## What Is Opium (OPIUM)?

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

Having begun operations in May 2020, Opium uses [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/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.


### Who Are the Founders of Opium?

Opium has a team involved in the creation of decentralized finance ([DeFi](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-decentralized-finance)) tools since 2017. These include three products built on top of the Opium protocol.

The platform’s CEO and co-founder is Andrey Belyakov. A member of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute, Belyakov’s experience lies in the professional derivative trading and fund management sectors, in which he has over 20 years’ experience with assets under management portfolios of €20 million and over. He has been involved in the cryptocurrency sector since 2015.

Arjan van der Kooij, Opium’s second co-founder, is a Dutch entrepreneur and private investor with a focus in IT and technology startups. 


#### What Makes Opium Unique?

Opium in its official whitepaper states that it aims to become the “Bloomberg of decentralized derivatives.”

Built on the Ethereum network, its platform allows anyone with a wallet to begin trading crypto derivatives and build and launch associated contracts. 

Begun before the DeFi movement appeared, a longer-term strategy has always been to attract traders away from traditional derivatives platforms. When the first [Bitcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/) (BTC) derivatives launched in the form of futures in late 2017, the floodgates were opened, but it took a long time for genuine interest to soar and for derivatives to become part of the cryptocurrency landscape. Opium intends to speed up the process by democratizing entry. 

Trades on the Opium platform attract an optional derivative fee, which if implemented sees 90% go to the creator and 10% retained by Opium.

Future plans include the launch of a V2 exchange, as well as so-called Layer 2 functionality which will decrease the likelihood of users facing losses when Ethereum [gas fees](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/gas-price) become overly high. 


#### Related Pages:

Read more about Uniswap (UNI) [here](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/uniswap/).

Read more about Aave (AAVE) [here](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/aave/).

Learn more about crypto derivatives markets [here](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/derivatives-market) with Alexandria, CoinMarketCap’s dedicated education resource.

Interested in more information about crypto? Check out the [CoinMarketCap blog](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/blog).


#### How Many Opium (OPIUM) Coins Are There in Circulation?

The in-house token of Opium is OPIUM. Built as an [ERC-20](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/erc-20) token on Ethereum, OPIUM will be released according to a specific roadmap after launch.

Out of a total supply of 100 million, 60% of the tokens will go towards an active users fund, with users themselves deciding how many tokens will be available for release at set intervals. Users will also decide on what level of engagement constitutes being “active.”

Another 16% of the supply will go towards investors and advisors with a broad two-year vesting schedule.

The remaining 24% will be split — 14% will go to the Opium team, while 10% will form a so-called Governance Reserve Fund, once again under the control of users via decentralized autonomous organization ([DAO](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-autonomous-organizations-dao)).


### How Is the Opium Network Secured?

Opium completed a professional independent audit of its operations using SmartDec, the results of which are publicly available online.

SmartDec offers a disclaimer that a single audit is not enough to be entirely certain of the security Opium’s code. 

For everyday users, standard risks include those involved with derivatives more broadly. Without due diligence and a suitable strategy, it is possible to lose large amounts of money very quickly during times of market volatility.

CoinMarketCap has a dedicated introduction to [crypto derivatives](https://coinmarketcap.com/derivatives/) which offers more information.


### Where Can You Buy Opium (OPIUM)?

OPIUM is not yet freely tradeable as of the time of writing this page (January 2021), as distribution has only just started. As of Jan. 28, 2021, OPIUM is available on Zerion. This situation will soon change and the information will be updated as the token becomes supported by more exchanges. 

If you’re still a cryptocurrency newbie, read our [easy guide to buying Bitcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/) or any other cryptocurrency. 

Opium

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

Pepe

Uniswap

Nvidia Inu

Gold

Alvara Protocol

PERI Finance

Atomic Wallet Coin

PlotX

0xBitcoin

Earn Network

S4FE

SYNC Network

IX Swap

PlasticHero

ClearDAO

Lybra Finance

QToken

dHedge DAO

saffron.finance

Tachyon Protocol

EOSDT

Ruff

Pascal

WaykiChain

StaFi

Balancer is an automated market maker (AMM) that was developed on the Ethereum blockchain and launched in March 2020. It was able to raise a $3M seed round by Placeholder and Accomplice. Balancer protocol functions as a self-balancing weighted portfolio, price sensor and liquidity provider. It allows users to earn profits through its recently introduced token ($BAL) by contributing to customizable liquidity pools.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Balancer(https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-balancer.

The protocol operates a few types of pools:

Private pools give the owner governance over the pool, and make the person the sole contributor of liquidity to the pool. Also, all the parameters are mutable by the owner.

Shared pools are for those who want to become liquidity providers (LPs). The LPs are rewarded with the Balancer Pool Tokens (BPTs).

Smart pools are similar to private pools but are controlled by a smart contract. They also reward using BPTs and allow anyone to contribute liquidity to the pool.

Balancer

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

MIR is the governance token of Mirror Protocol, a synthetic assets protocol built by Terraform Labs (TFL) on the Terra blockchain.

Mirror Protocol is decentralized from day 1, with the on-chain treasury and code changes governed by holders of the MIR token. TFL has no intention of keeping or selling MIR tokens, and there are no admin keys or special access privileges granted. The intent for this is to be a completely decentralized, community-driven project.

Mirrored assets are blockchain tokens that behave like "mirror" versions of real-world assets by reflecting the exchange prices on-chain. They give traders the price exposure to real assets while enabling fractional ownership, open access and censorship resistance as any other cryptocurrency. Unlike traditional tokens which serve to represent a real, underlying asset, mAssets are purely synthetic and only capture the price movement of the corresponding asset.

Mirrored assets provide the following advantages:

Global Accessibility: In most markets outside of Europe & North America, access to foreign equities and forex markets is highly limited. Crypto allows global accessibility without entry barriers.

Fractional Orders: In traditional finance, to execute a fractional order, multiple fractional orders are bundled together to execute a unitary transaction. The process of gathering all the orders into one requires additional waiting time. By utilizing the blockchain, orders volume is simply represented as a number on the blockchain, so there is no need for the intermediary bundling process.

Nearly-Instantaneous Order Execution: Oftentimes due to the lack of liquidity (price-time-priority order book algorithm), orders can take up to a day to fully execute. Given the fact that Mirror relies on liquidity provided by each individual asset pool, orders can be executed as fast as the blocktime of the network (~ 6 seconds).

Mirror Protocol

xDai is a cryptocurrency that is pegged to the US dollar. The xDai chain is a stable payment blockchain that is designed for fast and inexpensive transactions. STAKE is secured by proof-of-stake consensus. xDai was founded on Oct. 1, 2018.

STAKE is a multi-chain staking token that is designed to secure the payment layer. Staking allows validators and delegators to provide transaction consensus and receive staking incentives for block production. It is only required for consensus providers, not everyday on-chain transactions.

xDai was created by the POA Network, an open-source public side-chain of Ethereum founded in April 2017. It offers a framework for smart contracts which provides developers with an easy and effective way to code on Ethereum, while also leveraging the POA Network capabilities.

STAKE

Carbon Protocol

Wrapped Bitcoin Cash

WOM Protocol

Ampleforth is an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency with an algorithmically adjusted circulating supply. It is designed to be the base money of the new decentralized economy, by providing an asset that cannot be diluted by supply inflation and remains decoupled to the price action of other cryptocurrencies—and Bitcoin (BTC) in particular.

With Ampleforth, token holders own a fixed fraction of the total AMPL circulating supply, rather than a fixed number of tokens. When the protocol detects that the price of AMPL is too high, it increases the circulating supply, whereas the supply is decreased if the price is too low.

This change is propagated to all Ampleforth wallets, which have their wallet balance adjusted proportionally. Irrespective of this change, AMPL holders will still retain the same percentage of the token supply.

This automatic supply adjustment process is known as a “rebase” and occurs once each day, with a positive rebase if the price goes above $1.06, and a negative rebase if it is below $0.96. The overall goal of the system is to create incentives that drive the market price of AMPL back to ~$1.

Ampleforth

RARI

BoutsPro

FRAKT Token

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.