part "designSOL represents grear empowerment for the community. Imagine a content creator using this concept instead of Patreon, something like PatronSOL. The supporterts don’t lose money and support their favorite content creator. I would love to see an application like YouTube with this concept. Enjoying YouTube premium by staking SOL and the staking rewards going to the creator.

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You should start your own LST sometime for airforce folks :slight_smile:

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That’s a great idea bro, Air Force life :rofl:

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I think it will be cool JD, LST for veterans :fire:

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Yup. Great idea brother

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I love the idea that goes with Creator LSTs, plenty of possibilities we don’t even know about yet.

If pushing Creator LSTs is actually one of the main goals of Sanctum on its long term vision, it could really become something in the web3 ecosystem.

Personally interested in this. Lots of things can be done to create engagement, measure loyalty and rewards supporters.

Do we know if Sanctum will develop some tools to give creators a better way to create, market and push engagement/loyalty through these LSTs ?

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I guess with upcoming profile feature, you can make your own LST ser :grin:

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Yes! We’ve got some ideas and are speaking with creators to understand more about their pain points. Creators can fill up this form to indicate interest: https://forms.gle/1QaxyxM2GMuMPGQS9

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Have been thinking this idea too, but the hard thing is because not everyone understand crypto. If the marketing can reach out non-crypto people then it will be good

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Love this! thanks for posting this up cwchan! will something like greythornSOL be part of this creator LST?

Would love to go the pineSOL route on our research content here and was wondering what the best way forward is.

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Thanks will fill this !

If I understand it well, creators can choose the commission from 0 to 100%. Could we see different “commission tier” ?

Like for example if I swap SOL for cobieSOL, could cobieSOL have different tiers that would imply different perks ?

Tier 1 : 25%
Tier 2 : 50%
Tier 3 : 100%

I choose to give 50% of my yield to cobie, in exchange I get access to a private chat on his discord.

I choose to give 100% of my yield to cobie, in exchange I get access to a private call with cobie.

These kind of things, on a single creatorLST, would it be possible or not?

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Like for example if I swap SOL for cobieSOL, could cobieSOL have different tiers that would imply different perks ?

Tiered-commissions is a great idea actually, however it is not currently possible. The same commission rate applies to all holders of your LST. On this note, you (the creator) can decide on the commission, but we’d recommend 100% because it’s simpler for newbies to understand. E.g. You can always withdraw your initial ‘deposit’ at any time, and your yields goes to supporting the creator.

We recommend doing tiered memberships based on your supporters’ LST balance instead. For example:

  • Hold 1-5 cobieSOL for Tier 1 membership
  • Hold 5-10 cobieSOL for Tier 2 membership
  • etc.

That’s much easier to implement, and also much easier for anyone to understand!

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Would love to go the pineSOL route on our research content here and was wondering what the best way forward is.

Yes you’re right, we recommend a project/ firm to go with the pineSOL route. We are experimenting with a new suite of product to help earnest projects launch LSTs and build communities. Shoot me a DM and let’s chat! x.com

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I see yeah these tiers with LST balances work. But it’s capital oriented. Not a big problem itself but best would be to have both solutions.

If I have a 1k$ networth and I decide to support a creator by staking 2 SOL at 50% commission… That’s nice.

It wouldn’t be possible for sanctum to build a tool for this? People would give 100% commission, then the tool would distribute rewards based on what people opted for.

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Everything’s possible! We’ll get Creator LSTs started and see the appetite for something like this :+1:

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