Welcome to Aqua!
What is Aqua?
Aqua is the place to conduct transparent token auctions with a fair price discovery. It is designed with the aim to make everyone’s life easier.
Different projects have different needs and not all tokens are created equal. With Aqua, projects are given the opportunity to devise fair decentralized auctions themselves. Whether you wish to conduct an Initial DEX Offering, a private sale, a batch auction, a fixed price sale, utilize a bonding curve, run token buy-backs, or collateral liquidation auctions, we provide the main infrastructure that will allow you the flexibility to meet your specific requirements.
In the near future, every project could even plug their sale mechanism into our system, to reflect their social and technical needs. The diversity of sale mechanisms allows sellers to choose the one which best fits their tokenomics, investor community & funding stage.
Thus, Aqua is the one-stop shop protocol that provides crypto teams with all the tools needed to successfully raise capital in a decentralized way, while they stay focused building. It also gives investors the opportunity to support and invest in crypto projects in the most fair and trustless manner.
Key protocol features
Resiliency & Composability
Operating in a landscape that is quickly evolving, one of the protocol’s objectives is flexibility in building a non-specific open framework, which can be extended by third-parties, allowing them to integrate new modules, setting their revenue opportunities and governable parameters.
Easy-to-use zero-code
Designing a product that anyone can use, without deep technical knowledge, so teams can launch sales campaigns without the need of manual contract deployment.
Non-custodial
In a fully decentralized manner for both investors and sellers, the exchange takes no custody of any wallets, so all participants retain full control of their private keys.
Fully Permissionless
No access required! Anyone is able to fully utilize Aqua right out of the box.
Who is using Aqua?
Traders; Investors; Businesses raising capital; Companies doing token buybacks
B2B
Open fundraising for businesses without the high fees associated with traditional centralized exchanges. In addition to a single token offering, there is also an option to sell a bundle of assets.
D2C
Fair fundraising for retail investors, as anyone can participate in the sale with no risk of front-running or incurring high gas fees:
- no slippage, no matter the traded size;
- no front running / no flash loans / no miner extracted value;
- negligible trading fees;
Use Cases
Initial DEX Offerings
An initial DEX offering or IDO refers to the launching of a cryptocurrency on a decentralized exchange (DEX). In an IDO, a blockchain project makes a coin’s first public debut on a DEX in order to raise funding from retail investors.
Private Sales
Permissioned and custom-tailored to a project’s liking.
Batch Auctions
Teams who wish to provide transparency to their supporters in auctioning their token, can use Aqua’s FairSale mechanism with batch auctions. FairSale represents a trustless and efficient way for a fair price discovery. On one hand, bidders determine the highest price they are willing to pay, and on the other, auctioneers also set the minimum price at which they are willing to sell their tokens. This price dynamic matches all limit orders with one clearing price in the end to allow for a fair token distribution, where all participants end up with no less than what they bargained for. Batching in time intervals aids in reducing miner-extractable value and front-running, which would otherwise negatively impact bidders and auctioneers.
Fixed Price Sales
A fixed amount of tokens get offered at a pre-determined fixed price, on a first-come first-served basis, until sold out. There’s also a cap on the size each investor can purchase. Insiders, e.g. foundation, early investors or dev team, are pre-allocated a fixed percentage of the total token supply. Some sales offer discounted rates for limited periods, in order to incentivize early participation.
Bonding Curves
Aside from the usual traits of being customizable and automated, the distribution model known as a Bonding Curve Offering or BCO gives several other advantages. It provides an instant market for a decentralized distribution of tokens, which is useful and effective if deployed by a DAO. Also, early buyers have the unique opportunity to invest with a prospect for a significant upside. Teams creating bonding curve smart contracts can launch tokens with the application of a custom formula with functions for minting & burnining. Upon contract launch, investors can trade long or short on the curve. Price moves up on the curve when investors are bullish and respectively the token price dips along the curve on selling pressure.
Token Buy-backs
In a buy-back & burn model, most often a network would use its proceeds to buy a certain amount of its native token back from investors and burn it. The reasoning is in order to have the token value appreciate by reducing its supply as income increases.
Collateral Liquidation Auctions
If the value of collateral assets in vaults reaches the min liquidation ratio, vaults get liquidated by auctioning their collateral, in order to cover debt, and also any penalty owed.
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