Genesis Shards

Pre-initial decentralized exchange offerings (pre-IDOs) come with a range of problems. Genesis Shards aims to solve these by utilizing NFTs as a DeFi (decentralized financing) option for pre-IDO token launches.

Currently, there are very few options for pre-IDO trades, which is why it can be hard to get the community involved. Also, most of the pre-IDO market relies on over-the-counter (OTC) trading facilitated by platforms and forums that are hard for investors to find. Thus, traders find themselves in an unknown environment, exposing themselves to a high risk of default.

That is where Genesis Shards comes in. By providing users with NFTs, called Gen Tickets, for time-locking their cryptos on the platform, Genesis Shards will enable price discovery for new tokens in a unique marketplace that is based on NFT exchange.

Gen Tickets offer cross-chain pre-IDO liquidity. They can be swapped on the platform for other DeFi products, sharded (NFTX) for fractional swaps, and used to recover locked cryptos. Solidity-compatible Polkadot parachains will enable Genesis Shards to wrap illiquid pre-IDO tokens into Gen NFTs for trading on liquidity pools.

Genesis Shards has announced that it will conduct the first-ever dual-IDO on Polkastarter and Binance Smart Chain in April 2021. NFT technology will be used for a smooth transition as pre-IDO NFTs will be swapped for post-IDO ones.

Polkalokr

Polkalokr is the first customizable multi-chain token escrow platform for token economies built on Polkadot. Its Polkastarter ICO on 7 April 2021 raised $1,200,000.

Polkalokr improves transparency and liquidity by removing the need to place trust in a human third party. That is thanks to its token distribution model, which puts decisions in the hands of network participants through governance-as-a-service.

Polkalokr offers two key decentralized services, Lokr and Swappr. Lokr provides a fully customizable multi-chain token escrow, using Polkadot with flexible release schedules, and facilitates event-based distributions via Oracle feeds. The protocol also offers optional insurance products and allows the monetization of locked tokens.

Swappr is a P2P cross-chain token swapping protocol that comes with built-in privacy and multi-sig options. This protocol also allows for event-based execution via Oracle feeds.

Polkalokr had one of the largest pre-launch communities with over 100,000 people. It is clear that it is gaining massive traction and will likely continue growing in the DeFi space in Q2 2021.

Orakuru

Orakuru is a decentralized network of Oracle nodes and off-chain data for the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Since the BSC chain is still relatively new, there are very few Oracle options that work as reliable data sources. The Orakuru network will try to overcome this deficit by pulling data through external nodes that undertake $ORK staking.

$ORK was also the first token to be listed on The KickPad IDO launchpad and incubator. Orakuru’s data will be available for on-chain usage in BSC DEXs, prediction markets, insurance, lending, and more, and their feeds will power the different dApps. Orakuru will take a community-centric approach to offer a community-governed protocol.

Orakuru currently has seven experienced validators and will recruit more later in the year based on their $ORK token stake size. Orakuru is launching in April as the first official project on Kickpad’s launchpad, which wants to establish itself as a significant IDO and presale launchpad on BSC by making its platform “rug-pull proof.” The KickPad community is counting on its partnership with Orakuru to help it gain recognition as a secure and reliable launchpad for DeFi tokens.

On The Flipside

DeFis have been gaining infamy for their failure to produce fair IDOs. Most DEX tokens have prices that are prone to shoot up due to front-running and spamming by bots and lack natural price discovery mechanisms. IDOs came about because ICOs and IEOs were under centralized control, but IDOs may be giving an unfavorable advantage to technically experienced buyers and front-runners. We have yet to see a successful and fair IDO sale with reliable built-in price discovery mechanisms.