About

Tokemak is a company that operates a liquidity marketplace. They offer a protocol that dynamically optimizes the yield of supplied ETH across different decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and Liquid Staking Tokens. They also provide autopilot functionality that saves gas costs and auto-compounds yield. Tokemak aims to provide users with a secure and efficient way to maximize their ETH holdings.

History

Founded by Carson Cook (also Founder of FRACTAL), Tokemak aims at solving some of the common problems affecting DeFi and liquidity. Obtaining liquidity for own token is expensive: builders of new projects need to constantly provide incentives, and once incentives are gone, liquidity dries up quickly. Providing liquidity for individual users is also expensive, as they need to deposit double-sided tokens into liquidity pools. Additionally, liquidity providers bear the risks of Impermanent Loss (IL) which occurs when the price of the token changes compared to when it was first deposited in the pool. In turn, insufficient liquidity results in poor pricing and volatility. This negatively impacts projects/DAOs seeking deep liquidity for their tokens, exchanges looking to offer the best possible pricing, and the individual, hoping to avoid slippage due to the price impact of their trade.

Tokemak’s announced in April 2021 a $4 million investment round led by Framework Ventures, and joined by others like Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures, Delphi Ventures, and ConsenSys. The funding came in preparation for Tokemak’s initial liquidity accumulation phase, the DeGenesis Event, launched on July 28th, when whitelisted users were able to deposit ETH and USDC in order to earn the first pool of TOKE emissions. DeGenesis ended August 4th raising $36.56M in total, $12.56M of that amount being allocated to the Genesis pool. The end of DeGenesis marked the beginning of Cycle Zero where DeGenesis participants could claim their TOKE and migrate to the private farm. Afterward, the Collateralization of Reactors Event (C.o.R.E.) began on September 28th and lasted one week. This marked the first TOKE governance event when TOKE holders were able to vote for the first five Reactors to be established (out of 42 applicants). C.o.R.E. ended on October 5th with ~35M votes and five projects selected for a Reactor: Frax Finance, Alchemix, TracerDAO, OlympusDAO, and SushiSwap.

The establishment of the first five Reactors ended Cycle Zero, and opened a new phase where LDs began directing liquidity across exchanges and the respective DAOs. The second Collateralization of Reactors Event (C.o.R.E. 2) began on November 9th and ended on November 16th, with five new projects being assigned a Reactor: Shapeshift (FOX), Visor (VISR), Synthetix (SNX), Illuvium (ILV), APWine (APW).