1.2 $BARD Staking

Overview

BARD staking is available on Ethereum mainnet. When you stake BARD, your tokens are deposited into a Mellow vault and you receive stBARD, a vault share that increases in redeemable BARD over time. Staking contributes collateral to a Symbiotic-powered cryptoeconomic guarantee layer that complements Chainlink CCIP for cross-chain LBTC transfers.

How to Stake $BARD

Staking is straightforward through the Lombard app:

1. Connect Wallet: Visit app.lombard.finance and connect your Ethereum wallet

2. Approve $BARD: Authorize the staking contract to use your tokens

3. Enter Amount: Choose how much $BARD to stake

4. Confirm Transaction: Pay gas fees and receive stBARD

5. Track Rewards: Monitor your growing position in the dashboard

You receive stBARD, a liquid staking token that automatically appreciates in value as rewards accrue. No claiming needed - your stBARD simply becomes redeemable for more $BARD over time. The app shows your stBARD balance, live APY, and status of any pending exits.

What Your Stake Secures

LBTC moves across chains using CCIP. Lombard adds an extra guarantee layer by routing staked BARD into Symbiotic, where it backs a monitoring/alerting network that engages whenever LBTC is transferred cross-chain. If transfers proceed correctly, stakers earn programmatic rewards; Symbiotic's design keeps funds slash-eligible over a defined window to cover failures, aligning economic incentives with secure interoperability.

Two Symbiotic vaults were launched for this system:

• LINK vault: Capped at $100M

• BARD vault: Capped at 20M BARD

These vaults serve as the collateral base for the monitoring network that validates LBTC transfers.

Rewards Structure

Automatic Accrual

Rewards are paid in BARD and auto-compound inside the vault. Accrual happens by increasing the stBARD → BARD exchange rate, not by sending periodic payouts. If you hold 1,000 stBARD and the exchange rate moves from 1.00 to 1.08 BARD per stBARD, you will be able to redeem 1,080 BARD, without ever claiming anything manually.

Epoch	Duration	APY	Status
Epoch 1	Days 0-10.5	240%	Highest rewards for early stakers
Epoch 2	Days 10.5-21	120%	Transitional high yields
Epoch 3	Days 21-31.5	60%	Moderate sustainable yields
Epoch 4+	Day 31.5 onward	30%	Long-term sustainable rate

Additional Benefits

Beyond APY rewards, stakers receive:

• Symbiotic Points: Earn points in Symbiotic's ecosystem

• Mellow Points: Accumulate Mellow Finance rewards

• Lux Multiplier: 5,000 bonus Lux for staking 100+ $BARD in a single transaction (live since 18 Sep 2025, 10:00 UTC)

Unstaking and Withdrawals

Unstaking requires a 21-day waiting period:

1. Initiate Unstaking: Select amount to withdraw - position stops earning rewards

2. Enter Queue: Each unstake request has its own countdown

3. Wait Period: 21-day security cooldown

4. Claim $BARD: After maximum 21 days, redeem back to BARD

Multiple unstaking requests can be active simultaneously. You can continue accruing on the portion that remains staked while another portion waits in its exit window.

Note: Withdrawals are processed at the end of the next epoch, so some requests may be processed earlier depending on how far along the current epoch is. During the exit window, funds remain slash-eligible under Symbiotic until the epoch closes.

Protocol architecture

BARD staking integrates three layers: the Mellow vault, the Symbiotic restaking network, and Chainlink CCIP. Together, they secure LBTC transfers across chains.

1. On the source chain, LBTC is burned when a transfer is initiated.

2. Chainlink CCIP’s Committing DON records the burn and transmits it to the destination chain.

3. Before minting on the destination, CCIP checks Lombard’s Token Developer Attestation (LTA), which validates that the burn was legitimate.

4. In parallel, the Symbiotic network monitors both sides (burn and mint). It runs an independent alerting process, comparing events and flagging anomalies.

5. If the Symbiotic network detects a mismatch, an alert is raised and slash eligibility applies to the collateral in the BARD and LINK vaults.

6. stBARD positions remain slash-eligible until the end of an epoch, aligning the unstake flow with the monitoring window.

This architecture means that CCIP itself is unchanged, but Lombard adds an external cryptoeconomic layer around it. stBARD and Symbiotic effectively act as an economic insurance mechanism: if cross-chain execution fails, staked collateral can be penalized.

The contracts used include:

• Mellow Vault (ERC-4626): manages deposits, shares, and withdrawals.

• Withdrawal Queue: handles pending and claimable exits, ensuring the 21-day cooldown.

• Symbiotic Integration: enforces slash eligibility and collateral caps (20M BARD, 100M LINK).

• CCIP + Attestation API: guarantees that burns are validated before mints.

By combining these components, BARD staking creates the first production system where restaked collateral actively secures a cross-chain Bitcoin asset.

Contracts and verification

• BARD (ERC-20): 0xf0DB65D17e30a966C2ae6A21f6BBA71cea6e9754

• stBARD (ERC-20): 0x4B266366dc8fF4c0007943a679CBa1fDB845f98D

Always use the official links published by Lombard and verify contract addresses in App. If an address in your wallet or on an explorer does not match what the app shows, do not proceed.