Since rebranding from LeoFinance to INLEO, our ecosystem has undergone some massive changes. One of the biggest has been the opening up of content on INLEO.
Many on Hive still don't know this - I experienced this at HiveFest when I met many of you in person and we talked about the project - but INLEO now allows any and all types of content. Not just crypto & finance.
As part of the rebrand, we opened INLEO up to all forms of content. INLEO is now approaching our mission with an "Everything App" mindset.
We've brought Microblogging to the Hive blockchain. We brought Shorts the blockchain. We've brought Creator Subscriptions to the blockchain. We've brought Lite Accounts to the blockchain.
We have so much in store and now our platform is setup to onboard the masses to Hive. Building all of these features and our existing community has taken 5 years of hardcore grinding since the LEO Token and Project launched in 2019.
Bitcoin (BTC) is crushing All-Time Highs once again. While the altcoin market hasn't woken up yet, I believe that the price action of alts is likely to catch up to BTC soon and we'll be in a full-blown Crypto Bull Market.
So now that we know this is likely on the horizon, I wanted to make a quick refresher on LEO Tokenomics as we enter this bull run.
LEO Tokenomics Refresher
INLEO is at an all-time high in terms of monthly active users (MAUs). We've been onboarding new users and communities left and right. Our Dash Integration is set to go live VerySoon and this also will bring a massive wave of new users to the Hive Blockchain through https://inleo.io.
While we've been focused on growing our userbase, the tokenomics driving our platform are equally important as the tokenized rewards on INLEO are one of our main value propositions.
How to Earn LEO
One of the biggest questions I see from new users (and even existing users on Hive) is "how do I earn LEO?".
The answer is super simple: use https://inleo.io.
When we rebranded from LeoFinance to INLEO, we needed to come up with a solution for how to distribute rewards. Originally, we distributed LEO to anyone who tagged content with "leofinance" AND wrote that content about crypto & finance.
Obviously, rebranding to allow any content opened us up to a lot more potential earners for LEO but we also wanted to make earning LEO a proper value proposition for the token as well as for the creator/user.
Since LEO monetizes itself through platform usage, we came up with an awesome solution: the only way to earn LEO is to post/thread/comment from the INLEO Platform. This means that using https://inleo.io is the only way to earn LEO. Since we monetize the platform through usage of the platform, it makes sense to incentivize anyone who spends time on the platform:
- Premium
- Creator Subs
- LeoAds
- LeoDex
How Much LEO Exists?
Here's an Overview of the LEO Tokenomics:
- Max Supply: 50M
- Circulating Supply (November 2024): 20,352,814.062
- Staked Supply (April 2024): 14,157,165.604
- Emissions Rate (April 2024): 0.208 LEO/Block
- Exchange Listings: LEO | wLEO | bLEO | pLEO | aLEO
as seen on the INLEO Docs
As you can see, the max total supply (the max supply that can ever exist) is 50M LEO.
As of right now, the circulating supply of LEO is 20,352,814.062 (40% of LEO's total supply has been issued).
What Will Happen When LEO Hits 50M Tokens?
Since the fully diluted supply of LEO is 50M tokens and our rewards pool pays out from newly mined tokens, this is a common question.
The structure of LEO is that we have an emissions rate on the LEO Token. Each block (on Hive) a small amount of LEO is mined and sent to the Rewards Pool to be earned by users on https://inleo.io.
The current emissions rate is 0.208 LEO/block and it decreases over the next ~32 years. Block Rewards stop completely when LEO reaches 50M tokens in circulation.
System Income (Premium, Subscriptions, LeoAds, LeoDex) will replace the inflationary rewards pool in the future. It achieves this by using income generated by the platform (through the 4 revenue models + any others we add in the future) to buyback the LEO token and then put that LEO into the SIRP (System Income Rewards Pool).
The SIRP simply replaces the inflationary rewards pool. It starts paying in 2033 (when inflation on LEO drops below 4%).
As of right now, all system income buys back the LEO token and deploys it into the LEO/CACAO Liquidity Pool on the Maya Protocol (more on this below). This will stop in 2033 and switch over to buying back LEO and deploying to the SIRP ~9 years from today.
This pool will continually grow in terms of rewards vs. the inflationary rewards pool. In 2056, the inflationary pool will be 0% (as all 50M LEO is in circulation) and the rewards from the SIRP will be 100% of what is paid to users and active LEO POWER stakeholders on the platform.
LEO Staking
~78% of all LEO is staked as LEO POWER (illiquid for 28 days). Users can unstake at any time through a "Power Down" process. Powering down initiates 4 events - 1 per week - for 4 weeks where 1/4th of the total LEO POWER a user has staked becomes liquid.
For example, a user with 10,000 LEO POWER could unstake some or all of that power. If they unstake 4,000 of it, then they will receive 1,000 LEO liquid in their wallet each week for 4 weeks. At the end of the 4 weeks, they would have 6,000 LEO POWER and 4,000 liquid LEO.
The rest of the LEO in the circulating supply is either liquid or bridged to wLEO, bLEO, pLEO or aLEO and available in Automated Market Makers (AMMs) for traders to buy/sell LEO.
Value Capture
At the heart of the LEO Token Economy is the ideal of "Value Capture".
Our goal is not just to build a vibrant social media platform where users can create and engage with each other. Our goal is also to build a vibrant tokenized ecosystem that is rewarding for those users who build the platform and grow alongside us.
When you look at the Facebook's, X's, Instagram's and Tik Tok's of the world, what do you see? You see the top 1% of creators earning 99.99% of the creator revenue and you see the rest of the total revenue flowing to the corporation that started the platform.
INLEO is different. On INLEO, the creators, users and token holders own the platform. As creators/users utilize the platform, they get rewarded in LEO.
As token holders grow the platform, they own the success of the platform.
Being an engaged member on INLEO means earning more shares in the future of tokenized social media.
Value Capture is an incredibly important cornerstone to succeeding economically as a platform. When people use INLEO, we need to capture value into the LEO Token.
We do this through:
- Premium
- Creator Subs
- LeoAds
- LeoDex
- ...and more in the future
Value Capture means leveraging the attention built up on INLEO and flowing all the revenue back into the LEO Token. It's what creates a sustainable economy.
As mentioned above, 100% of this revenue buys the LEO token off the market and then deploys it into the LEO/CACAO Liquidity Pool on the Maya Protocol.
Over time, this will change to System Income. By 2033, the SIRP contract will be initiated and instead of 100% of the buybacks going into the LEO/CACAO liquidity pool, 100% of the buybacks will go into the SIRP.
The SIRP is a fancy acronym for Rewards Pool. We all know what a Rewards Pool is but what we know so far is that Rewards Pools are built with inflation.
LEO Inflation stops in the future and System Income replaces that with a new Rewards Pool that is made up entirely of LEO buybacks from tokenized revenue.
So LEO gets bought off the market and deployed to the rewards pool where INLEO users can then earn LEO for using the platform.
Now you see why growing the users (and thus, the revenue capture) of INLEO is so important. More users = more revenue = more LEO buybacks. We all grow together.
The Coming Bull Run and $100M LEO Market Cap
In the last bull run, LEO hit $1.18. Achieving a market cap of roughly $17,700,000 and an FDV Market Cap of $59,000,000.
That was way back in 2021. LEO was just 2 years old and microblogging didn't even exist on Hive. Think of all that LEO has accomplished as a platform and ecosystem since then. Launching Premium, Creator Subs, LeoDex, LeoBridges, Shorts, Threads, Referrals, Communities and many more features. In addition to all of that, we have 10x as many users today as we did back then.
LEO has come a very long way since the last bull run and I firmly believe we'll more than 2x the top we hit in the last bull run.
The focus in the bear market has been an extreme builder mindset. We've been building nonstop in terms of features, ecosystem and community. The bull market is right on the horizon and I am confident that we are approaching it with a much stronger value capture model. Our userbase will grow dramatically and so will the revenue for System Income and by effect, the Automated LEO Buybacks.
LEO is currently trading at ~$0.03 with a market cap of $610k and a FDV of $1.5M. If our targets above are hit and we grow exponentially in this bull run like we did in the last bull run, then we're looking at nearly a 70x from the current price. Nobody is saying this is guaranteed nor easy. It's going to take a lot of hard work, but I believe in this ecosystem and we've set ourselves up for massive value capture in this bull run through all the system income revenue models outlined above.