## What is Eco?

The Eco Currency is intended to serve as a decentralized alternative to fiat currencies. Other cryptocurrencies either fix their monetary policies and admit exchange rate volatility, or attempt to limit volatility and achieve dollar parity through various policies.  

Eco does not treat dollar-parity as a proxy for utility. Eco is a free-floating currency designed to achieve its aims through monetary policy transparently established and managed by a representative group of governing “Trustees” who are elected by the community of Eco holders. Trustees have one core mandate: to maximize the wealth held in ECO. As with many other token systems, Eco currency holders are also empowered to vote on community proposals and protocol upgrades.

Eco features two tokens: the variable supply base currency (ECO), and a deflationary supply token (ECOx) intended to incentivize long-term holders and bootstrap an open market signaling expectations for ECO adoption. These tokens, together with the various contracts and components that support them, form the Eco Currency Protocol. 

## What makes Eco unique?

### Real Consumers use Eco

We’ve been waiting a decade for someone to build a bridge for the mainstream world to benefit 
from crypto. Starting with the Eco App and its network of partners, products built on top of Eco do exactly that — and it's only the beginning. More are in the works, giving everyone access to crypto-powered financial services while onboarding them to the Eco Currency.

### Real Community drives adoption

The community building and supporting Eco is unlike any other. It’s a wildly active, inspiring and driven group unified by one goal: to further adoption of Eco. From deep economic discussion to creative content, you’ll find a place in the Eco Community.

### Real Governance makes it work

Eco’s currency, $ECO, is governed by its own monetary policy much like the fiat currencies we use every day. But instead of a far-removed central bank setting the policy, an elected group of Eco users (called ‘Trustees’) does so — using better data and better tools, with clearer incentives.

## What are the two tokens?

Within the Eco Currency system, there are two tokens. $ECO is the currency itself — governed by its community, with the goal of building an independent currency for saving and spending. $ECOx is the secondary token meant to bootstrap governance and liquidity for the system.

$ECO is the base currency for spending and saving, with supply governed by monetary policy.

$ECOx is the secondary asset for ensuring sound governance and supporting responsible growth.

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

UNUS SED LEO

Uniswap

Pendle

The Graph

Wormhole

Lido DAO

Aave

Ondo

FLOKI

Quant

Gala

Ethena

ether.fi Staked ETH

Inscribe

Spectra Chain

X2Y2

Smart Reward Token

Vega Protocol provides the derivatives scaling layer for Web3. It is a custom-built proof-of-stake blockchain, which makes it possible to trade derivatives on a decentralised network with comparable experience to using a centralised exchange.

VEGA is the network governance and staking token. It is used for:

Voting on the creation of new markets on the network

Running validator nodes on the network via staking VEGA tokens

Earning fees from traders through staking and delegation

Governing important network parameters which ensure markets are secure and fair

Vega Protocol

Handshake is a decentralized permissionless system that is intended to incentivize a distributed network of computers to operate a system for domain name ownership.

Under Handshake, every peer is tasked with validating and managing the root DNS naming zone, with the objective of providing an alternative to current certificate authorities and naming systems.

Different participants across the internet such as social networking handles and domains rely on a centralized approach. This means the systems depend on a system of honesty — and are still prone to cyber attacks and fraud.

Handshake aims to eradicate this problem by creating a decentralized internet that relies on a peer-to-peer system.

Handshake

Chia Network (XCH) is a layer 1 blockchain that uses its own custom-designed programming language called Chialisp and a novel consensus mechanism called proof-of-space-and-time (PoST). The combination of these two allows the blockchain to use less energy without compromising network security. In contrast to most other blockchains, Chia Network is a public, for-profit, open source company that aspires to become listed on NYSE or NASDAQ. Its blockchain is aimed at enterprise use, which is why Chia Network plans to have XCH on its balance sheet in case of a listing.

Chia Network’s first proof-of-time function was released in 2019, with the first beta version of its blockchain launching in 2020. Chia Network achieved full functionality, including wallet functionality, transactions and smart contracts, with its mainnet launch in 2021.

Chia

Opium is a new platform for launching and trading cryptocurrency derivatives.

Having begun operations in May 2020, Opium uses Ethereum to run a decentralized derivatives marketplace in which any cryptocurrency owner can participate.

The aim of the platform is to democratize access to financial derivatives while using the benefits that decentralization affords traders over legacy alternatives.

Opium’s in-house token, OPIUM, launched in January 2021 and will fulfil various roles mostly centered around platform governance. Active users will be able to vote on some of the most important decisions involved in the platform’s operations.

Opium

Multichain (MULTI), previously known as Anyswap, claims to be the ultimate router for web3 and has positioned itself as an infrastructure developed for arbitrary cross-chain interactions.

As claimed in their official documentation, Multichain offers solutions that enable nearly all blockchains to interconnect – regardless if it is EVM chains (e.g., Avalanche), Layer 2 chains tied to Ethereum (like Polygon), Parachains networks like Moonbeam on Polkadot, and so on.

Multichain is a prominent name in the cross-chain space, with a rapidly growing network of 26 chains, with Total Value Locked (TVL) reaching highs of over $10.45 billion, and a sustained daily volume of over $100 million. However, the onset of the bear market and recent news of Multichain CEO being uncontactable saw TVL dropping to $1.38B.

Multichain

Hashflow is a DEX Aggregator that offers deep liquidity across the leading blockchains. Hashflow offers traders the best prices, access to $8B in liquidity, and the ability to trade every token both interchain and cross chain. Since launching in April 2021, Hashflow has facilitated over $18B in total trade volume.

Hashflow's team consists of top minds from both web2 and web3 including Airbnb, Amazon, Arbitrum, Citadel, Genesis Trading, and more. Backers include Dragonfly Capital, Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Trading, and Balaji Srinivasan.

Hashflow

Karura is an all-in-one decentralized finance (DeFi) hub and stablecoin platform built on Kusama (KSM) and integrated into Polkadot (DOT). Karura was created by the Acala Network, which has won four Web3 Foundation grants and founded the Substrate Developer Academy.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Karura.

Both Karura and Acala are backed by multiple funds, including Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Polychain Capital and Hypersphere. Karura and Acala operate in parallel. Specifically, Karura is implementing DeFi on Kusama in the same way that Acala is offering DeFi on Polkadot. The network is built with almost the same codebase as Acala: the two platforms provide scalable, convenient and fast DeFi cross-chain ecosystems for Kusama and Polkadot.

Parachain Karura is a platform that allows users to create effective, low-cost and complex financial applications, saving time and increasing trading efficiency.

The platform itself provides a multi-collateralized stablecoin backed by cross-chain assets (kUSD), a trustless staking derivative (liquid KSM), and an automated market maker (AMM) decentralized exchange (DEX) for unlocking liquidity and supporting financial innovation.

Karura is the decentralized financial hub of Kusama, a scalable multi-chain network for radical innovation and early-stage Polkadot deployments. Karura is the sister network to Acala. It hosts multichain liquid staking token (LST) protocols (such as liquid KSM - LKSM), an AMM decentralized exchange, and an app platform that is EVM-compatible and highly customizable (based on Substrate). Karura is secured by Kusama, and is the liquidity gateway of Kusama parachains, Acala and L1/L2 blockchains

Karura

Covalent leverages big-data technologies to create meaning from hundreds of billions of data points, delivering actionable insights to investors and allowing developers to allocate resources to higher-utility goals within their organization.

Instead of painstakingly sourcing data from a small handful of chains, Covalent aggregates information from across dozens of sources including nodes, chains and data feeds. The Covalent API then sources end-users with individualized data by wallet, including current and historical investment performance across all types of digital assets. Most importantly, Covalent returns this data in a rapid and consistent manner, incorporating all relevant data within one API interface.

Having achieved product-market fit, we are now planning to execute the next phase of Covalent, which is a progressive decentralization that will enable the Covalent Network to be owned and operated by its users. Of course, a critical piece to this is CQT.

CQT is the native token of the Covalent Network. It has three primary purposes:

CQT is a governance token, whereby token holders vote on proposals to change the system parameters.

CQT is a staking asset. Validators will earn fees for answering queries.

CQT is a network access token that fulfills data queries for users of the API.

Developer resources include:

Covalent Knowledge Base for extensive guides on how to use the Covalent API. 

Covalent API Documentation.

Covalent

Ethereum-based DYDX ($ethDYDX) is a governance token that allows the dYdX community to truly govern the dYdX Layer 2 Protocol built on Ethereum ("dYdX v3"). ethDYDX is currently undergoing a migration from Ethereum to the dYdX Chain. More information is available here. If you want to migrate ethDYDX to dYdX Chain DYDX, to enable staking, security and governance of the dYdX Chain you can follow the how-to-bridge guide here.

If you want to read about the new token utility for dYdX Chain DYDX you can read the blog here

ethDYDX (dYdX) is the governance token for the layer 2 protocol built on Ethereum. By enabling shared control of dYdX v3, ethDYDX allows traders, liquidity providers, and partners of dYdX to work collectively towards an enhanced dYdX v3.

Built on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine, layer 2 is used for trading of cross-margined perpetuals on the platform. The scaling solution allows dYdX to increase transaction speed, eliminate gas costs, reduce trading fees and lower​​ minimum trade sizes on the protocol.

A total of 1,000,000,000 ethDYDX have been minted, and started to become accessible over five (5) years, on August 3rd, 2021, at 15:00:00 UTC.

dYdX (ethDYDX)

Acala Token

Rally

Flow

Biconomy is a multichain relayer protocol that aims to improve the user onboarding and transaction experience on decentralized applications (DApps). The project’s declared goal is to make web3 products as intuitive and easy to use as web2 products. Biconomy offers an infrastructure to solve several web3 bottlenecks:

Protocols can onboard users without paying gas fees.

Users can pay gas in an ERC-20 token of their choice.

Users avoid blockchain complexities like a change of network.

Transactions are confirmed much faster.

In short, Biconomy focuses on transaction management and gas optimization and can reduce gas costs by up to 40%. To achieve that, the protocol utilizes meta transactions, allowing users to submit a transaction with zero gas and having a third party pay for the transaction fees for the user. By providing a non-custodial and gas-efficient relayer infrastructure network, Biconomy is able to do this at scale.

Biconomy

Forta

saffron.finance

Mina Protocol is a minimal “succinct blockchain” built to curtail computational requirements in order to run DApps more efficiently. Mina has been described as the world’s lightest blockchain since its size is designed to remain constant despite growth in usage. Furthermore, it remains balanced in terms of security and decentralization. The project was rebranded from Coda Protocol to Mina in October 2020.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Mina Protocol.

The Mina network has a size of only 22 KB, which is miniscule when compared to Bitcoin’s 300 GB blockchain.

Mina

DODO is a DeFi protocoldecentralized finance (DeFi) protocol and on-chain liquidity provider whose unique proactive market maker (PMM) algorithm aims to offer better liquidity and price stability than automated market makers (AMM).

The PMM pricing mechanism, which mimics human trading, utilizes oracles to gather highly accurate market prices for assets. It then provides enough liquidity close to these prices in order to stabilize the portfolios of liquidity providers (LP), lower price slippage and negate impermanent loss by allowing arbitrage trading as reward.

DODO also caters for new crypto projects with a free ICO listing through its Initial DODO Offering (IDO) which requires issuers to only deposit their own tokens.

DODO’s smart contract operates as an ERC20 token on the Ethereum network.

DODO

Aurora is a product that helps Ethereum users and dApps to easily move to the NEAR blockchain. It allows users to do two distinct things: upload and interact with Solidity smart contracts on NEAR blockchain and move assets (including ERC-20 tokens) between Ethereum, NEAR and Aurora via the Rainbow Bridge..

Aurora’s base token is ETH to deliver the best user experience and familiar tooling for developers.

AURORA token is a governance token to ensure proper upgrades to the protocol.
Aurora is governed by AuroraDAO which includes representatives from different ecosystems and sectors of the blockchain industry.