The Hub funded the Hydro Team in January for Q1 and Q2 2025. For Q3, Hydro operated entirely from the profits generated by deployments (and expects to do the same for Q4). Although the Hub is no longer directly funding the team, Hydro continues to manage and deploy community funds, and for that reason, we will keep publishing our quarterly progress reports.
Below is also a top-line summary of our metrics (Q1 to Q3):
| Description | Number |
|---|---|
| Value of deployments | 4,039,928 ATOM + 217,227 USDC + 2,000,000 NTRN |
| Number of deployments | 71 |
| Number of bids | 91 |
| Number of protocols | 19 |
| Average Hydro APR | 20.1%* |
*This number is additional to the staking APR and doesn’t include the points distributed by Drop, Pryzm & Amulet
On the technical front, here’s what we delivered in Q3:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Inflow | Built vault contracts for BTC, USDC, and ATOM, along with flexible core smart contracts and custom indexing infrastructure |
| Current | Launched the lockup marketplace into production, then shipped several new features (e.g governance score) and UX improvements based on user feedback |
| Riptide | Released Riptide, which enables bids into riskier venues (voters can underwrite risk with their funds in exchange for larger rewards) |
| Monitoring | Built monitoring tools for all Hydro deployments (Osmosis, Mars etc.), and extending the monitoring to the first planned Inflow deployments |
| Neutron outpost | Deployed an outpost on Neutron, enabling lockups & deployments with dNTRN. This included modularization of the contracts making future outposts easier |
| Stream | Added support for new protocols in Stream, including Vortex, Magma & Duality, along with research for the integration of protocols on Ethereum L2s & Solana |
Following the cancellation of the Hub EVM launch, we focused much of our efforts on Inflow. Inflow allows anyone to deposit assets, including non-Cosmos assets, into Hydro to earn passive yield. Rather than relying on protocol bids, capital is automatically deployed into the best available strategies across both Cosmos & others chains. It expands Hydro’s reach, enables deployment of more asset types at higher volume, and reduces reliance on individual bidders. The ATOM, BTC and USD Inflow vaults are now live in private beta and results will be shared in the next report.
The core team remained stable with 6 full-time members working at 100% capacity and 4 part-time (technical reviews, design, operations, finance) at 50% capacity. Hydro’s total Q3 expenditures amounted to $217,194
During the quarter, Hydro also paid $104,087 via the Hydro Grant DAO. As always the numbers are only estimated as we are waiting to receive final invoices and unexpected costs sometimes come up after the report is published.
| Grant | Description | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Hydro committee | Liquidity deployments (signing) & general advisory | $9,350.00 |
| Hydro vault manager | BTC & USDC vault management | $4,772.00 |
| Indexing | Metrics page & deployment tracking data | $3,950.00 |
| Riptide & Inflow | Support for Riptide & Inflow smart contract development | $25,200.00 |
| Deployments | Liquidity deployments (tx posting) & Stream automation | $21,070.00 |
| Outposts | Frontend integration for new outposts (starting with Neutron) | $19,690.00 |
| Vortex | Support for Vortex v2 updates | $20,055.00 |
The first three quarters of 2025 have proven that Hydro’s model works. Projects kept bidding in tough market conditions and the protocol still delivered solid returns to stakers. In Q4, our focus is now on scaling up the deployments and making the public launch of Inflow a success.