What Is Polkastarter (POLS)?
Polkastarter is a blockchain platform designed to provide an easy to use launchpad for cross-chain token pools and auctions. It is most commonly used by early-stage blockchain projects that want to raise capital and easily distribute their tokens at the same time.
Through Polkastarter, blockchain projects can easily create their own cross-chain swap pools, which allow them to securely raise funds, while users can invest without risks, since swaps are automatically executed by smart contracts.
POLS is the native utility token of the Polkastarter platform and plays a number of roles in its ecosystem, being used for liquidity mining, governance, paying transaction fees, and gaining eligibility to participate in POLS-holder only pools.
The platform first went live in December 2020, and has quickly grown to become one of the most commonly used platforms for initial DEX offerings (IDOs). As of February 2021, Polkastarter operates on the Ethereum blockchain, but will eventually migrate to the Polkadot mainnet.
Who Are the Founders of Polkastarter?
Polkastarter features an executive team with over three decades of combined experience in tech firms. It was co-founded by Daniel Stockhaus and Tiago Martins, who currently hold the roles of CEO and CTO at Polkastarter respectively.
Daniel Stockhaus is a serial entrepreneur credited with co-founding a highly successful e-commerce firm known as LiGo, as well as the digital growth agency Oliphant Ltd. Prior to this, he worked as a digital media designer for Fitch, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in communication and media studies.
Tiago Martins, on the other hand, is a former professor of computer science and an experienced developer with expertise in online education and product development. He is also the co-founder of Codeplace, an online platform that teaches the fundamentals of web development.
Besides the executive members, the Polkastarter team also includes several heavily experienced advisors and other non-public staff.
What Makes Polkastarter Unique?
Polkastarter's main offering is its fixed swap smart contract, which allows projects to easily launch liquidity pools that execute orders at a fixed price — rather than using the AMM model made popular by Uniswap.
The platform is designed to handle a range of auction types, including sealed-bid and dutch auctions, as well as both fixed and dynamic ratio swaps. This makes it suitable for cryptocurrency projects looking to raise funds, as well as a variety of other use-cases, including private trades, OTC deals, and discounted sales.
Beyond this, other key features of the platform include permissionless listings, anti-scam capabilities, full KYC integration and liquidity mining.
It should be noted that many of these features are currently unavailable, but are scheduled to launch at a later date — possibly after Polkastarter transitions to the Polkadot network, which is currently slated for Q1 2021.
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How Many Polkastarter (POLS) Coins Are There in Circulation?
As of February 2021, a total of 56.5 million POLS are in free circulation, out of a total supply of 100 million tokens.
POLS initially launched with 17.875 million tokens in circulation, but this has since increased to its current levels due to the gradual release of locked tokens. According to the official tokenomics, POLS should reach 100% dilution 24 months after listing (approximately late September 2022).
Overall, the total supply is divided as follows:
Foundation reserve: 10%
Team & Advisors: 10%
Marketing fund: 10%
Liquidity fund: 22.5%
Seed sale: 15%
Private sale: 22.5%
Team tokens are locked for 1 year and are then unlocked at a rate of 25% per quarter.
How Is the Polkastarter Network Secured?
As of March 2021, Polkastarter is based on the Ethereum blockchain and POLS is an ERC-20 token. As a result, it is secured by Ethereum’s extensive proof-of-work (PoW) mining system, which sees thousands of miners and nodes work together to keep the network secure.
In Q1 2021, Polkastarter is scheduled to migrate to Polkadot. This move will be facilitated through its partnership with Moonbeam, which will allow the Polkastarter team to easily port its current Ethereum-facing code to Polkadot. Once launched on Polkadot, transactions will instead be secured by Polkadot’s hybrid consensus mechanism — consisting of GRANDPA and BABE.
BABE is used to propose block producers, whereas GRANDPA finalizes them. The two systems work together to prevent centralization and protect against Sybil attacks.
Where Can You Buy Polkastarter (POLS)?
Despite being a relatively new token, POLS can be traded on a large number of prominent cryptocurrency exchanges — some of the most popular of which include Huobi Global, Gate.io and Poloniex. It's also available on most major decentralized exchanges — including Uniswap, 1inch and 0x Protocol.
