Hydration Newsletter: Mar / Apr 2025
Breaking $0.2B TVL, GIGADOT Launch, Polkadot GIGAHydration
Welcome to the March/April edition of Hydration Newsletter—our bi-monthly update covering developments since the beginning of the year. The first four months of 2025 have seen Hydration reach new heights, with our Total Value Locked (TVL) surpassing $200 million, the successful launch of GIGADOT, the proposed Polkadot Hydration Campaign, and continued value distribution to HDX stakers.
Our recent momentum has caught the attention of the broader Polkadot community, with Hydration featured in a Polkadot Twitter Space titled "Why is Everyone Talking about Hydration?" This recognition underscores the growing role Hydration is playing in advancing DeFi on Polkadot.
Read on for the highlights of an exciting start to 2025.
Hydration Breaks $0.2B TVL
In a significant milestone for Hydration and Polkadot DeFi, our Total Value Locked (TVL) has surpassed $200M. This rapid growth reflects increasing confidence in Hydration's infrastructure and the expanding utility of our platform.
The growth in TVL has been driven by several factors:
Successful launch of GIGADOT, attracting significant capital
Introduction of new assets to the Omnipool
Expansion of our borrowing capabilities
Strategic incentives through the Polkadot Hydration Farms
This achievement positions Hydration as the leading DeFi protocol in the Polkadot ecosystem and demonstrates the growing adoption of capital-efficient DeFi solutions.
GIGADOT: DOT Evolution Unleashed
On April 16th, we successfully launched GIGADOT, a capital-efficient token that combines DOT exposure with yields from staking, lending, trading fees, and incentives in one place.
GIGADOT represents a significant evolution in how DOT can be utilized in DeFi, solving the fundamental dilemma DOT holders have long faced: whether to stake tokens for network security rewards or deploy them in DeFi to participate in the ecosystem's growth.
Under the hood, GIGADOT utilizes Hydration's Stablepool technology with a drifting peg mechanism to account for the inherent value drift between vDOT and aDOT. From a user perspective, the technical complexity is completely abstracted away – users simply interact with GIGADOT as a single token that combines multiple yield sources:
Staking Rewards (~11.85% APR) through the vDOT component
Lending Interest via the aDOT component
Trading Fees from the vDOT-aDOT pool
DeFi Incentives from Hydration and Polkadot treasuries
GIGADOT is now available on Hydration and can be accessed at app.hydration.net/strategies/gigadot.
Polkadot GIGAHydration Proposal
We recently published a proposal on Polkadot OpenGov to allocate 5M DOT from the Polkadot Treasury towards liquidity incentives on Hydration. The proposed incentives buckets are stablecoins, AMM LPs, and GIGADOT. If approved, this will extend the original Polkadot Hydration Campaign which has been running for almost 1 year now.
Find out more and vote on our proposal here.
New Assets and Integrations
The Hydration ecosystem continues to grow with the addition of several high-profile assets and new integrations:
New Bluechip Assets:
SKY (SkyEcosystem, formerly Maker) is now available for trading on the Hydration Omnipool
LINK (Chainlink) has been added to the Omnipool, bringing another major blockchain project to Polkadot DeFi
tBTC is now available to supply as collateral or to borrow on Hydration
Turtle v3 Integration: Turtle has launched v3 with swap functionality powered by Hydration. Users can now swap and transfer from Hydration to any parachain in one seamless flow. This integration, powered by Paraspell's SDK, represents a significant step toward frictionless cross-chain interactions. Check out Turtle here.
Catch-up: January/February Updates
We missed sharing our January/February newsletter, so here's a recap of important developments from earlier this year:
HDX Buybacks and Staker Rewards
Our commitment to returning value to HDX stakers continues with the ongoing distribution of 197,084,881 HDX to stakers over a 25-week period. This distribution, approved through Referendum 7, has boosted the HDX staking APR by approximately 27.9%, resulting in a combined staking APR exceeding 30% for the distribution period.
Additionally, the community has approved a series of HDX buybacks for 2025, with an initial budget of 10,000 H2O (worth approximately $325,000 at current prices). Following the success of the first two tranches, we have now completed two additional buyback tranches, continuing our methodical approach to sustainable value creation throughout the year.
HOLLAR Development
Following our announcement in March, development of HOLLAR—our upcoming decentralized, overcollateralized stablecoin—continues to progress.
Having successfully completed the security audit, we are currently finalizing preparations for the launch on our public testnet.
HOLLAR will complete our vision of uniting trading, lending, and stablecoin infrastructure under one roof. Stay tuned for announcements about the testnet launch and opportunities to provide feedback.
KSM and SOL Integration
Following the approval and execution of Referendum 31, KSM was added to the Omnipool, making Kusama's native token available for trading on Polkadot. SOL has also been added to Hydration, furthering our cross-chain capabilities.
New Deposit Flow
We've launched a new deposit flow to streamline onboarding to Hydration. Users are now guided through a process whether they're depositing from centralized exchanges, another chain, or via credit card through our integrations with Banxa and Harbour.
Check it out here.
Polkadot Hydration Farms
We've made adjustments to our Polkadot Hydration Farms to optimize incentives and liquidity through a series of three coordinated referenda (#28, #29, and #30). We've also launched two new farms:
tBTC - with up to 200% APR, targeting 30% APR on $2,222,222 liquidity
AAVE - with up to 250% APR, targeting 25% APR on approximately $1M liquidity
Looking Ahead
Our momentum continues to build. The successful launch of GIGADOT and our growing TVL provide a strong foundation for continued development throughout 2025. We're particularly excited about the upcoming HOLLAR launch and continued expansion of our ecosystem. Stay tuned for more updates, and as always—stay hydrated! 🚰