sMON in Action: How Liquid Staking is Powering Monad DeFi Across Bean, Nostra, and Caddy
Posted April 28, 2025
Kintsu’s vision for liquid staking goes beyond passive yield. With sMON, users gain access to a capital-efficient, composable asset that unlocks real utility across the Monad ecosystem, even during the testnet phase.
Our newest visual campaign, the Kintsu Water Park, highlights how users can actively put sMON to work across three integrated protocols: Bean, Nostra, and Caddy. Each protocol represents a different DeFi primitive: DEXs, Lending, and Options and together, they demonstrate what it means to build with liquid staking at the core.
What is sMON?
sMON is the LST users receive when they stake MON through Kintsu. It represents staked MON that continues to earn protocol staking rewards, while also being transferable and usable across DeFi applications.
By holding sMON, users maintain exposure to staking yield while gaining access to lending markets, trading venues, and structured products.
Where can you use sMON today?
All three integrations below are already live on Monad testnet, and each allows users to deploy sMON into DeFi strategies without giving up staking rewards.
Bean Exchange: Trade and provide liquidity with sMON
Swap MON and sMON: Bean supports direct swaps between MON and sMON, enabling users to enter and exit staking positions flexibly while retaining yield.
Provide liquidity with sMON: Users can LP with sMON pairs and earn trading fees without losing staking rewards, making liquidity provision more capital-efficient.
Composable trading infrastructure: As a core DEX on Monad, Bean supports integrations and routing that make sMON a default asset for broader DeFi flows.
Why it matters: Traders and liquidity providers benefit from deeper pools and sustained yield, while sMON gains visibility as a native trading asset in Monad’s DEX layer.
Nostra Finance — Lend, borrow, and increase capital efficiency with sMON
Lend sMON: Users can deposit sMON into lending markets, earning protocol interest on top of the staking rewards it already generates.
Borrow against sMON: Unlock liquidity without selling or unstaking by using sMON as collateral, enabling users to enter leveraged or looping strategies. Users can leverage their sMON to borrow more MON, stake it on Kintsu, and lend it on Nostra for additional protocol interest.
Maintain staking exposure: All activity involving sMON continues to accrue underlying staking rewards via Kintsu’s compounding mechanism.
Why it matters: This unlocks an entirely new level of capital efficiency, where staked assets are no longer locked, but instead deployed productively into borrowing strategies.
Caddy Finance — Earn market-driven yield via options using sMON
Trade options with sMON: Caddy now supports a market for sMON options, allowing users to participate in volatility and yield strategies with their staked capital.
No lockups or cooldowns: Positions are liquid and configurable, users can write or buy options without needing to exit staking positions.
Stack yield layers: Earn from both protocol staking and options premiums by putting sMON into structured products.
Vault yields: Deposit sMON into the DeFi Yield vaults and generate additional yields. (to be announced soon)
Why it matters: Caddy enables more advanced users to earn yield without understanding the complex of options by creating one click option yield vaults, making sMON a truly composable financial primitive.
This campaign isn’t waiting for mainnet to demonstrate value. All of the above use cases are live today on testnet, and importantly, sMON is already earning staking rewards.
