What an awesome and incredibly fast moment occurred at the very end of 2021. In barely two hours on December 29, Agoric sold over $50M in BLD on CoinList. This marked the first ever public sale of BLD, our staking token. 

The speed of the sale is the result, of course, of several years of incredibly hard work. In fact, it would not have been possible without our experienced crew of engineers, the support of the whole team, the confidence of our long-term backers, collaboration with partners in our network, and the input of our growing community. Most notably, the validators who pushed our system throughout last year’s incentivized testnet.

Two-Token Ecosystem

BLD is one of the two tokens planned for the Agoric chain, the other being RUN. BLD is the native staking token, used for securing the network and for governance. RUN is the fee token, used to pay for chain services (e.g., gas), implement smart contracts on-chain, and support cross-chain activity. More on RUN: 

The RUN token will be launched by the Agoric community through the RUN Protocol, a series of smart contracts authorized by the BLD holders through governance. RUN is envisioned as a stable token pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar (USD). RUN is fully backed by user-provided collateral, which may include BLD, assets built on the Agoric chain, and assets from the $75B+ interchain ecosystem such as the Cosmos ATOM, Osmosis OSMO, and Akash AKT, all available via Cosmos’s Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC). Together, BLD and RUN create the solid foundation for a thriving DeFi ecosystem. 

We’re proud that Agoric is only the second L1 protocol where one can invest simultaneously in the growth of the stable token and the growth of the smart contract ecosystem at the same time (the other being Terra).

From Our CEO

At the time of the sale, Agoric CEO Dean Tribble said, “We are delighted to have reached this crucial milestone. Our programming model, supported by our native market infrastructure, is designed to enable the formation of a cryptoeconomic standard library with the same exponential composability that led to the explosive growth of the Node.js, React.js, and other JavaScript ecosystems.”

What Happens Next?

The result of the sale provides a solid financial foundation for our work here at Agoric. As we rapidly proceed with Mainnet, we’ll be working on the Agoric virtual machine, supporting the RUN token and protocol, vault contracts, native AMM, and permissionless smart contracts. 

Read more in the CoinList deep dive into JavaScript dapp development, earning staking rewards, RUN Protocol, the Zoe smart contract framework, cross-chain activity, and much more.

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