Token supply and distribution
Last updated
Last updated
COL is the former name for DUCK – the Unit Protocol governance token. COL tokens were distributed through the lockdrop coin offering (LCO) in May 2020 when Unit Protocol went by the name ThePay.cash.
In December 2020, upon the proposal from our community, Unit’s governance token effected a migration to its current name - DUCK, which has more representation of the project symbol. After another community-initiated vote regarding the token split ratio, the total supply has been decreased by 100 times. COL was swapped to DUCK pro rata 100:1.
1 COL = 0.01 DUCK
More details can be found in the announcements.
After migration, the utilization and all the token functions remained the same. The DUCK token can be used for governance purposes, staking and as one of the collaterals for minting the Unit Protocol’s native stablecoin - USDP.
The total supply of COL tokens has counted 200B (100%)
staking 70%: 140B
team 20%: 40B
available for lockdrop 10%: 20B
Below we take a closer look at what happened to each of these three parts.
Based on the token economy and supply estimations, 97,1% of the tokens initially intended for staking have been eventually burnt. When we planned the initial distribution model, we considered it necessary to have high token emission at least at the start, so we created significant staking reserves. But later on, we could see that such an amount of tokens created more risk than potential benefits for the Unit Protocol. There was no need for such reserves anymore, and we would like to focus on keeping value inside the Unit Protocol.
The original intention aimed to burn about 90% of the staking tokens share, saving 10% for future possible incentive programs. It was considered as a significant step that covered the issue of a massive amount of undistributed tokens and added more safety for token holders. The total value of the burned tokens at that time exceeded $100M. There are some numbers outlined below. We are going to count the values in DUCK, considering that a unit of the initial governance token COL equals 0,01 DUCK.
Input data, in DUCK:
total supply, 100%: 2,000,000,000
staking, 70% from total supply: 1,400,000,000
remainder of the staking share after the burn events: 37,625,000
number of tokens distributed among incentive programs: 2,375,000
37,625,000 + 2,375,000 = 40,000,000
The smart contract reference can be found here.
1,400,000,000 – 40,000,000 = 1,360,000,000 ~ 97,1% - part of the share initially intended for staking purposes that has been burnt
After burning 97,1% tokens initially aimed for staking, Unit Protocol has employed the buyback and burn strategy as a deflationary mechanism to increase DUCK tokens long-term value.
All the incoming stability fees, in USDP, were used to buy back and burn the DUCK tokens from the market. All the fees accumulated in the treasuries were converted to DUCK and burned again.
The burn events have been publicly announced via Telegram.
Buyback reduces the total number of circulating tokens on the market, which positively impacts the price. Similarly, token burning decreases the supply on the market, increasing the value of the remaining tokens.
#1: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4fb3e215b56c06d58617cd872d5aea34b2af2cb0c252abcdb4ade31c6cf625fa
#2: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd05cca59370938c7fd96db7c356156c6eda584f531ff0dc1c9a44428bb247252
#3: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb1f57fa4ba5e4d36a95e1edf2e434e9f31cf131baa78af1c9b9cc1d258ca2ee6
#4: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc5dd43ea09d5ff362a8b384c3cb70e3a660509887ff417b2a12c6a12b9d524c2
#5: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xf9c551d425903327e69c3d54d8177e08c5eeece61057af69d8a7bb561d9f7136
#6: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb0b410345f06a72e4e198de4f5920f4fbaba527fb6ff16eaf45139685c0abe79
#7: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0d049926a5f993dc9b95c615a44d0126cb718868b08cfcc59facc880aa000ec6
#8: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb330b999343dea5b732be21b0752f3bf3ab2052aec58c01962a95498a6f2c5e9
#9: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x1125030a122f085715b92abe7b7fbf2968238ee0adf17708e6264f1b24a3400c
#10: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc112a3d6de9accb012b315c76c5dc4730d35e0ff139e304f31b27504c415cde6
#11: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xcb82c91a43bbefed559cdee43d3e682045fa487f744de1ebe5685aecaf028b2d
#12: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb3a4e6a83ce51ba112202c010d24e20ce98caa7b6d2f27ca2538482ae5517761
#13: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc217b59fab67d45368510be0c10e50da5a983f2638188553d481c4b5946d99b5
#14: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x1f3fe220493ec978324a8162253332cf740506407534908bcfab337420fb9ed7
#15: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x5dcb5e772f2523b3da5887c87b2cb6f59070190285d9a97bbca0718c0043de5f
#16: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xa9f4f3764b0cbff00fea729b912726c126f584a02aeb0b1a5c6b37e7eb91d91f
#17: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4388e7a0b0304c71f696a652be5cd23c17d78708d9e1f48ddad4eb406ddc1829
391 408 535 (~$38m estimated value at that time):
Since the inception, our goal was to allow DUCK holders to capture value from the Unit Protocol operations. Previously it was done via a burning mechanism, but since that moment we have eventually announced the DUCK staking.
The team tokens have been locked for 5 years with the linear unlock. As of now the team doesn’t possess its own tokens in an accessible form.
Every day, each block is released by 0,0137 DUCK. This is a daily piece of the team's five-year lockup.
With an intention to distribute the tokens in a fair way, in which the risk of people losing their money is reduced, the team decided to conduct a lockdrop - the free of charge coin offering.
A lockdrop is a method of token allocation in which participants block their funds for a specific period of time. After the lockdrop period is over, participants can unlock their funds and receive tokens of a new project in proportion to their share.
The Unit Protocol’s LCO was held on May 7th, 2020. In order to fulfill the condition, participants should have locked the ETH tokens to receive the Unit Protocol governance tokens proportionally to their deposits. No locked ETH goal was initially set. Unit’s lockdrop required a lockup of 1 week and received 3,903.742 ETH with an estimated value at that time around ~$800,000.
The calculation of the corresponding share was carried out according to the following formula:
COL PER ETH FORMULA 20,000,000,000/ [TOTAL LOCKED ETH] * [AMOUNT TO PARTICIPATE IN ETH]
EXAMPLE FOR 10 ETH 20 000 000 000 / 5000ETH [TOTAL LOCKED ETH AS EXAMPLE] * 10ETH = 40,000,000 COL OR 4,000,000 COL PER ETH
Lockdrop participation info on GitHub
View the contract 1 View the contract 2
55 participants with overall number of 82 transactions essentially received a share of COL proportional to their amount of time-locked ETH. The tokens themselves didn’t fall under any lockups once they were received by the users, meaning they could have been used right away. As a result, the team distributed 10% of its supply to the community without receiving any funding for the project.
After the migration announcement, the token holders were able to seamlessly swap their COL tokens to DUCK.
The Unit Protocol governance token emission was designed as limited. Therefore, no more tokens can be issued in future.
Lockdrop contract: https://github.com/thepaycash/lockdrop/blob/master/contracts/COLToken.sol
Newsletter: thepaycash.substack.com/p/thepaycash-stable-coins- payment-network
Security audit: https://github.com/thepaycash/audit/blob/master/ Lockdrop%20%26%20Token%20Audit%20Report.pdf
| # | Date | Amount, DUCK | Amount, USD (at the day of burn event) |
|---|---|---|---|
1
29 Junuary 2021
108,072
2,696
2
19 February 2021
64,298
19,461
3
23 February 2021
210,491
54,174
4
1 March 2021
378,000,000
130,729,441
5
13 March 2021
62,485
22,831
6
13 April 2021
338,764
123,208
7
23 April 2021
960,307
346,045
8
13 May 2021
544,696
288,061
9
23 May 2021
4,185,093
1,776,269
10
30 May 2021
590,425
236,761
11
11 June 2021
499,527
216,018
12
17 June 2021
1,247,848
450,501
13
20 June 2021
540,697
163,701
14
20 June 2021
231,253
70,014
15
23 June 2021
1,321,768
250,060
16
15 July 2021
2,136,872
328,153
17
1 August 2021
365,933
41,828
