Talisman <> Bifrost Liquid Staking Partnership

About Talisman
Talisman is a Polkadot and EVM Wallet used by over 130,000 users for self-custody management, holding over $500M worth of assets. Talisman also provides a web application called Talisman Portal, where users can discover and manage staking positions from a number of selected providers. Talisman has grown to become one of the largest staking businesses in Polkadot managing over $40M in staked DOT and offering nomination pool staking on several other chains. Talisman nomination pools have the unique feature of autocompounding, which allows users to receive rewards compounded into their staked funds automatically and without transaction fees. For all staking protocols, our staking interface provides an intuitive and user-friendly way to discover assets to stake, making it simple for beginners to use and powerful for professionals.

Talisman Portal Staking Dashboard showing options for MANTA and GLMR Bifrost Liquid Staking at http://app.talisman.xyz/staking

Talisman recently launched Quests, missions for users to complete using the Talisman Wallet. Quests are often centred around ecosystem campaigns and often include educational guides that help explore the ecosystem across the full user experience from Swaps for getting the ecosystem assets, to cross-chain bridging, and through to staking. With the introduction of XP rewards, Talisman provides incentives and rewards for users to participate in many stages of the process and with Wallet Mining users get XP rewards on top of staking rewards for certain assets.

Talisman Quests Page

By combining our Staking Dashboard with Quests, Talisman has the ability to help users discover new staking opportunities and incentivise them to stake with us.

Bifrost Integration into Talisman Staking Dashboard
Integrating Bifrost's liquid staking assets into Talisman has already begun, with vGLMR from Bifrost being Talisman's recommended option for staking GLMR and vMANTA as our recommended option for Manta Staking. The integration allows users to easily discover, stake and manage their position for Bifrost's liquid staking in the Talisman Portal. In future, we intend to integrate further liquid staking assets such as vETH and vDOT.

Staking Drawer on Talisman Portal, showing UI for Bifrost vMANTA liquid staking

As a wallet company, we manage more than staking. With users natively managing their portfolio, accounts, and securely managing assets, Talisman is in a unique position to provide a native experience for Bifrost liquid staking. Currently all staking options are provided in the Portal, however over time we plan to incorporate this functionality into the wallet itself through a ‘‘one click staking’ feature. This work has already begun for nomination pool staking and will be released in the near future. Other staking protocols such as Bifrost Liquid Staking will be integrated with this functionality over the longer term, allowing convenient staking right in the wallet. Talisman is currently actively building out our cross chain swap aggregator, which allows users to swap assets from EVM networks to the Polkadot ecosystem cheaply and conveniently. This enables users to easily bring liquidity from EVM into Polkadot, and access hard-to-get assets like MANTA and TAO, allowing people to easily participate in staking protocols like Bifrost Liquid Staking.

Talisman Portal’s Cross-chain Swap feature. The feature is being actively developed with new routes and swap providers integrated.

Value Proposition and Goal of the Partnership
The value proposition for Bifrost through our integration lies in leveraging Talisman's staking offering as a recommended option for our user base and co-marketing across our Quests and ecosystem campaigns to inform and facilitate uptake. Through our Quests wallet mining campaigns, users will be incentivised to hold vGLMR and vMANTA currently, and in future other liquid staking assets such as vETH and vDOT (see details below).

There is also further benefit in Talisman providing a more extensive user experience, from discovery of the assets to be staked as well as pathways to swap and bridge to get them. The user reaps many benefits by having the ability to stake all their assets from a single dashboard alongside other crypto functionality.

By partnering with us, Bifrost will benefit from growth but also the intuitive guided experience for stakers, and our trusted reputation in the staking community. Following successful launch of liquid staking for the MANTA and GLMR assets, we will expand the portfolio to other Bifrost assets. Most importantly among these are vETH and vDOT. vETH ties in well with Talisman’s intention to grow further into the EVM space, while vDOT underlines our ongoing involvement in the Polkadot ecosystem. We expect to begin integration of these staking methods over the next few months with vETH scheduled for September and vDOT for October 2024.

Target Commission Rate
We are applying for a commission rate set at 50% of the protocol's commission. Given our anticipated staked AUM this rate provides modest revenue to support the build of features and support for the user experience.

Integrating vGLMR was approximately a day of work by our designer,and a week of work for an engineer, and integrating vMANTA was approximately another 3 days of engineering work. This amounts to a total investment from the Talisman team of more than US$4000. We expect that integrating further assets for staking will involve similar or slightly reduced costs depending on the difficulty or any differences to the existing ones. Integrating these staking assets into our wallet (as opposed to the Portal) will also incur similar workloads; as our wallet code architecture is quite different to the Portal, and most code can’t be reused across products.

Commission Receiving Bifrost Address
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Growth and Community
Talisman can support Bifrost's growth as well as support for its community through several key initiatives:

• Discovery: integrating Bifrost Liquid Staking tokens as recommended staking options for Talisman users (already complete for GLMR and MANTA in the Portal Staking Dashboard, soon to be ready for ETH and DOT).
• Manta Campaign: as part of our campaign and quests with Manta, we'll add educational guidance and streamlined UX for the steps along the way to staking, including how to get MANTA, bridging to Bifrost and staking within Talisman.
  • 1 x UI updates, including guidance information in the UI for users on how to stake with Bifrost
  • 1 x inclusion in Manta Quest: outlined steps and guide in our Quests for staking Manta with Bifrost
  • 1 x video
  • 1 x article and
  • 2 x posts to deep dive on staking and the overall campaign on how to get Manta then stake
  • 1 x Twitter space (a panel with Manta and Bifrost)
  • On top of this we will add Quests XP rewards for the steps along the way including holding MANTA, bridging and staking to get vMANTA to further encourage discovery and growth.

Talisman Quest design for Bifrost MANTA staking wallet mining quest

• vETH campaign: Following integration of the vETH asset for liquid staking in the Portal, we’ll produce a Quest similar to the one described above for vMANTA but for vETH, with a similar marketing campaign around it.
• User experience: with native integration from wallet to asset, staking within Talisman can provide an easy to use option for newer users to Bifrost
• Incentives: as part of Talisman Quests, we'd like to also offer XP rewards for users liquid staking on Bifrost, in addition to their staking rewards
• Support and guidance: The Talisman community is one of the most active and helpful communities for support, and with that comes support for Bifrost staking. As a wallet and staking provider, Talisman is often users’ gateway to interaction with blockchains - this means that Talisman is the first call for support when people have issues. Our expert support team will respond to users’ questions and help guide them through the steps along the way to support the integration within Talisman.

Talisman aims to support Bifrost's liquid staking growth and adoption and facilitate the pathways to the Bifrost ecosystem. We believe this partnership offers a great opportunity for Talisman users to discover the yield opportunities available in Bifrost's ecosystem, and for Bifrost investors to gain value from Talisman's ecosystem reach.

Thank you for considering our proposal.