On July 1, 2022 (at 3pm PT), the first 15,000,000 BLD tokens — or 1.5% of the Agoric network — will unlock. In short, unlocked tokens will no longer be restricted and can be freely transferred. This milestone is an important step in the growth of the Agoric ecosystem and marks the beginning of BLD tokens participating in the wider crypto ecosystem. Here’s what you need to know:

What Can I Do With Unlocked BLD

As highlighted in our Next Steps for Public Sale Purchasers article, Agoric completed a CoinList public sale on December 29, 2021. Of a total 50M BLD tokens sold across two options, 15M BLD from Option 1 will unlock on July 1st. Unlocked BLD token holders will be able to transfer their tokens freely between Agoric accounts and, with your vote to enable IBC, across to other Cosmos chains to participate in the interchain ecosystem. Unlocked BLD holders can also make proposals for governance and can continue to stake their tokens and vote on governance proposals. 

If you’re an Option 1 Purchaser, the best way to check that you have received your BLD tokens is by visiting agoric.bigdipper.live and entering your Agoric wallet address. Your unique wallet address should begin with “agoric1” followed by 38 alphanumeric characters. Token holders should be wary of services offering to check on token delivery status, as this is a known approach used by scammers to steal tokens. Agoric OpCo will never ask for your personal seed phrase or private keys, and we encourage holders to refrain from sharing this information with any unknown and unverified party.

Vote to Turn On Staking Rewards

The initial kick-off discussion to enable staking rewards was posted on the Agoric Commonwealth forum. The resulting proposal (#6) to enable staking rewards is now live and open for voting. Alternately, you can also vote directly through your Keplr Wallet. Voting is open until shortly after noon PT (UTC 2022-06-29 19:14).

An important component of this vote is that BLD holders will receive unlocked BLD through staking rewards if enabled. The governance proposal also includes updates to additional chain parameters that will be needed prior to the mainnet-1 launch. These include: 

  • Double-sign slashing penalty initialized at 5%, in line with Cosmos standard, which adds to the integrity of the validator set and their performance  

  • Unbonding time increased to 21 days, in line with Cosmos standards, which builds trust by limiting the rate of change in network topography and stake distribution — enabling the network to respond to significant changes in a timely manner

  • Inflation set at 5% with no dynamic adjustments, with the plan to re-evaluate the reward rate around the launch of mainnet-1

  • Minimum BLD deposit for governance increased to 500 BLD

  • Voting period increased to 3 days to allow for sufficient time to produce a quorum but to remain flexible for future governance proposals that will be needed as mainnet-1 launches

Important: Agoric encourages all who are engaging in governance proposal votes or other BLD transactions to verify that they are using the correct browser extension or wallet app by checking its version directly with the developer.

The BLD Community Fund

Similar to other projects in the Cosmos ecosystem, establishing a community fund can be a powerful vehicle for innovation and growth. A BLD community fund would initially be seeded with BLD by the Agoric OpCo, followed by BLD contributions from the community.

Please participate in discussion on commonwealth for how to most effectively use the community fund to grow the platform and community.  We’ll share a general update in our upcoming Twitter Space on Wednesday, June 29, as we work to get this off the ground this week.

For research purposes, you can look through existing community funds across the Cosmos ecosystem by visiting Mintscan, selecting a Cosmos project in the drop-down, and looking at the “Community Pool” data point.

Stay Safe Out There

Agoric would like to remind all BLD holders and participants in the greater crypto economy to be cautious and vigilant with the security of your seed phrase or wallet mnemonics. While Agoric actively monitors for scams and security risks, token holders must be mindful of the various practices being used to acquire wallet information and steal tokens from users (such as being contacted by unverified customer service representatives or submitting personal information through online forms and web-portals). These scams can originate through a number of communication and social media channels. If you ever have questions about a person or organization contacting you with an unverified promotion, incentive, or a support inquiry, please join the Agoric Discord and drop a message in the #report-scam channel.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will BLD be listed on exchanges? 

Any exchange info will be announced through the usual social channels.

The BLD token unlock, combined with the unlocked tokens from staking rewards, makes it likely that BLD will trade in Cosmos DeFi after IBC is enabled by governance.

Where can I buy and/or sell BLD? 

There is no DEX or CEX for unlocked BLD at this time. However, unlocked BLD will be free to transfer by July 1, 2022. 

What’s the price of BLD? 

We do not discuss price in any Agoric channels!

How do I transfer BLD to another chain?

Once IBC is enabled by community governance vote, BLD can be transferred to any blockchain that has IBC enabled and active relayers with Agoric. 

When will IBC be enabled?  

IBC can be enabled for the Agoric chain by a governance vote. This vote is likely to occur prior to the launch of mainnet-1.

Why should I stake my BLD? 

Staking your BLD enables you to vote on governance proposals, earn staking rewards, and helps to decentralize and secure the chain by supporting the validators who propagate the Agoric blockchain. 

What are staking rewards?

Validators in the voting set earn rewards for running and securing the chain. BLD holders can delegate their stake to the voting validator set in order to receive staking rewards.

How is this related to Inter Protocol?

Staking rewards are BLD only at this time. Inter Protocol is the project being built on Agoric, which has not yet launched.

I have not received my BLD from the public sale

If you purchased BLD tokens but did not submit a valid address, you will not lose them. We are planning the next step for purchasers who fall into this category.

Thanks for reading!

Make sure to stop by our Community Twitter Space this Wednesday, July 29 @ 9am PT / 16:00 UTC where we’ll cover everything you need to know about this milestone. 

You can join the Agoric community on Twitter, Discord, Telegram, and LinkedIn, subscribe to our monthly newsletter and catch us at upcoming events.