Blockzero Labs: Bringing the next generation of decentralized projects
Cryptocurrency and blockchain adoption is surging the past few months and it doesn't seem like it will stop anytime soon. This is arguably the biggest technological innovation since the Internet and the world has slowly started to realize this. As we are moving to a more decentralized world, it's important to focus on innovative solutions that can solve problems accross different industries and make the daily lives of people better.
The DeFi market’s momentum is constantly growing and we are seeing many new innovative apps, solutions and platforms coming out almost every day. Decentralized finance does not require traditional intermediaries such as banks, brokerages or exchanges. All of the work that would normally be handled by these institutions is instead performed by smart contracts and blockchain.
What is Blockzero Labs and why you should care?
Blockzero Labs is here to bring the next round of innovations and push DeFi one step further with revolutionary projects and products, and by putting community first. Blockzero Labs is crypto’s first decentralized and community-driven token studio and accelerator which operates as a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). In simple words, it's a blockchain startup network focused on building, launching and sclaing blockchain projects into the decentralized world. Blockzero not only create their own unique and innovative projects, but they also help other existing projects to scale. Blockzero provides projects the initial infusion of capital they need to get off the ground and helps them connect with potential partners, advisors, and team members to scale.
Most importantly, they build DeFi projects with the community, which is their strongest part, and they are called Citizens. In simple words, blockzero is the community. Everything is done after discussing on the forum and voting. The community is the one that decides what will be done, and provides feedback, any help needed and proposes ideas. From day one, Blockzero’s credo has been, “Community first – technology second”.
There are over 8,000 community members (Citizens) at the moment. Anyone can become a Citizen by filling out the citizen application form. Why should someone become a Citizen? One of the main benefits is that you can participate in the Blockzero Mind Mining Program, a program that rewards Citizens for their prompt, consistent, and quality engagement across all social platforms. Citizens are rewarded in XIO tokens, the primary (ERC-20) and governance token of Blockzero Labs. Previously, Blockzero Labs was called XIO Network, but they were rebranded as Blockzero Labs in the end of 2020. And because Blockzero Labs is community-driven, all tokens developed by them are distributed directly to XIO holders. So anyone who holds XIO tokens, will receive all future tokens that Blockzero Labs develops.
$XIO Tokenomics
Total Supply: 100,000,000
Initial distribution was:
• 25% reserved for Liquidity Incentives
• 25% reserved for Social Initiative
• 25% reserved for Foundation
• 25% offered to Citizens at launch (10% of these tokens went unclaimed and was reserved by the XIO Founders)
Team
The team started working on their vision in 2019 and on October 2020, they launched mainnet. Zachary Dash is the founder of Blockzero Labs and there are over 15 core members in the team that you can see here. Generally, the whole team is fully transparent and open with everything, which is rare compared to other crypto projects, and of course it's necessary since the project is community-driven.
Blockzero Labs tokens/projects
January 1st, 2021 marked the launch of Flashstake, the first official project from Blockzero Labs, with the native token FLASH (read my article about Flashstake). Flashstake is the time travel of money – crypto’s first flash-staking protocol that allows you to earn instant upfront yield by staking FLASH tokens. There are also several other projects/tokens in the pipeline set to be distributed exclusively to XIO holders. The next one, coming soon, is AquaFi, a universal liquidity mining token. You can see more about the projects of Blockzero here. All Citizens are invited to propose token ideas to the community.
Blockzero DeFi Accelerator program
Recently, Blockzero Labs announced the launch of a DeFi Accelerator program with the mission to “educate, incentivize and onboard the next 1,000,000 users into the world of decentralized finance”. In early March, UMA Protocol became the first project to join in the program.
Projects accepted into the Accelerator are expected to offer between $10,000 to $250,000 worth of tokens to the Blockzero Vortex — a DAO that controls the inflow and outflow of capital. The Vortex is separated into three primary Orbits — each with their own purpose, distribution mechanism, and functionality. The XIO token is needed to remove these tokens from the Vortex. They can be removed by voting, staking or burning.
To ensure that assets are securely locked while incentivizing Blockzero Citizens to support projects/protocols for many years to come, the Blockzero Vortex utilizes a deflationary distribution model and XIO holders need to burn XIO tokens to remove tokens from the Vortex. In simple words, you are trading XIO, which are burned, for tokens that are in the Vortex and might worth more in total value than your XIO.
This is just one of the three ways to remove tokens. The Blockzero Vortex will be implemented in the near future.
To conclude, this is a project/concept that every single crypto enthusiast should support and be excited about. This is one of the best concepts I have seen in the 5 years that I am in the crypto space. If I could describe Blockzero Labs with one phrase, I would say true innovation.
Sources:
https://blockzerolabs.io/blockzero-in-5/
https://blockzerolabs.io/mainnet-launch-proposal-flash-to-the-future-xio-token-studio/
https://medium.com/bombx/uma-protocol-joins-blockzero-labs-defi-accelerator-program-5c9a6c84b1de
https://blockzerolabs.io/accelerator/
https://blockzerolabs.io/tokens/
https://medium.com/bombx/blockzero-labs-xio-tokenomics-the-vortex-proposal-df42cc84de13