Background

Argo is the premier liquid staking protocol built on top of the Cronos blockchain that aims to unlock the value of all staked CRO and maximize the capital efficiency of CRO across the Crypto.com ecosystem.

Currently, CRO staking is and has been a very attractive and low on top of your CRO holdings, offering users 10-risk way of earning yields 12% APY on staked CRO. However, staked CRO are essentially locked up and inaccessible to stakers. Stakers their CRO will have to wait for a 28who wish to unstake days unbonding period before their CRO becomes accessible again.

Argo offers an alternative to this with CRO liquid staking, improving capital efficiency without compromising network security. This is made possible through the issuance of bonded CRO ("bCRO") which is a liquid staking derivative that represents your staked CRO and can be utilized across the DeFi ecosystem in Cronos to generate additional DeFi yields.

Argo offers two main products:

1. CRO Liquid Staking Argo is the premier liquid staking protocol built on top of the Cronos blockchain. You can easily stake your CRO on Argo in a single click and receive bonded CRO tokens (“bCRO”) in return.

• bCRO can be subsequently used across decentralized finance (DeFi) applications across Cronos and accrue additional DeFi yields on top of CRO staking yields, essentially double-dipping and improving your capital efficiency.

• You can withdraw your CRO anytime by unstaking and waiting for the unlock period. Alternatively, you can directly swap bCRO back to CRO on the secondary market.

2. Argo DeFi Vaults Argo DeFi Vaults is Cronos' first one-click yield optimizer for single-sided staking CRO and allows users to earn higher APR than simply staking their CRO.

• Argo's liquid staking module made it possible for users to enjoy earning CRO staking yields on Cronos and opens up the possibility of earning DeFi yields on top of that.

• Argo's DeFi Vaults run strategies that aim to maximize the CRO staking yields earned by users who staked their CRO on Argo.

CRO Liquid Staking

Liquid staking on Argo is an alternative to traditional staking with a validator. It allows you to stake your CRO on Argo and receive bonded CRO ("bCRO"). bCRO that you receive represents your staked CRO and acts as a receipt, allowing you to exchange them later on for your staked CRO and the earned rewards. bCRO is a liquid, tokenized representation of the Staker’s staked CRO. bCRO enables stakers to gain liquidity over their staked CRO and enables the l ocked value of the staked CRO to be utilized across decentralized finance applications across Cronos.

Benefits of Simplicity Argo Liquid Staking:

Argo offers a simple and one Cronos. click liquid staking feature for users to stake CRO on Currently, there are no CRO staking option on Cronos. Argo not only makes it possible to stake CRO on Cronos but extremely easy and seamless as well.

Capital Efficiency

With a fully liquid derivative token (bCRO), users are opened up to the possibility of using their staked assets across other DeFi applications. Users no longer have to choose between staking CRO (locking up CRO) or using that asset value as liquidity across decentralized exchanges or provided as collateral in lending platform can now earn DeFi yields on top of staking yields!

Instant Liquidity

Users do not have to wait for the 28 days unbonding period to unstake their CRO and get back their assets in their wallets. Instead, bCRO can be immediately swapped for CRO across secondary markets such as decentralized exchanges.

The Argo Team believes the secondary market will be extremely attractive to two stakeholders in the Cronos ecosystem:

1. Stakers: Stakers who wants instant liquidity Immediately swap your bCRO to CRO without waiting for the 28 days period across our DEX partners.

2. bCRO <> CRO A rbitragers: Since instant liquidity to swap bCRO to CRO will result in CRO trading at a premium (liquidity premium) to bCRO. Arbitragers who are bullish about CRO can essentially buy bCRO at a discount and go through the normal 28 days unbonding period to receive more CRO after the unbonding period ends.

Diversified Validator Management

Their Validator Delegation Strategy aims to optimize staking returns and reduce slashing risks a s we spread the staked CRO across multiple high quality validators.

Reduced Slashing Risks

Argo diversifies all staked CRO across a multitude of whitelisted high quality validators who were selected based on meeting certain threshold performance criteria (Uptime, Commission %, self-staking, Oracke Sign %)

With Argo liquid staking solution, users are delegating their CRO to a multitude of validators rather than just one. Due to the fungibility of bCRO, the cost of slashing is thus spread across multiple protocols. This design is inspired by the Bonded Asset (bAsset) design of Anchor Protocol on Terra.

Argo DeFi Vaults

Argo secondary core product is the Argo DeFi Vaults. Argo will be implementing proprietary strategy vaults to optimize CRO yields. Argo DeFi Vaults will be a significant gamechanger to the dynamics of CRO staking and introduce automated strategies such as auto-compounding and auto yield harvesting.

How will Argo DeFi Vaults Work?

Their vaults aim to solve this problem by providing users with DeFi strategies using liquid staking bCRO.

By utilizing their vaults, users will have access to:

• Optimal yields from a set of curated protocols across the ecosystem

• Easy One-Click Delegation from CRO for strategies that would otherwise require multiple steps to manage

• Auto-Compounding and position management so users don't have to worry about this process daily, it is automated.

Token Economics $ARGO

$ARGO token is the native token of Argo. It is designed to capture a portion of their protocol's revenues, as such, its intrinsic value should and will scale according to Argo's TVL.

Total Supply:

ARGO has a total fixed supply token capped at 1,000,000,000 $ARGO

Design Principles

Argo is guided by 5 key principles, which inspires the design of their token:

• Provides clear utility (and a redemption mechanism) for governance tokens

• Stabilizes and grows the price of the governance token

• Incentivizes deposits of LPs effectively according to ecosystem needs

• Promotes sustainable growth in protocol wealth

• Aligns incentives for long-term holders Vs. mercenary capital