Igor Solomin

What Is Genesis Shards (GS)?

Genesis Shards recognizes existing problems in the pre-IDO space, including the low liquidity of tokens due to the lack of a tradable market and inconsistent OTC trading practices, resulting in a high risk of defaults.

Genesis Shards aims to enable network members to access and trade pre-IDO tokens in an efficient and secure manner. Projects can leverage token liquidity early in the lifecycle with community support. This is due to the availability of NFTs in the OTC market and the transformation of NFTs into a liquidity facility for pre-IDO tokens.

Genesis Shards was created in 2020 and raised $2.7 million in March 2021 to launch a new pre-IDO market. The list of investors includes 3Commas, Axia8, OKEx Block Dream Fund, LD Capital, Spark Digital Capital, Momentum 6 and others.

Who Are the Founders of Genesis Shards?

Garlam Won and Nilotpal Mukherjee are the co-founders of Genesis Shards.

Prior to founding Genesis Shards, Garlam Won served as head of marketing at Harmony and head of global partnerships at ICONIZ. He has also acted as an advisor for Kylin, PAID Network, Raze, PolkaFoundry, KPAD and SPLYT.

Won majored in finance at Garlam University. He has worked as an investment banker at JP Morgan and as a management consultant at Deloitte. He covered the blockchain ecosystem as the chief blockchain editor at Financial Street Media.

Nilotpal Mukherjee has held the position of an investment banker at Deutsche Bank and a strategic consultant at Accenture. In 2018, he joined Marlin Protocol as a business lead.

What Makes Genesis Shards (GS) Unique?

According to the team, Genesis Shards’ goal is to develop a comprehensive market for pre-IDO NFT liquidity and open up new opportunities for the DeFi market in general.

Genesis Shards provides a market for illiquid tokens by wrapping time-locked fungible tokens in NFTs.

The GS token is the native utility token of Genesis Shards. GS is used for Genesis Access, Genesis NFTX and enables participation in the governance of the Genesis network.

In order for GS tokens to become a part of the Genesis network, they must be exchanged for Genesis Access NFTs. The number of tokens held determines the access rights for members.

GS is the native token on the Genesis NFTX platform. The token allows users to benefit from a reduction in swap fees for tickets and access cards and Genesis smart contracts.

Holders of the GS token have certain governance rights with their voting power directly dependent on the number of tokens they own.

How Many Genesis Shards (GS) Coins Are There in Circulation?

The public launch of the GS token took place on April 14, 2021, on the decentralized fundraising platform Polkastarter (POLS). Genesis Shards is a dual IDO on Polkastarter, so the launch happened simultaneously on Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

The total supply was divided between the ETH pool (70%) on Ethereum for POLS holders and the BSC pool (30%) on Binance Smart Chain.

As of April 2021, GS has a circulating supply of 12,030,988 tokens and a total supply of 218,911,248 tokens.

How Is the Genesis Shards Network Secured?

Genesis Shards is a decentralized ecosystem powered by Polkadot which uses nominated proof-of-stake (NPoS) as its consensus algorithm to increase chain security. All parachains that are connected to the Polkadot Relay Chain benefit from the economic security that Relay Chain validators provide.

Polkadot's data validity and availability scheme allows chains to interact with each other. The chains are independent in governance but united in security.

It launched in late 2020 — and the team behind this project are aiming to create a decentralized algorithmic stablecoin that will become a mainstay in the DeFi space.

According to developers, BAS is “an ownership token which receives inflationary rewards from Basis Cash” — and its value will be directly linked to increasing adoption of BAC.

Basis Shares and Basis Bonds are used to help keep Basis Cash at a price of $1. If the price falls below this level, bonds can be purchased at discount prices — and redeemed on a 1:1 basis once prices exceed this level.

If BAC remains above $1 after bonds have been redeemed, new BAC tokens are minted and distributed to those who own Basis Shares.

Who Are the Founders of Basis Share?

This is where things get a little bit unusual. Basis Share, and the other tokens in the ecosystem, have been launched by two anonymous people called “Rick” and “Morty” — a clear reference to the popular cartoon series of the same name.

During an AMA session in early January of 2021, “Morty” said that there are plans to expand the team further as there are technical positions to be filled concerning integrations and applications.

What Makes Basis Share Unique?

What’s unusual about Basis Share is how this token appears to have come from the ashes of a project that never saw the light of day. Elements of this ecosystem have been derived from Basecoin, which managed to raise $133 million in an ICO. Andreessen Horowitz was among just some of the big names that decided to get involved. Unfortunately, a clampdown by the SEC meant these funds needed to be returned to investors.

Basis Share is unique because of how it is one of two tokens that will be responsible for ensuring that Basis Cash remains at a value of $1. This means that BAC isn’t actually collateralized by an asset such as gold, dollars or another cryptocurrency.

One of the project’s main goals is to ensure that the Basis Cash stablecoin is fairly distributed, and that it is resistant to censorship.

How Many Basis Share (BAS) Coins Are There in Circulation?

A total of one million BAS have been created, and they are being distributed to two liquidity pools on Uniswap in a 75/25 split. This token has been characterized as a “long position on the entire protocol” — a stark contrast to Basis Bonds, which have been likened to a fixed yield product.

Of course, the number of BAC in circulation is likely going to be far more fluid, as this will be determined by overall levels of supply and demand.