The QCK Token Launch: All About QCK

Quicksilver Zone
QuicksilverZone
Published in
4 min readMar 21, 2023
Quicksilver’s QCK Token has Launched

The QCK token has officially listed on Osmosis DEX. Between Discord, Telegram, Twitter, AMAs, and Spaces, the team has answered thousands of questions about the protocol, QCK, and how QCK brings long-term value to Quicksilver’s liquid staking model. This article will dive into the fundamentals of QCK to help the community get up to speed with the token.

The Basics of QCK

If you’re new here, Hi! Quicksilver is a Cosmos SDK zone that provides liquid staking for the Interchain. Thanks to custom features like signaling intent, unrestricted validator sets & participation rewards, Quicksilver supports both decentralization and user sovereignty. Quicksilver will be the only liquid staking protocol in Cosmos that offers you the ability to choose any validator for liquid staking.

QCK is the native token of Quicksilver.

Participating in Governance

Since Quicksilver is controlled by its token holders, staking QCK allows a community member to participate in the governance decisions that influence the protocol’s future. Decisions made by the community include things like protocol parameters, onboarding of new zones, distribution of incentives, and inflation rates.

Paying Fees

QCK token is used to pay fees for transactions submitted to the network. These fees are paid to block producers on the network as compensation for ensuring a transaction is included in a block.

Liquid staking transactions on Quicksilver use the native chain’s token as gas; for example, depositing ATOM to receive liquid staked qATOM uses ATOM as gas. However, you will need QCK tokens for transactions like withdrawing qAssets from Quicksilver to deposit them as liquidity on Osmosis, or simply staking your QCK to a validator to secure the Quicksilver chain.

Staking QCK

QCK token holders can delegate their QCK to validators to secure the Quicksilver chain. The validators provide proof-of-stake consensus to the network.

Stakers receive QCK rewards and native chain rewards as a thank-you for staking. QCK rewards come from inflation, and the native chain rewards come from staking fees collected by the protocol.

For example, if a user stakes QCK, they will receive QCK, ATOM & STARS rewards. As more chains onboard onto the protocol, QCK stakers have the opportunity to earn rewards in more tokens. This means that QCK will eventually provide exposure to major Cosmos assets, similar to an index token.

All revenue generated by the Quicksilver protocol is distributed among the QCK stakers.

Wallets that support QCK staking include Keplr, Cosmostation, Citadel, and Leap.

QCK Tokenomics

QCK is an inflationary token with adaptive tokenomics, meaning protocol governance can change vital parameters like token inflation. We created it this way to make it flexible to market conditions and the goals of the Quicksilver community.

The QCK token’s unique distribution mechanisms help ensure there is an overlap of incentives and ownership between users of the Quicksilver protocol and holders of the QCK token.

The genesis token allocation of QCK was 200M, of which >56% went directly to the community & to testnet incentives. You can read more about the genesis allocation on Medium.

A Vision for Inflation

QCK token inflation is designed to support decentralization, liquid staking adoption, and community ownership of Quicksilver. QCK token inflation will empower Quicksilver in four ways:

  1. Incentivise stakers to secure the Quicksilver chain
  2. Support decentralization on the native chains onboarded for liquid staking
  3. Incentivise protocol adoption & usage
  4. Support the Quicksilver Community

To support this vision, the year 1 inflation emissions are planned to be distributed as follows:

  • 80% emitted as Staking Rewards to reward validators and their delegators for securing the Quicksilver network.
  • 10% distributed as Participation Rewards to users of the Quicksilver protocol.
  • 7% to the Incentive Pool for ongoing incentives to new users and liquidity providers.
  • 3% to the community pool controlled by governance, to be spent on projects benefiting the Quicksilver community.

Inflation is governance configured, meaning that the community can vote on total inflation, yearly inflation, and the allocation of emissions.

Inflation in the first year will be 25%, after which it is expected to drop by 25% per year. These rates give QCK a max supply of 400M before inflation goes to zero.

Getting Access to QCK

QCK token is listed on Osmosis DEX. The pair is QCK:OSMO. The pool will be soon incentivized with QCK rewards as a thank-you to early participants.

The QCK token page is live on Coingecko. It’s new, so it will take a few hours or days for the page to update with the latest information.

Finally, we’d like to thank the community & partners who made the QCK launch possible.

It is a thrilling time for Quicksilver, and we are glad to be on this journey with you. 🙌

Quicksilver is the interchain liquid staking protocol for the Cosmos ecosystem and beyond.

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