Acala network is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible DeFi smart contract platform which operates as a Polkadot parachain. The platform offers users various features which include DOT Liquid Staking (LDOT), decentralized Acala dollar stablecoin (aUSD), and an AMM DEX.
ACA is the utility and governance token of Acala, used for the following use cases:
Transaction Fees: Users will require ACA tokens to pay for gas fees and execute smart contracts.
Governance: Enables ACA token holders to nominate council members and participate in voting on the network.
Liquidity mining: Provide liquidity to the platform's LPs to earn a portion of the exchange fees.
Network Staking: Users can stake ACA to become a validator or delegate to participate in the network consensus, and in return are rewarded with ACA.
Minting stablecoins: Provide ACA as collateral to mint Acala stablecoins (aUSD).
Acala consists of the following major components working in conjunction:
Polkadot: Polkadot facilitates cross-chain communication and interoperability by connecting multiple blockchains into one unified network. Acala is the Polkadot ecosystem version of Karura (KAR) in the Kusama ecosystem.
Parachains: Parachains are independent blockchains (Shards) that are able to connect to Polkadot.
Crowdloans: It is a method for projects to fundraise for a parachain slot on the Polkadot network. Users temporarily lock their DOT in exchange for a reward from the project team, often in the form of the project's native tokens.
Slot Auctions: For projects to operate as a parachain on Polkadot, they would have to win a slot in the parachain auction. Moonbeam won the first slot auction via a crowdloan, thus securing a Polkdaot parachain for 96 weeks.
The project raised ~33MM DOT tokens from over ~25K contributors in the Acala crowdloan for the Polkadot parachain slot auction.
As at January 25th 2022, the total token supply of ACA is 1,000,000,000, and the circulating supply upon listing will be 69,304,481 (~6.93% of the total token supply).
Learn more about the token distribution of ACA here.