EmpowerChain Launch, Airdrop, and Testnet Rewards!

We are very excited to announce the successful launch of the EmpowerChain! After one year of development, two testnets, and four weeks of incentivized testnet, we finally launched the blockchain for the circular economy. Since we started our journey five years ago, we’ve been dreaming about scaling up concepts for the circular economy to web3 (and vice versa). That dream is starting to materialize.

Over the next few days and weeks, the launch will intensify with a token streaming event with StreamSwap, native support in the Leap wallet, a full launch of the EmpowerChain Plastic Credit marketplace, and more.

StreamSwap is an Osmosis-based protocol for time-based token swaps — enabling community-driven token launches. The community is set to launch a StreamSwap bootstrapping on the 5th of July and end with the streaming phase on the 7th. To learn more about StreamSwap, we recommend reading this blog post: Introducing StreamSwap — protocol for time-based token swaps powering community-driven token launches.

What is EmpowerChain?

EmpowerChain is a tailored blockchain network designed to support the circular economy and promote equal opportunities for stakeholders in the global decentralized waste management ecosystem. EmpowerChain enables stakeholders to collaborate and create sustainable solutions for our planet’s waste challenges by providing a trustless, lock-in-free platform.

More concretely, EmpowerChain works on providing tools, infrastructure, and incentives needed for the circular economy to work. At launch, we are deploying the first set of tools with plastic credits and proof of existence. You can learn more about EmpowerChain and its applications in our docs. A good starting point could be https://docs.empowerchain.io/introduction/what-is-empowerchain.

Launch phases and key dates

The launch of EmpowerChain will happen in multiple phases over the next few weeks. These phases will get the network up and running, bootstrap liquidity, and enable integrations with Empower’s existing solutions and users.

Some important dates to note:

• 28th of June: Launch of the network
• 5th of July: StreamSwap Bootstrapping (2 days event)
• 7th of July: StreamSwap Streaming (1–2 hour event)
• 7th of July: Osmosis liquidity pool
• 10th of July: Proposal to turn on staking rewards (emissions)

All dates are subject to change as most of these events are controlled by the on-chain governance.

Phase 1: Ignition (genesis)

In the first phase, we get the network ready for prime-time by starting to produce blocks, initial delegations, and enabling IBC. There is limited liquidity, and the focus is on ensuring stability and starting the integration work with other backend systems and frontends.

This phase should last a few days, concluding before the 5th of July (because of StreamSwap).

Phase 2: Lift-off (IBC and StreamSwap)

As we’ve talked with the community, the current plan is for a StreamSwap bootstrapping event to start on the 5th of July. A text proposal to vote on this must go up for vote and reach quorum and majority first. Still, when it is, we can initiate this on behalf of the community from the Impact Group (see tokenomics and structure below for more details on the setup).

Phase 3: Max Q (Liquidity event)

Right after the end of the StreamSwap stream, the plan (if governance decides to) is to put half of the swapped tokens, as well as match it with MPWR tokens to create a 50/50 pool with the same token ratio as the result of the StreamSwap stream.

The other half of the swapped tokens will be sent back to EmpowerChain and put into the Tech Funding group to keep for future funding of core development of the protocol.

Phase 4: Powered Ascent (Integration and launching initial applications)

This phase will happen continuously in the background from the 28th. It will conclude with the EmpowerChain Plastic Credit Marketplace officially launching with the first plastic credits a couple of weeks after launch. It is unavailable from day one because it requires a lot of integration with existing systems (which we have tested and done during testnet already, so we expect this to happen fairly smoothly).

More concrete details and dates will be announced during the next few weeks.

Governance structure

EmpowerChain governance is a multi-layered on-chain governance system with a constitution at its core. It should be a stable, solid public good and reliable, predictable infrastructure. We aim to have slow, considerate, and purposeful governance to ensure this. To do this, we will propose a constitution that will be the core of the governance. The constitution will be a document that can only be changed by a supermajority of the governance.

As seen in the picture below, on-chain governance owns the constitution and the ownership of SubGroups. The SubGroups are the entities that will hold and execute on funds and proposals coming from governance and the constitution.

The team will control most of these groups and assets at launch to ensure a reliable network start. The makeup of the groups will be decided by governance over time.

More information about our “road to decentralization” will be published shortly.

In the meantime, you can read more about the vision for EmpowerChain governance here: https://docs.empowerchain.io/governance/overview

Tokenomics

The EmpowerChain tokenomics are designed to make the native network utility token, $MPWR, a useful asset for all participants in the EmpowerChain ecosystem. This is important for long-term development and maintenance and to ensure that the token is a viable incentive for actors in the waste sector to participate.

The initial distribution of tokens is set up as follows:

• 25% for waste collectors and recyclers (to be distributed over time)
• 25% for usage incentives and airdrops (to be distributed over time)
• 10% for private presale (exact numbers TBA — remaining funds will be kept for future funding — all tokens are subject to lockup and vesting (minimum 1-year lockup + 1-year vesting)
• 5% permalocked for an on-chain staking impact
• 20% for community growth, partnerships, liquidity, etc
• 7.5% for team members (1-year lockup + 4-year vesting)
• 7.5% for an Empower long-term lockup (5+5 years)

Any tokens not owned by the team will be locked in on-chain groups (similar to a multisig), which are owned (admin) by the chain itself (through governance), but will be preset with members of the team and potentially other community members. The makeup of these groups will be decided by governance of time.

Any locked or vested tokens can still stake and accrue staking rewards. The staking rewards are liquid tokens that are transferable. This is how the Cosmos SDK vesting accounts work, so the tokenomics design is trying to consider this. This means that, for instance, Empower’s long-term lockup tokens can accrue staking rewards (even though the initial amount is fully locked for five years). There will be some exceptions; for instance, the team tokens will not be paid out any staking rewards in the first year. The exact mechanism we will use for this is still being discussed and will be announced later.

You can do a deep dive into the tokenomics and distribution, including more details on each category in the genesis distribution, in our docs here: https://docs.empowerchain.io/tokenomics/initial-token-distribution

Genesis Airdrop

At the genesis of EmpowerChain, we’ve distributed 7,250,000 MPWR tokens to 122,386 recipients.

The airdrop is fully locked until the 7th of July (around the conclusion of the StreamSwap event) and will vest linearly for one year after that.

As for both airdrops and testnet rewards, all locked and vested tokens can be staked. You will likely be unable to do so before some tokens start vesting (on the 7th) so you can pay for gas.
As emissions (“inflation”) are not turned on until later, no staking rewards are lost.

For those who staked with Empower Validator on the chains where we validate have gotten an additional bonus.

More airdrops are planned at a later time, and one of the ways people will be rewarded is for keeping and staking their airdrop.

Each airdrop has a small minimum amount and a small cap to have as few whales eating up the airdrop as possible and get as wide distribution as we can manage. It’s like a combination of a fairdrop and stakedrop. Only staked assets have been counted.

The chains we’ve airdropped have been strategically important for EmpowerChain now and in the future. Snapshots were taken on the 25th of June.

No claiming is required; your wallet automatically has the tokens (locked and vested as described above).

We’ve airdropped tokens to stakers on the following chains:

• Stargaze (2000000 MPWR airdropped, cap at 15000 STARS and minimum 251 STARS)
• Osmosis (3500000 MPWR airdropped, cap at 300 OSMO and minimum 11 OSMO)
• Regen (1000000 MPWR airdropped, cap at 1000 REGEN and minimum 10 REGEN)
• Cheqd (500000 MPWR airdropped, cap at 5000 CHEQ, minimum 15 CHEQ)
• Ixo (150000 MPWR airdropped, cap at 2500 IXO, minimum 100 IXO)
• Jackal (100000 MPWR airdropped, cap 1000 JKL, minimum 11 JKL)

NFT airdrops

As we have communicated earlier, holders of Cyber Plastic Heros, Earth Day Plastic Heros, and Cyber Solar Heros will also receive an airdrop. This has not been distributed yet and will be done before or on the 7th of July, and the tokens will not be locked or vested.

Testnet rewards

We’re excited about the participation and results from the (first?) incentivized EmpowerChain testnet. We’ve had thousands of people participate in many tasks to test out tooling to help enable the circular economy.

By a long shot, the overall winner was the genesis validator Cumulo. They did amazing work in writing documentation, Zealy challenges, and almost all the other tasks available. We are proud to have them contribute and validate on EmpowerChain.

All testnet rewards have been distributed (some exceptions for missing wallets, see below). Most of the recipients got extra tokens because most of the categories got increased prizes. Like the airdropped tokens, all rewards are fully locked until the 7th of July and will vest linearly for one year after that (meaning that after six months, 50% of the tokens will be unlocked).

As for both airdrops and testnet rewards, all locked and vested tokens can be staked. You will likely be unable to do so before some tokens start vesting (on the 7th) so you can pay for gas. As emissions (“inflation”) are not turned on until later, no staking rewards are lost.

For the testnet rewards, we did not distribute all rewards as not all categories had full participation. We increased the rewards for most categories with some of the tokens that were left over. The remaining tokens will be set aside for future testnet and rewards.

Zealy rewards were increased from 120,000 to 150,000 MPWR tokens. UI testing increased from 15 and 30 MPWR to 20 and 40 MPWR. CLI testing increased from 9.3 and 37.5 to 20 and 50 MPWR. IBC testing increased from a maximum of 50 to 100 MPWR. Bug rewards were increased by quite a bit to reward the hard work put into these tasks. Some bugs had been spent a lot of work to resolve, and some got bonuses based on that.

In the end, after adjusting up rewards and removing missing wallets, we ended up distributing 253,763 MPWR tokens from the testnet rewards. Most of the remaining rewards are for security issues and builder rewards and will be kept for that purpose in the future. Builders should reach out to figure out how we can work together.

A note on missing wallets: not everyone can submit their wallets in time, so we will accommodate anyone who missed out. Please reach out on Discord if you did not get any rewards. We will distribute another round of rewards for missing wallets towards the end of July. That said, we were able to find wallets from other tasks and combine data to miss as few people as possible. Most people should have gotten their rewards just fine.

There have been questions about why some people have higher amounts in their wallets than others who might have done more in the testnet. In every case so far, the answer has been that they also received an airdrop at the address (see the airdrop section above).

Make sure you follow us on:
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