# What is hstXDC

* > **One-line:** A liquid staking primitive that lets institutional XDC holders deposit XDC into a regulated, transparent vault that mints `hstXDC` on Canton Network — preserving XDC native staking yield, governance rights, and validator selection while unlocking the position for institutional credit and yield strategies on Canton.

### The Thesis

hstXDC sits at the convergence of two regulated-counterparty L1s:

* **XDC Network** — 108 KYC-verified validator masternodes, BFT deterministic finality (\~6 seconds), full EVM compatibility since the v2.6.8 Cancun upgrade (mainnet block 98,800,200, January 2026), Subnet capability for permissioned execution environments.
* **Canton Network** — Privacy-preserving institutional settlement layer with native sub-transaction privacy, the CIP-56 token standard for interoperable institutional assets, and a production track record carrying real-world financial settlement at institutional scale.

The opportunity these two chains create together is structurally unusual: **two L1s where the validator set is identifiable, the settlement guarantees are deterministic, and the user can map the trust assumptions onto regulated counterparty frameworks.** Most cross-chain liquid staking products bridge a permissionless L1 to a permissionless DeFi venue. hstXDC bridges a KYC'd L1 to an institutional settlement network. The trust assumptions on both sides match the user's existing mental models.

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### What hstXDC does, mechanically

<table><thead><tr><th width="103.625">Layer</th><th>What happens</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Deposit</strong></td><td>Institutional holder deposits XDC into the Helix Vault contract on XDC mainnet. XDC enters the masternode delegation flow and accrues native staking yield.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Mint</strong></td><td>Bridge layer signals the deposit to the Canton-side vault contract, which mints <code>hstXDC</code> 1:1 to the holder's Canton party. <code>hstXDC</code> is a CIP-56 compliant token.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Hold</strong></td><td>The holder retains: XDC native staking yield (the LST appreciates against XDC over time), XDC governance rights via the validator selection layer, and full programmability of <code>hstXDC</code> on Canton — DvP, repo, lending, qualified custody.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Redeem</strong></td><td>Holder burns <code>hstXDC</code> on Canton; bridge layer signals the burn to XDC mainnet; XDC is unstaked through the standard XDC validator unbonding flow and returned to the holder.</td></tr></tbody></table>

### What hstXDC is not

* **Not a wrapped token.** `hstXDC` is not a 1:1 wrapper of XDC on a different chain. It is a liquid staking token: it represents a *staked* XDC position, and its exchange rate against XDC drifts upward over time as native yield accrues to the underlying.
* **Not a cross-chain asset.** XDC stays on XDC. `hstXDC` lives on Canton. There is no XDC token crossing the bridge layer — only attestations of stake state. This is the load-bearing security choice (see sec5).
* **Not custodial.** Helix does not hold customer XDC in a Helix-controlled wallet. The vault contract holds delegations on-chain with constrained admin keys, and the bridge layer is protected by a threshold-signature attestor design pattern (see sec5, sec8).
* **Not yet live.** hstXDC is in the architecture and scoping phase as of April 2026. Helix's Canton-side infrastructure is already in production (see sec10); the hstXDC vault is in design. Honest status disclosure is in sec2 — no claims of shipped functionality before there is shipped functionality.

### Why this matters for institutional users

The full institutional thesis lives in sec6 and sec7. The three-sentence version:

1. A holder of locked institutional Canton-side positions and a holder of staked XDC can now operate both positions through a single Canton-side surface, without the value-bearing assets ever crossing a bridge committee.
2. The bridge layer carries authorization signals only — not the assets themselves — which collapses the institutional custody question to *"who custodies the XDC on XDC, and who custodies the LST on Canton."*
3. BitGo qualified custody covers both ends as of March 25 2026. The custody question is already answered.