Happy New Year, Champs!
2024 is over, and with it, a series of very fortunate events in AutoLayer. We’ve seen incredible growth in such a short span of time, and it’s all thanks to our wonderful community. Let’s recap the events of the year and celebrate all the milestones we’ve achieved.
LRTfi and LSTfi Products
AutoLayer officially launched in March of 2024, introducing new products and features centered around Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs) and Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs), all powered by EigenLayer. We introduced the 1-Click Restaking and 1-Click Staking features here, and the first LRTs that rolled out were from Renzo and Kelp DAO. More protocols were added as time went on, however.
Our First Events Before TGE
Once more LRTs and LSTs came in and our product lineup expanded, we focused our attention on our TGE by launching two campaigns to officially kick off the countdown.
Galactic Journey to Genesis
From April 18, 2024 to May 18, 2024, we went on a journey through the cosmos with the $LAY3R Galactic TGE Quest. It was a five-week adventure that gave users a chance to win one of our 800 exclusive Genesis NFTs by participating in quests, completing tasks, and restaking. The NFTs were successfully distributed when the campaign finished and were important to the LAY3R airdrop that happened later on.
We had multiple protocols and partners join the Galactic Journey, including Poolz, Carbon Browser, ParaSwap, Camelot DEX, PoolzBoost, Balancer, PIP, Chappyz, Serenity Shield, Kelp DAO, and Arbitrum News DAO (ANDAO).
AutoLayer Restaking Competition Season 1
Alongside the Galactic Journey, we also hosted Season 1 of our Restaking Competition! This ran from May 3, 2024 to June 30, 2024. Users climbed the leaderboard by restaking LRTs on AutoLayer and accumulating AutoLayer Points. The Top 25 restakers shared a prize pool that grew in proportion to how many milestones were achieved (which, in turn, was calculated by total volume.).
Season 1 managed to break through Milestone 3 with more than $40,000,000 in total volume, thus earning a total prize pool of $100,000 in LAY3R tokens.
Partnerships and Integrations
A lot of AutoLayer’s growth can be traced to all the integrations and partnerships we managed to build throughout the year! Some of them include Renzo Protocol, Camelot, Balancer, ParaSwap, UniSwap, ether.fi, Swell, Kelp DAO, Inception LRT, Linea, Nektar, Everclear, Base, Optimism, Merkl, PancakeSwap, and so much more!
Our ecosystem has grown so much since we started, and we’re ready for even more expansion in the future.
Ethereum and BNB Chain Expansion
AutoLayer initially started on the Arbitrum chain, but a huge factor in our rapid development was expanding to both the Ethereum mainnet and BNB Chain.
The Ethereum mainnet expansion happened last May 29, 2024, and brought new LRTs from ether.fi, Puffer Finance, Swell, PrimeStaked, ClayStack, Renzo Protocol, and Kelp DAO with it, constituting 70% of the market in just one app.
We went live on BNB Chain last June 21, 2024, opening AutoLayer to Binance users and introducing LRTs from Renzo Protocol and ether.fi. Over time, we managed to create our own next-gen LRT on the network, which we’ll talk about later.
AutoLayer Goes to EthCC
We were present during EthCC[7] at Brussels from July 8–12, 2024 where we got to meet the DeFi community, participate in insightful discussions and presentations, see several protocols showcase their progress, and enjoy good food and vibes all around.
Our CEO, Javi Blanco Thomas, had a keynote speech at Epic Web3’s Restaking and Infra Day (July 8) entitled “Restaking and LRTs: The Path Ahead.” He was also part of a panel discussion called “The Future of Liquid Staking and Restaking” also featuring other renowned members of the DeFi community. Next, he took part in the BNB Incubation Alliance event where he was, once again, the keynote speaker in “Restaking and LRTs on BNBChain: The Path Ahead.”
Alongside that, AutoLayer co-hosted a networking event with Morningstar Ventures, ParaSwap, and Tap Protocol, where builders, investors, and creators alike all got together to get drinks.
You can see the full details of our EthCC Recap here.
Endgame Events and IDOs
With LAY3R’s launch just around the corner, we amped things up by releasing a series of endgame campaigns to kickstart our TGE:
AutoLayer Summer Fest 2024
Summer Fest was another Galxe quest we launched with a $50,000 prize pool (in LAY3Rs) distributed to 1000 winners (Top 900 on the Galxe leaderboard + 100 random winners). The mechanics were similar to the Galactic Journey to Genesis quest, and we also had featured partners such as EverClear, EigenLayer, BNB Chain, Nektar, Kelp DAO, Linea, and Inception LRT.
Genesis NFT Giveaway for Social Media Champs
To show appreciation to our community, we also hosted a giveaway of our Genesis NFTs to the most active members across our social media channels (Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Medium). Our team selected the most active social media champs and distributed the NFTs 3 days before TGE.
We also launched IDOs on ChainGPT, DexCheck, GainsPad, Seedify, Magic Launchpad, and Poolz in anticipation of $LAY3R’s launch.
The LAY3R Launch
The biggest milestone of the year was easily $LAY3R’s launch. It was finally made available (and still is — trade some LAY3R now!) on major trading platforms such as KuCoin, Gate.io, and MEXC at the start of October 2024, with Season 1 Phase 1 Claims and Staking starting on October 7th and trading on November 10th. At launch, there was some initial instability, but $LAY3R still ended up among the Top New Coins and gainers on KuCoin, even reaching #1 at certain points. $LAY3R Season 1 unlocked 0.82% of the total token supply, and the highlights from our Season 1 snapshot were as follows:
📈 $245M in volume traded
🥇 138M+ AutoLayer Points Accumulated
🔗 Almost 400K Transactions Processed
🚀 Almost 100K new users onboarded
There was an important change made to $LAY3R’s Season 1 claims and trading due to market conditions, which was staggering the Season 1 distribution into 3 phases (Nov. 10, 2024, Dec. 10, 2024; and Jan. 10, 2025). To make up for it, we gave users the option to stake their LAY3R allocation and receive a 25% bonus. The Genesis NFTs were also distributed in full starting in the first phase. You can read more details about the LAY3R launch by clicking here.
The Burning Cycle
The LAY3R launch marked a major turning point for us, and we prepared ourselves for a long road ahead. We started a program called The Burning Cycle that burned 10% of our LAY3R supply through various initiatives and its goal was to benefit our loyal LAY3R holders and add value to the community.
This was kicked off by the Burn Baby Burn campaign in collaboration with TaskOn. 93,000 participants witnessed the LAY3R burn and 50 of them shared a total prize pool of 500 USDT. Overall, 700k $LAY3R tokens were burned and left circulation, which meant a leaner supply for stronger value.
Introducing the Next-Gen LRT: AuBNB
Our last big splash of the year was introducing the most advanced LRT to date: AuBNB, the Next-Gen LRT. It combined institutional-grade $BNB collateral, seamless cross-chain transfers via XERC-20, and a multi-layered reward engine for optimized DeFi strategies. AuBNB went live on December 6, 2024, and already neared max capacity in less than a week! More detailed information about AuBNB can be found in our documentation.
Supporting the AuBNB launch was a quest on TaskOn that started on December 5, 2024 and will end in January 10 of this year. The total prize pool amounts to 25,000 LAY3Rs and there will be 200 winners of 125 LAY3R tokens each.
AuBNB has a bright future ahead, especially considering that the LRT has a multi-phase launch, with the next phase introducing additional incentives, removing the maximum cap and shifting $LAY3R token rewards to programmatic incentives, supporting a more sustainable reward structure to the ecosystem and benefitting the Binance community long-term.
The LIP Program
Besides the AuBNB launch, we also launched our Liquidity Incentivized Program with a reward pool of 450,000 $LAY3R tokens, and the program itsef is capable of generating up to 1657% APR. This was a joint effort between Merkl, PancakeSwap, and AutoLayer. Claim your rewards on Merkl by providing liquidity to the Cake-LP WBNB/LAY3R pool on BNB Chain.
More details here.
AI Agents Arriving Soon
News of this technically came out in 2025, but we’ve made teasers of it just before the New Year. We’re currently working on a new feature that will be released with the next iteration of AutoLayer: AI Agents. They are AI-driven assets that operate within the crypto marketplace and have their own profiles and analytics to help users understand what value they bring.
2025 is shaping up to be another great year for AutoLayer and the DeFi landscape in general. But we wouldn’t be where we are without all the people that helped support us — from our partners, our investors, our community, and our team. Thanks to all of you for making 2024 wonderful. Now, on to the next!
About AutoLayer
AutoLayer is the largest restaking marketplace with advanced risk-reward analytics, points management, and structured products. Hosting a full suite of LRTs, LSTs, and other 1-click products that users can restake into, AutoLayer offers more than 20 different assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum restaking.
