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Tenderize — tLPT (Liquid Staking for Livepeer on Arbitrum)

Tenderize built a general-purpose liquid staking system ("Tender Protocol") with a Livepeer integration. The Livepeer derivative is a rebasing token (tLPT) whose balance tracks a pro‑rata claim on the pool’s underlying staked LPT.

This dossier focuses on: did Tenderize increase unique small delegators / participants? (and what we can prove from on-chain logs).

On-chain deployment (Arbitrum One)​

Source of addresses: Tenderize app config + tender-core deployments.

  • Tenderizer (pool / delegator contract): 0x339efC059C6D4Aa50a41F8246a017B57Aa477b60
  • TenderToken (tLPT): 0xfaC38532829fDD744373fdcd4708Ab90fA0c4078
  • LPT (Arbitrum): 0x289ba1701C2F088cf0faf8B3705246331cB8A839
  • TenderSwap (tLPT/LPT): 0x2429fC7082eb517C14946b392b195B181D0b9781
  • LP token: 0x6cAbc6e78c1D632b6210EaB71c19889b92376931
  • TenderFarm: 0x3FE01e8b62a8E17F296Eb3832504C3D3A49f2209

Deployment tx (tenderizer proxy): 0x5c38f744c68e188751e275b0a599d0eec3745829a226641430965117295aadea (2022‑05‑09 UTC)

Mechanism (what it did)​

  • Deposit: user deposits LPT into a Tenderizer contract.
  • Stake: the Tenderizer bonds pooled LPT into Livepeer (bond(amount, node)).
  • Accrual: as the pool’s underlying stake increases from rewards, tLPT balances increase (rebasing via a share system).
  • Exit:
    • User calls unstake(amount) on the tenderizer.
    • The contract burns tLPT from the user before unbonding in Livepeer.
    • Unbonded stake is tracked via a withdrawal-lock mechanism; user later calls withdraw(lockId) to receive LPT.

This is the same core idea you described (“can only mint if you stake; can’t unstake unless the derivative is burned”), except it’s implemented as a burn() call (not literally “send to 0x0”).

Important nuance: TenderToken does not emit ERC20 Transfer(from=0x0, ...) or Transfer(..., to=0x0) events on mint/burn (it mints/burns shares without emitting Transfer). So “unique tokenholders” can’t be inferred from ERC20 transfer logs alone.

Livepeer-specific details​

  • Livepeer has ETH fees in addition to LPT staking rewards; Tenderize’s integration optionally:
    • calls withdrawFees(),
    • wraps to WETH,
    • swaps WETH→LPT on Uniswap,
    • and compounds.

Did it increase “unique delegators”?​

Protocol-level: No (not in the “more delegator addresses in BondingManager” sense).

  • In Livepeer, the Tenderizer contract is the delegator (it’s the address that calls bond/unbond/withdrawStake).
  • Users who deposit into Tenderize do not become delegators in Livepeer’s BondingManager; they become pool participants holding tLPT shares.

So Tenderize can increase the number of unique participants with stake exposure, but it doesn’t directly increase the number of on-chain delegator accounts.

Adoption / “unique participants” (hard evidence)​

We scanned the Tenderizer’s on-chain logs on Arbitrum via eth_getLogs and computed unique depositors, deposit sizes, and exit behavior.

  • Analysis script: tools/tenderize_livepeer_adopters.py
  • Output snapshot (committed): solutions/tenderize/livepeer-adopters-summary.json

Key results (from solutions/tenderize/livepeer-adopters-summary.json):

  • Deposits: 2,786 Deposit events from 2,518 unique depositors; ~92,191.46 LPT deposited (2022‑05‑09 → 2024‑03‑09).
  • Deposit size distribution (by depositor’s total deposited, LPT):
    • <= 1: 1,219
    • 1 - 10: 1,201
    • 10 - 100: 68
    • 100 - 1000: 20
    • 1000 - 10000: 6
    • > 10000: 4
    • Percentiles: p50 ~1.02, p90 ~3.18, p95 ~7.00, p99 ~155.98
  • Exits:
    • Unstake: 556 events from 502 unique unstakers; ~111,536.42 LPT unstaked
    • Withdraw: 346 events from 311 unique withdrawers; ~110,026.25 LPT withdrawn (first withdraw 2023‑02‑08; last withdraw 2025‑05‑30)
    • Deposit → exit linkage: of 2,518 depositors, 305 eventually had a Withdraw event (so most depositors did not fully exit through this contract as of the scan).

Interpretation:

  • Tenderize appears to have attracted a large number of very small depositors (most total deposits are under 10 LPT).
  • It did not create “2518 new delegators” on Livepeer; it created “2518 pool depositors”.

Tokenomics (extra “non-simple” parts)​

Tenderize’s whitepaper specifies (initial params):

  • Governance fee: 2.5% of staking rewards
  • Liquidity fee: 7.5% of staking rewards (to incentivize LPs)
  • Swap fee: 0.5% on their tenderToken/underlying pool
  • Optional protocol governance token $TENDER (for governance + fee share)

Risks / failure modes​

  • Upgradeable proxy risk: the Livepeer Tenderizer is a proxy (ProxyImplementationUpdated events exist). A Dedaub report alleges a Tenderize V2 proxy-upgrade backdoor drain (Ethereum), which is a reminder that admin key/upgrade governance is a primary LST risk.
  • Operational risk: public repo issues suggest parts of the product broke over time and the org may no longer be maintaining deployments.

Reproduce the analysis​

Generate/refresh the snapshot JSON:

python3 tools/tenderize_livepeer_adopters.py \
  --out-json solutions/tenderize/livepeer-adopters-summary.json

Optional (heavier): count unique addresses in tLPT transfer logs:

python3 tools/tenderize_livepeer_adopters.py \
  --include-transfer-holders

References​

  • Whitepaper: https://github.com/Tenderize/Whitepaper/blob/main/README.md
  • Core contracts repo: https://github.com/Tenderize/tender-core
    • Tenderizer burn-on-unstake: contracts/tenderizer/Tenderizer.sol
    • Livepeer integration: contracts/tenderizer/integrations/livepeer/Livepeer.sol
  • Tenderize app config (addresses + chain selection): https://github.com/Tenderize/tender-app