ECO & ECOx Supply and Liquidity Overview

Token Supply

ECO (ticker: $ECO) is the base currency intended primarily for spending activity. ECO has a variable supply set by monetary policy.

ECOx (ticker: $ECOx) is a secondary token designed to promote sound governance and responsible growth. ECOx has a capped total supply that is designed to decrease over time.

Since ECO and ECOx have different purposes and use cases, they are allocated differently and their circulating supplies are expected to change at different rates. Therefore this post only summarizes the starting supply — from here, other than for preset token unlock events, system governance will dictate changes in token supply and distribution of new supply.

Token supply is allocated among five stakeholder categories:

Community

This includes early Eco Discord and Twitter community contributors, the prefunded protocol treasury vault and tokens allocated to the Eco Association for community distribution and support.

Team

This includes past, present and future employees (including founders) of Eco, Inc.

Advisors

This includes founders not employed by Eco, Inc., founding advisors, and other individuals who supported early research and helped shape the original vision for Eco, but who never formally worked for Eco, Inc.

Investors

This includes investors who purchased rights in ECOx in fundraising rounds in 2018, 2020 and/or 2021.

Ecosystem Partners

This includes ECO distribution partners (including Helix Foundation, Eco, Inc. and certain other partners listed below) as well as tokens allocated to Eco Association for its own operations in support of the protocol.

At launch, ECO and ECOx will be allocated as detailed below.

At launch there will be 10 billion ECO units allocated as follows:

Community: 8,565,000,000 units (85.65%)

• 6,030,000,000 (60.30%) in the protocol treasury vault, controlled by community governance
• 2,500,000,000 (25.00%) in Eco Association for long-term user distribution
• 35,000,000 (0.35%) reserved for early Eco Discord and Twitter community contributors

Ecosystem Partners: 1,435,000,000 (14.35%)

• 1,235,000,000 (12.35%) in Eco, Inc. for long-term user distribution
• 200,000,000 (2.00%) dedicated to market liquidity through Helix Foundation

The entire initial ECO supply is intended for end-user distribution and liquidity support through various channels, with the vast majority influenced by community management.

There are 1 billion ECOx units allocated as follows:

Community: 197,000,000 units (19.70%)

• 120,000,000 (12.00%) in the protocol treasury vault
• 50,000,000 (5.00%) reserved for future Trustee compensation
• 14,000,000 (1.40%) reserved for pre-launch Eco Discord and Twitter community contributors
• 13,000,000 (1.30%) reserved for further community liquidity incentives

Team: 228,296,449 units (22.83%)

• 121,579,145 (12.16%) to founding Eco, Inc. employees
• 106,717,304 (10.67%) to non-founding Eco, Inc. employee pool

Advisors: 86,863,914 units (8.69%)

Investors: 292,759,401 units (29.27%)

• Further detail is available in the Circulating Supply section below.

These investors who purchased rights in ECOx did so through entering into agreements with Eco, Inc. — which is a separate entity from the Eco Association, with its own token allocations. The lead investors for the fundraising rounds were: a16z Crypto, Pantera Capital, Expa, L Catterton, and Activant Capital.

Ecosystem Partners: 195,080,236 units (19.51%)

• 70,000,000 (7.00%) to Eco Association for community grants, long-term capitalization and market support
• 56,319,296 (5.63%) to Eco, Inc. for long-term capitalization
• 35,427,607 (3.54%) to Bolt Financial, Inc. for partnership and supporting future ECO distribution
• 20,000,000 (2.00%) dedicated to market liquidity through Helix Foundation
• 13,333,333 (1.33%) to Expa for partnership, contribution of Eco brand, and supporting future ECO distribution

Voting Power

Since the Eco protocol has two tokens, it can be difficult to assess the relative allocations and rights for both tokens across all stakeholder categories. But one way to think about this in the aggregate is in terms of voting power.

Both ECO and ECOx participate in community governance of the network (again, if you haven’t yet read the whitepaper, it’s best to do so before this post). At launch, the voting power of the ECO supply and the ECOx supply have equal weight.

Here is how voting power is allocated among stakeholders at launch:

This voting power split assumes full participation by all holders of both ECO and ECOx (which also assumes all ECOx is staked). However, at launch, not all voting power will be assigned or delegated; it will be up to the Eco community, through governance, to ultimately design processes for delegating and/or voting the power of the protocol treasury vault.

Note that system voting power will not remain static. In any given system generation in the future, the voting power of all ECOx remains constant or decreases, while the voting power of all ECO is equal to the ratio of ECO supply in that generation to the ECO supply at launch, times the ECO voting power at launch. In other words, in the event that ECO supply is inflationary (from monetary policy) and/or ECOx supply is deflationary (from ECOx => ECO conversions), the actual voting power of all ECO will increase relative to the voting power of ECOx.

Circulating Supply & Unlocking Schedules

The earliest unlocked ECO and ECOx tokens in circulation are reserved for pre-launch Eco Discord and Twitter community contributors, as well as for market liquidity. All team, investor and advisor ECOx tokens are subject to 1-4 year lockup periods (and in many cases additional vesting schedules) as further detailed below.

All lockups begin at protocol launch, which is defined as the day when the generation time clock of the Eco protocol begins (i.e. when system governance begins).

Protocol launch occurred on Friday October 28th, 2022.

Community

• ECO and ECOx tokens available to be claimed by eligible community members will be claimed half unlocked and half locked up. The locked ECO will be claimable after 30 days. The locked ECOx will be claimable starting after 30 days, but with additional ECOx for waiting longer to claim. (More details regarding the community token claim are given below.)
• The treasury vaults may be tapped at any time, although substantial community coordination will be required to access them via governance; as such, they are considered not a part of the circulating supply at launch.

Team

• All team members at Eco, Inc. are subject to 5 or 6-year vesting schedules for their tokens; there is a one-year cliff, with the remainder vesting monthly afterward.
• Vested founding team member tokens are subject to an additional post-launch lockup period, to be released over 4 years as follows: 10% of vested tokens release two years after launch, and then 15% of vested tokens release every 4 months thereafter.
  
  Prior to October 2023, this lockup was scheduled to be one year shorter, but it was updated and extended at that time.
• Vested non-founding team member tokens are locked for one year post-launch.

Advisors

• Vested advisor tokens are locked for 1-4 years post-launch.

Investors

• Eco investors are subject to 2, 3, or 4-year lockup periods depending on when they invested.
• Here is the split broken down by the number of investor-held ECOx tokens in each price tier and lockup period:
• • 59,673,328 investor ECOx units (5.97% ECOx supply) were purchased for a price of $0.115/unit and are subject to a three-year lockup period with one-sixth of the tokens released four and eight months after launch, and then one-sixth of the tokens released two years after launch, and one-sixth every four months thereafter.
  • 50,586,073 investor ECOx units (5.06% ECOx supply) were purchased for a price of $0.15/unit and are subject to a two-year lockup period with one-third of the tokens released four and eight months after launch, and then one-third of the tokens released two years after launch.
  • 107,500,000 investor ECOx units (10.75% ECOx supply) were purchased for a price of $0.20/unit and are subject to a four-year lockup period with 10% released two years after launch, and then 15% of the tokens released every 4 months thereafter.
  • 75,000,000 investor ECOx units (7.50% ECOx supply) were purchased for a price of $0.80/unit and are subject to a four-year lockup period with 10% released two years after launch, and then 15% of the tokens released every 4 months thereafter.
  • Prior to October 2023, these lockup schedules were all one year shorter, but they were updated and extended at that time.
• Alternatively, aggregating the overlapping lockup events above, here is the total number of investor tokens unlocking during years 1, 2, and 3:
• • 26,807,579 investor tokens will unlock 4 months after launch.
  • 26,807,579 investor tokens will unlock 8 months after launch.
  • 45,057,579 investor tokens will unlock two years after launch.
  • 111,961,664 investor tokens will unlock during year 3.
  • 82,125,000 investor tokens will unlock during year 4.

Ecosystem Partners

• Tokens held by Ecosystem Partners (other than Eco Association) are subject to similar 1-4 year lockup periods and/or subject to additional contractual restrictions governing their intended distribution.
• The Eco Association tokens are unlocked and designated for further distribution and grant-making according to its mandate and community guidance; until such processes are set up, they are considered not a part of the circulating supply.

Liquidity

This post will be updated with more detailed market liquidity information in the coming weeks, including ways for unlocked ECO and ECOx holders to participate in liquidity incentive programs.

At launch, the vast majority of ECO and ECOx supply will not be in circulation, as it will either be in community treasury (accessible through protocol-level community governance), or reserved for longer-term distribution (whether according to governance or subject to lockup, as detailed above).

Initially the circulating supply of ECO and ECOx will consist entirely of tokens claimable by community members and reserved for market liquidity. Helix Foundation anticipates working with market makers to support market activity; these relationships will be disclosed when they become finalized.

The low initial float for ECO and ECOx is intentional; early price volatility may be higher as a result, but this reflects the overall state of the system today (very early) versus years into the future, reserving flexibility for efficient distribution as the system expands and matures — ensuring enough supply is withheld to be distributed widely and fairly enough for Eco to realize its vision. ECO is intended to be distributed strategically over the course of many years (or even decades), whereas ECOx is intended to steadily bootstrap growth of the Ecosystem as well as efficient future capital allocation over a similar time frame.

Community Claim

Eco Points holders on Discord and Twitter will be eligible to claim ECO and ECOx according to their Points balances. The claim will be available shortly after protocol launch. Community Points holders must validate ownership of their associated Discord and/or Twitter accounts, and connect them with an Ethereum wallet address previously registered through the Eco ID dApp (which will be available soon).

Community Points holders will be eligible to make two token claims: one immediate and a second after a waiting period. These claims are made permissionlessly, based on possession of an Eco ID and an on-chain Merkle tree of Twitter and Discord IDs mapped to Points holdings.

The details of each claim are described below.

For the initial claim, a claimant will receive:

• a number of ECO equal to 5x their Points balance; and
• a number of ECOx equal to 0.5x their Points balance.

Those tokens will be unlocked (i.e. fully liquid) once they are claimed. The initial claim must be made within 365 days of protocol launch.

Community Points holders may then return for a second token claim one year after they make their first claim. However, a claimant may elect to defer the second claim (keeping their remaining eligible amount ‘locked’) for longer in order to receive more ECOx. Here is how that will work:

At the second claim, a claimant will receive:

• a number of ECO equal to 5x their Points balance (in every case, measured as of the pre-launch Points freeze); and
• a number of ECOx equal to 0.5x - 3.5x their Points balance, depending on how long they leave the ECOx locked in the claim vault.
• • If the claimant makes the second claim 30-180 days after the first claim, it will return a number of ECOx equal to 0.5x the claimant’s Points balance;
  • If the claimant makes the second claim 180-540 days after the first claim, it will return a number of ECOx equal to 1.5x the claimant’s Points balance;
  • If the claimant makes the second claim 540-720 days after the first claim, it will return a number of ECOx equal to 2.5x the claimant’s Points balance;
  • If the claimant makes the second claim 720+ days after the first claim, it will return a number of ECOx equal to 3.5x the claimant’s Points balance;

For clarity, the ECOx claim schedule may otherwise be summarized as follows:

• Claimants who make their second claim 30-180 days after their first claim will end up with a total number of ECOx equal to their Points balance as of protocol launch (0.5x from the first claim, plus 0.5x from the second claim);
• Claimants who make their second claim 180-540 days after their first claim will end up with a total number of ECOx equal to 2x their Points balance as of protocol launch;
• Claimants who make their second claim 540-720 days after their first claim will end up with a total number of ECOx equal to 3x their Points balance as of protocol launch;
• Claimants who make their second claim 720+ days after their first claim will end up with a total number of ECOx equal to 4x their Points balance as of protocol launch.

In summary, community Points holders are entitled to receive a number of ECO equal to 10x their Points balance and, at minimum, a number of ECOx equal to 1x their Points balance — and more ECOx the longer they leave their second claim locked.

What's Next?

This summary will be updated with references to contract addresses, liquidity pools and system metrics as soon as they become available. If you have additional questions or would like to contribute to the Eco community, please visit eco.org or jump into Discord. If you’re interested in contributing further analysis on the protocol extending the information in this document, please join the Discord and say so.

Thank you for supporting the Eco vision. Remember, it’s still early…