In Brief:
- LOAD/SOL staking on Loadout goes live Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. UTC, and 100M LOAD has been set aside for rewards across two years.
- Emissions are highest at the start and taper off over time. According to the team, the goal is deeper liquidity, which means better trade execution and less slippage.
- The staking launch comes roughly two weeks after the protocol went live on Solana on Oct. 12, and follows a pause on game launches that started Oct. 15.
Starting Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. UTC, Loadout users can stake LOAD/SOL, with 100M LOAD allocated to rewards over a two-year period.
Loadout revealed the program in a post on X. “Stake to earn your share while building deeper liquidity for better trade execution and less slippage,” the team wrote.
LOAD/SOL staking opens 27 October at 6pm UTC.
We’re putting 100M LOAD into rewards over two years. Stake to earn your share while building deeper liquidity for better trade execution and less slippage.
Emissions start highest and decrease over time.
Choose flexible@LoadoutView on X ↗
Most of the rewards come early. “Emissions start highest and decrease over time,” the post said, so people who stake first collect the biggest slice of emissions. The post mentions a flexible option for stakers too, but doesn’t say what the lock terms or reward rates are.
Liquidity comes first
Because LOAD is paired with SOL, rewards are tied to how deep liquidity runs in the token’s main market. After launching on Loadout’s own bonding curve, LOAD moved into a Meteora pool.
A sniper deterrent was built into that launch: trading fees opened as high as 99% and dropped to 5% over roughly 60 seconds.
The Solana launch of Loadout took place on Oct. 12. Anyone who linked a Solana wallet and an X account during the Season 0 campaign was able to claim XP that counts toward LOAD rewards.
Staking was already planned
This week’s announcement had been on the roadmap for a while. In mid-October, the team said its goals for the next four to six weeks were better liquidity, the introduction of staking and a bigger game pipeline.
LOAD is the platform’s utility token, used for referral rewards, trading rewards and staking. A portion of platform fees funds automatic buybacks and burns of LOAD.
The team’s tokens are locked for 12 months, then vest linearly over the following 12. Investors received 5% of their allocation at TGE, and the other 95% vests across six months.
Coming back from the pause
The news follows a difficult first week. Loadout paused launches on Oct. 15 so it could fix issues on the platform.
“We want launches back up and running as soon as possible,” Loadout said then. “We’re designing new anti-snipe, brought on another developer to work on staking, and have started building permissionless launches.”
Launches are now starting again. The team said Lo and Behold, a cozy roguelike from Soulcraft Games, was set to arrive on the launchpad during the week of Oct. 21. According to Loadout, the game has 13,000 Steam wishlists.
Inside the launchpad
Loadout was founded by Kieran Warwick, co-founder of Illuvium ILV $3.10 ▼ -9.6% (official site), and the Illuvium team built it for indie and AA studios. A studio that wants to issue a bonding-curve token must first hand over a playable demo, design documents, team details, a roadmap and a funding plan.
The platform has no presales, private rounds or VC discounts. Every trade has a 5% fee, split into 4% for the game’s treasury and 1% for the platform. When a project reaches 85 SOL it graduates, and its liquidity is moved into a locked Meteora DLMM pool.
Games on the platform don’t need to revolve around tokens, and they can release on Steam, consoles or other platforms.
Warwick has called “capital formation as one of the most practically useful things crypto can offer the gaming industry.”