Announcing PIKA Token Launch

5 min readMay 9, 2023

Pika Protocol is 2 years old, and PIKA is finally here!

TL;DR

We are thrilled to announce the launch of PIKA, the utility token of the Pika Protocol. PIKA can be staked to access platform trading fees and get trading fee discounts. PIKA is also planned to be the gas token of the future PIKA Chain built on top of OP Stack.

The token generation event(TGE) is set to take place in May 23 @ 14:00 UTC and will be hosted on Pika Protocol launchpad on Optimism, lasting for four days.

How we get here?

Pika Protocol has always been a community driven project with zero funds raised and no VC involvement. We are now in our third year of developing Pika Protocol, and could never have imagined we would come so far when we first announced the project in 2021.

Pika v0 — September 2021

After spending six months in development, we launched a derivatives-backed stablecoin on the testnet. Despite our efforts, we faced significant challenges with this model, leading us to pivot towards creating a perpetual swap exchange.

Pika v1 — November 2021

We introduced the first perpetual swap exchange on Optimism in beta, marking a new beginning for our platform.

Pika v2 — January 2022

The official launch of Pika Perp Exchange garnered impressive adoption, solidifying our position as one of the most utilized protocols on Optimism. We consistently ranked within the top 5 for transaction count.

Pika v3 — July 2022

In July 2022, we rolled out a major upgrade that introduced advanced features such as stop/limit orders, dynamic funding, and forex trading capabilities.

Since our inception, we have attracted over 280,000 users to our platform, achieved a total value locked (TVL) of $15 million, and processed ~$1.5 billion in trading volume.

Introducing PIKA

Pika Protocol has a two tokens: PIKA and Escrow PIKA(esPIKA)

PIKA is the utility token of Pika Protocol:

PIKA can be staked to access 30% of platform trading fees.(PIKA is locked for 14 days for staking)
PIKA can be staked to get trading fee discounts.
PIKA is also planned to be the gas token of future PIKA Chain built on top of OP Stack.

PIKA will not have governance functionality at launch, but we may introduce governance in future when the protocol is more mature.

Escrow PIKA(esPIKA) is a non-transferable token that can be vested for one year to unlock PIKA. The lock-up mechanism will begin with a 90% fee for vesting PIKA which will decay linearly to zero. Any fees for redeeming earlier than one year will be sent to the treasury growth fund. After one year, esPIKA becomes 1:1 with PIKA.

PIKA Supply

PIKA has a total supply of 100m and and initial circulating supply of 19 million following the token generation event(TGE).

19%: Token generation event

30%: Future platform rewards for liquidity providers, traders and PIKA stakers. All rewards are distributed as esPIKA over next 3 years. The reward tokens are held in a vesting contract with a three-year linear vesting schedule. They will be distributed periodically once they have been unvested.

20%: Growth fund for exchange liquidity, operations, grants and marketing. 6% is to provide exchange(DEXes and CEXes) liquidity after TGE and the rest is linearly vested over next 3 years

20%: Core contributors and advisors(vested linearly over 2 years)

11%: Retroactive and future airdrops(distributed as esPIKA)

Token Generation Event

The Pika token generation event is a completely fair launch, as the project has been fully self-funded for the past two years without any involvement from VC or private investors. This event represents the FIRST and ONLY chance for users to obtain token distribution.

Event Details

Platform: Launchpad of Pika Protocol
Start time: May 23 @ 2PM UTC
End time: May 27 @ 2PM UTC
Chain: Optimism
Accepted deposit: ETH
Starting PIKA price: 0.0002 ETH per PIKA (~$6.8m MC, ~$36m FDV)
Allocation: 19,000,000 PIKA (19% of total supply)
Total max supply: 100,000,000 PIKA
Vesting: None, 100% unlocked
Referral: create and share your referral link for 2% ETH bonus on referrals

PIKA tokens will be distributed at TGE in three phases:

Whitelist Phase: for the first 24 hours, 5 million PIKA tokens (5% of the supply) will be available for whitelist participates at the fixed price of 0.0002 ETH(~$0.36) and the FDV of ~$36m with a market cap of ~$6.8m. Whitelist addresses will be selected from historic vault depositors, traders and contributors. The allocation of each whitelist address depends on historic activities(1, 3 or 5 ETH allocation for each address). Participation is on a first come first served basis and will end early if all the allocation is filled. Please note that being whitelisted does not guarantee a spot if the allocation is filled early.

Public Phase: for the next 72 hours, 14 million PIKA tokens (14% of the supply) and the undistributed whitelist allocation are available for the public participation, at the starting price of 0.0002 ETH(~$0.36). All participants will acquire PIKA tokens at the same rate, calculated based on their contributions (Received Amount = Deposited ETH Amount / PIKA Final Price). The price will never go above 0.0004 ETH and the phase will end early if that price is reached to protect depositors from getting an unexpected high price.

Claim Phase: once the event ends and the final price for public phase is determined, PIKA tokens can be claimed.

700 ETH out of the raised amount will be added to Uniswap as token liquidity. If not all the 19% tokens are generated, the remaining part will be sent to the treasury growth fund for future token liquidity. Every user can create a referral link that can be publicly shared, to earn 2% (in ETH) of all the referred deposit made through it.

TGE Whitelist

Pika Protocol’s success over the past two years would not have been possible without the unwavering support of our dedicated community. In recognition of their valuable contributions, we are offering Pika users the chance to be whitelisted for the TGE. The criteria and methodology for this opportunity is outlined in this post. The whitelist can be found here.

Roadmap of Pika Protocol

The future of Pika has never been more exciting. There are three major milestones we plan to deliver within next 18 months:

Launch of Pika v4, an incremental upgrade for Pika v3
Launch an NFT perp exchange
Launch Pika v5
Launch Pika chain, a layer-3 chain on top of OP Stack

Please check this post for details of the roadmap.

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Visit website: www.pikaprotocol.com