Skyward Finance

Skyward is a decentralized Launchpad for tokens and projects on the NEAR smart contract blockchain.

Historically, projects conducted initial token distribution through centralized auctions, DEX offerings, and fixed-cost sales which were unfair by limiting participation due to geo-location, being vulnerable to front-running bots, sybil attacks, multi-account registration, and unclear price discovery.

It is a platform that allows its users to raise funds by selling a token via special auctions. The process is fairly simple. The founders of a project need to provide the tokens they want to sell and can choose which token is used to pay for it. There is no fixed price for the token, instead its being distributed across all participants depending on how big their share of provided funds are. For example if there are 1,000 NEW token sold for a total amount of 1,000 nUSDT was raised then you will get 1 NEW per 1 nUSDT that you supplied.

One problem of such an auction is that the early buyers will not know how big their share will be because the people that buy at the very end might push the number of supplied funds much higher. That’s why Skyward uses a unique distribution model there each second the users get their share of tokens.

Basically, if an auction lasts 5 days and there is a total amount of 1,000,000 tokens being sold, then the protocol will distribute 200,000 tokens per day, or 8333 tokens per hour, or 2.315 tokens per second. That means that at any second where you supply 10% of the funds, you will receive 10% of the tokens distributed per second. If someone is later adding more money to the pool and your share falls to 5%, you will receive 5% of the rewards for that time period. That ensures that early investors don't have a disadvantage, in fact they are earning the most.

The developers can also offer a referral pool that will distribute more tokens to people that referred the project to a friend to promote the token sale.

The Skyward protocol takes a 1% fee on all tokens sold and another 1% fee on all funds raised, unless the developers accept the native SKYWARD token as payment, in which case they only have to pay the 1% fee on the tokens sold. This fee is going to a treasury that is owned by the SKYWARD token holders and the holders can redeem their share of the treasury anytime by burning their tokens, which means that the native token will work as a sort of ETF for new tokens on the Near chain.

The SKYWARD Token

The protocol has its own native cryptocurrency with the same name. The SKYWARD token gives its users ownership over the protocol and almost more importantly over the treasury that receives 1% of all tokens sold and 1% of all funds raised. Developers can also accept the SKYWARD token as payment without having to pay a 1% fee on raised funds to the protocol.

Every token holder owns a share of the treasury and they can redeem their share at any time, meaning that SKYWARD is backed by a part of all the projects that used the platform and the market cap of the token theoretically couldn't fall much below the value of the treasury. When you hold 1% of the token supply you can burn it to receive 1% of the treasury and you can choose in which tokens of treasury your share is paid out. Taking out a share of the treasury doesn't hurt the value of the remaining SKYWARD tokens because they are still backed by their part of the treasury and they will now receive a higher percentage of future fees.

There is a small max supply of 1,000,000 tokens and the supply will shrink due to the burn mechanism. 1% of that supply was distributed to early community members, 9% was put aside for the founders and will be vested over the first year and the remaining 90% were sold during multiple auctions on the Skyward platform. All of the funds raised during the SKYWARD sales went to the treasury too. The token is not only backed by other tokens but its supply is also well spread and not mostly controlled by the developers.

Since the token is backed by earned fees from new projects, it will grow in value if more developers use the platform to raise funds and if their projects perform well. The Near blockchain is relatively young and is still very popular, as its ecosystem and value grows it will also make the SKYWARD token more valuable. However, Near is early in its development and should it perform bad then SKYWARD will too.

The token cannot be bought on any centralized exchange right now, but you can get it on the Ref Finance DEX of the Near blockchain if you have NEAR coins. You can store it in a Near Wallet.