CACAO

Learn more about our settlement asset paired in every liquidity pool. No more wrapping, learn how to exchange natively.

August 22, 2024

Key takeaways

  • $CACAO is the native token of the Maya Protocol, it powers the whole ecosystem and provides the economic incentives required to secure the network.
  • All $CACAO to ever exist will be minted at once and distributed to the people participating in Maya’s Liquidity Auction, to have a fair distribution (Fairdrop).
  • $CACAO tokens are paired with external assets like BTC, ETH or BNB inside our liquidity pools, to facilitate trades and to earn a percentage of the swap commissions.

Maya Protocol has been designed to be completely fair and open. To accomplish this, two different tokens were conceptualized: $MAYA and $CACAO.

$CACAO is our flagship token, and the lifeblood of the protocol. Its Total Supply is 100 million, which will be minted once and then distributed to the people participating in our Liquidity Auction, in what we consider to be a very fair distribution process. You can read more about the Liquidity Auction and the subsequent Fairdrop process here. 

TWO MAIN FUNCTIONS: LIQUIDITY AND SECURITY

Unlike other more speculative tokens, $CACAO plays an integral part in the security and operation of its protocol.

$CACAO tokens power the Maya Protocol ecosystem and provide the economic incentives to secure the network because they are required to run our nodes (Maya runs with a Proof of Bond consensus mechanism).

They are also needed to provide liquidity in our pools, where they are paired against other, external assets to earn a percentage of the transaction fees generated by user swaps. All of our liquidity pools consist of an external native token paired against $CACAO. For example, there is a BTC / $CACAO pool and an ETH / $CACAO pool, but we don’t have a BTC / ETH pool.

Because of their limited supply and different use cases, the more people participating in our ecosystem, the higher the value $CACAO tokens would be. 

$CACAO’s deterministic price should be 1x TVL (Total Value Locked)

Because of the 1:1 ratio of assets inside our liquidity pools and, given the Proof of Bond mechanism, the theoretical market cap of $CACAO in our pools will always match the sum of the value of the rest of the exogenous assets in them. In other words, all the $CACAO in our pools should equal in value the sum of the notional USD value of all the BTC, ETH, RUNE, etc.

Thorchads will recall that Thorchain’s economic design and bonding requirements result in a theoretical deterministic value for $RUNE’s market cap of 3x TVL. Maya’s 1x might look lower at first glance but is actually the reflection of the higher capital efficiency within our protocol and the tighter relation of $CACAO’s price to liquidity depth and fee generation.

Over the long term, a bet on $CACAO is a bet on all the assets provided to the protocol. Another way to look at it is to see $CACAO as a basket of the main assets in our cryptoverse.

BROADENING USE CASES BEYOND MAYA

$CACAO tokens’ value will be strengthened too when they can be used productively outside of the Maya ecosystem, which we intend to do with features like Security Nodes and the Aztec Chain. If you are interested in these innovative features, make sure to read about them in our WhitePaper here.

Are you ready for the value accrual black hole that Maya is building around $CACAO? We hope you are as excited as we are! 

Oh, and see you in our Liquidity Auction!