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Information about the AJNA Token
Originally published on January 5th, 2024
Disclaimer: The content of this communication is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information contained herein as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. You should not rely on the information contained herein as a basis for making any business, legal or other decisions. Ajna Labs LLC and its members, officers, directors, owners, employees, agents, representatives, suppliers and service providers cannot be held liable for any of the information contained in this communication. Nothing contained herein constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Ajna Labs LLC or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction.
Numbers contained herein should be considered estimates and should not be relied on for any decision. There could be mistakes in the data. Some numbers are approximations. Information is subject to change. We are not responsible for any actions taken upon this information.
Name: Ajna
Symbol: AJNA
Supply (current and maximum): 999,999,999
Address: 0x9a96ec9B57Fb64FbC60B423d1f4da7691Bd35079
What is the AJNA Token?
The AJNA token is the internal currency of the Ajna Protocol. It is the exclusive currency which can be used in reserve auctions. Reserve auctions occur when an Ajna Pool has accumulated reserves. Reserves accumulate through the accumulation of three fees in a pool – (1) the net interest margin, which accumulates on debt outstanding, (2) the origination fee, which accumulates on new debt, (3) the deposit fee, which accumulates from any lender deposit. These fees are necessary to discourage manipulation of the pool by bad actors. The AJNA token is a way to extract these reserves without incurring a significant and wasteful economic loss. Once reserves exist, anyone can trigger a reserve auction as long as 120 hours have passed since the previous one began.
The initial supply of AJNA is 1 Billion (1,000,000,000) tokens. There is no ability to mint new AJNA tokens, 1 Billion is the maximum supply. Note that the supply is currently 999,999,999 as 1 AJNA token was burned for testing purposes.
When AJNA tokens are used to purchase reserves in a reserve auction they are irreversibly burned. This means that over time, as AJNA tokens are used to purchase reserves, the supply of AJNA can only decrease.
Initial Distribution
The AJNA token was distributed at the end of 2023, shortly before the dissolution of Ajna Labs.
The distribution is approximately:
Team-Funders: Ajna Labs was self-funded for the majority of its existence by its founders. The founders who contributed capital to the project were given tokens for doing so.
Team-Builders: All team members and advisors of Ajna Labs LLC, regardless of whether they contributed capital to the project, also received tokens.
Voters-Funders: Towards the latter stages of development, when it became apparent that the ecosystem would require competent voters to participate in the onchain grants program, Ajna Labs permitted trusted individuals and entities to contribute capital in exchange for their commitment to voting in the grants process. These individuals and entities were given tokens proportional to their capital contributions.
Integrators/Contractors: Several external contractors and companies have integrated or are working towards integrating various components of the Ajna Protocol into their own product suites. Some have provided services such as security audits. These groups were primarily paid in AJNA tokens.
Incentives: Summer Finance was awarded 5.5% of the AJNA token supply to distribute to users of the Ajna Protocol through the Summer.fi front end (www.summer.fi) as they see fit. A Yearn Finance core contributor was awarded 3% of the AJNA token supply to distribute to users of the Ajna Protocol through Yearn Finance products as they see fit (www.yearn.finance). The Mom team was awarded 3% of the AJNA token supply to distribute to users of the Ajna Protocol through their front end (www.ajnafi.com) as they see fit.
Grant Treasury: The Ajna Grant Process is a permissionless, onchain process that is not in any way intermediated by a centralized counterparty. This treasury will release up to 3% of its supply every 90 days to the top 10 most popular proposals, in accordance with the votes of AJNA tokenholders.
Lockup Schedule
Many holders of AJNA tokens will be under some kind of lockup agreement for at least the first year following the token’s distribution. The intention of the lockup schedule is to ensure that there is sufficient available liquidity for Ajna pools to sell their reserves while preserving fairness and maintaining appropriate incentives for the recipients who will continue to provide services to the ecosystem (e.g. voting). As reserves accumulate and reserve auctions are triggered, holders of AJNA tokens can exchange these tokens for reserves directly with the pools once their balance is unlocked. Having an insufficient available supply of AJNA tokens would result in the Ajna pools effectively selling reserves at a discount.
The schedule is estimated* as follows. As a reminder, each grant cycle is anticipated to be roughly 90 days and thus the following schedule and chart represent a two-year time horizon. Certain lockups may exceed two years but do not represent a material amount of tokens. Lockups for integrators and contractors align with the length of services which they have agreed to provide and thus may fall into this category. The first grant cycle should conclude approximately 90 days after the grants contract is deployed (targeting Monday Jan 8, 2024). The relevance of grant cycles will become apparent in the following section on lockup conditions.
Assumes incentives are distributed evenly over the course of a year, and that Summer.fi allocations for initial deployment users are distributed immediately.
Lockup Conditions
Note: All token lockups that are tied to the grant cycle are considered unlocked only when the following grant cycle begins.
Voters-Funders/Integrators/Contractors: This group is subject to a “vote based unlock” where they will unlock (based on their specific agreement) between 12.5%-25% of their tokens per grant cycle in which they participate. They will only unlock tokens that they vote with and must participate in both the screening and funding stages of the grant process. If they fail to vote with any of their tokens, these tokens will not unlock for 4 years.
Team-Funders/Team-Builders: In order to preserve the decentralized nature and integrity of the grants process, all tokens associated with Ajna Labs team members are not subject to voting requirements. Team member tokens will unlock 25% at the end of each grant cycle. This aligns with other groups whose lockup is based on voting.
Incentives/Grant Treasury: No lockup is placed on these tokens.
What will happen to the Ajna Labs team after the wind-down?
The team at Ajna Labs are true believers in decentralization and its efficacy. Upon completion of our work, we intend to wind down the Ajna Labs entity and leave further development of the Ajna ecosystem entirely in the hands of its users. As of now, our official winddown is targeted for January 11th, 2024. After this date, Ajna Labs LLC will cease to exist and cease its contributions to the protocol and/or ecosystem. The primary method by which ecosystem growth is intended to occur is through the grant process.