Stride Labs Raises Funds from the Interchain Foundation to Build the First IBC Eureka-powered DeFi Platform

The Interchain Foundation (ICF), a Swiss non-profit that advances interoperable, sustainable, and community-owned decentralized software in the Cosmos ecosystem

The Interchain Foundation (ICF) has made an investment in liquid staking protocol, Stride.

The investment will enable the protocol to launch the first installment of a new generation of decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Cosmos Hub with the support of IBC Eureka for instant multi-chain swaps.

This DEX, named Stride Swap, will be a synergistic liquidity engine for all of IBC Eureka. As new Eureka assets appear, liquidity in Stride Swap will enable users to instantly swap assets like ETH, SOL, and USDT with Cosmos-native tokens like ATOM and USDC.

This is also crucial for Eureka’s expansion into Ethereum L2s and other chains without instant finality, for which Stride Swap will provide the liquidity that solvers and fillers need to perform instant on-boarding and transfers to users, capitals, exchanges, and more.

With Eureka’s new bridging rails and Stride’s smart liquidity infrastructure, the Cosmos Hub becomes a frictionless economic center of a truly multi-chain Internet of Blockchains. This marks a major inflection point for Cosmos DeFi, offering a user experience that rivals centralized platforms — but fully decentralized, composable, and chain-agnostic.

The DEX has already begun development and is set to release in the following months. It will be complementary to Stride’s current liquid staking features, which will remain as a standalone product.

Additionally, Stride Protocol will retain STRD as their sole governing token. The protocol will deploy customizable and permissionless hooks, multi-chain swaps, liquidity pools, built-in vaults, hyper-optimized liquidity for Eureka routes, white-glove token deployment, dynamic fees, and other DeFi primitives on top of IBC Eureka’s multi-chain bridging solution.

Its close relationship with the Cosmos Hub will benefit the DEX with multi-chain liquidity access and easy connections to hundreds of chains via IBC, including the recent addition of Ethereum.

As the first multi-chain service on the Cosmos Hub, Stride Swap will deliver efficient routing and liquidity across all Eureka-connected assets — establishing a foundational DeFi primitive for the Hub. This liquidity layer is essential for building and scaling the Cosmos Hub’s emerging application and multi-chain service ecosystem.

Stride will be collaborating with Interchain Labs as a key design partner for the Hub’s upcoming permissionless VM, which will enable developers to deploy multi-chain applications and services that can tap into Eureka’s distribution and Stride’s liquidity infrastructure.

Highlighting its expertise in decentralized finance within the Cosmos and IBC ecosystem, Stride’s liquid staking protocol deployed in 2022 has quickly become one of the core application blockchains on the network.

Stride provides Liquid Staking Token functionality to networks and users that today total over 136,000 users and over $35 million in total value locked.

Magnhus Mareneck, Co-CEO of Interchain Labs said: “We are excited to work together with the Stride team to bring a core primitive for DeFi to flourish in Cosmos: an IBC-native DEX, directly on the Cosmos Hub. While IBC Eureka provides the rails and routing to access any protocol anywhere, we need a core liquidity hub to trade multi-chain seamlessly, and we are excited to see the array of new applications this will enable around the Cosmos Hub”.

Riley Edmunds, co-founder of Stride said: “With Stride Swap, we’re expanding our product suite while narrowing our focus to the chain that’s always been at the heart of our journey. IBC provides the rails to reach any chain — and Stride will provide the liquidity to trade seamlessly across them. The Cosmos Hub was the first network Stride supported, back in 2022. Today, we’re doubling down to help the Hub realize its original vision — to be the economic center of Cosmos. This partnership with the Interchain Foundation reflects years of earned trust and mutual alignment. When the Hub wins, Stride wins. And when Stride wins, the Hub does too.”

Josh Cincinnati, President of the Interchain Foundation’s Council said: “The Interchain Foundation is dedicated to the expansion of the Cosmos ecosystem, which includes making Cosmos the best place to build across chains. This collaboration with Stride plants a seed for the new builders and projects to do just that, starting with one of blockchain’s core primitives: finance, now made fully multi-chain by Stride Swap and IBC”.

This investment supports an open and competitive environment, enabling other DEX/DeFi options to emerge and compete, while ensuring that a high-quality trusted option, Stride, is available for users of the Cosmos Hub and IBC.

The Stride protocol will deploy its DEX functionalities in the Cosmos Hub in the coming months. Stride Labs also intends to implement other synergistic dynamics between Stride and the Cosmos Hub that may include ATOM token buy-backs and burns via the Stride protocol’s revenue.

Additionally, Stride is exploring moving its