About the project
- EVM L2 blockchain that uses BTC as gas
- $6.7M seed round raise
- Point program launched
- Retroactivity bonus available on other protocols
- Early stage project
About the project
Corn is an Ethereum L2 that uses hybrid tokenized BTC (BTCN) as gas.
There will be two tokens in the network:
- BTCN (1:1 tokenized BTC) – generated through network fees;
- CORN – native network token.
On August 20, it became known that the project raised $6.7 million in a seed round with the participation of Polychain Capital, Binance Labs, Sandeep Nailwal (Polygon), Bryan Pellegrino (L0), and others.
The amount is adequate for a seed round. There will most likely be more funding rounds.
The project has a good Twitter. Representatives of Binance, IOSG VC, Polychain, eGirl Capital and others have signed up for it.
There is no tokenomics yet. Nor is there a roadmap.
Team
There is no LinkedIn page. Even the founders do not mention Corn on their personal LinkedIn pages.
There are two co-founders in the company.
Chris Spadafora is the first co-founder of Corn. He also founded the BadgerDAO project (FDV $66 million, at its peak it was worth 25 times more, raise $21 million, investors Blockchain Capital, Polychain), which develops products for integrating BTC into the DeFi sphere, and the North Block crypto project accelerator.
Judging by his Twitter, Chris is quite a significant person. Representatives of tier1 funds Coinbase, Blockchain Capital, Multicoin Capital, Paradigm, eGirl Capital, Delphi Digital, Fabric Ventures, as well as Andre Cronje are subscribed to him.
He does not speak often, his last interview was five months ago.
Twitter: https://x.com/spadaboom1
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisspadafora/
Zak Cole is the second co-founder of Corn. He is a Managing Partner at venture capital firm Number Group, and previously founded and served as CTO of Web3 platform Slingshot and founded audit firm Code4rena.
Zach trained as a cyber network engineer in the United States Marine Corps. During Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2007-2008, he and his unit were responsible for building critical data infrastructure in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
After completing his service in the Marine Corps, he worked as a web developer, network engineer, and applied cryptographer.
Like Chris, Zach is also no stranger to the cryptosphere. Representatives of tier1 funds a16z, eGirl Capital, Coinbase, Paradigm, IOSG VC, Electric Capital, IDEO Ventures, and accounts of The Graph, DeBank, and Parallel projects are signed to it.
Non-public, no speeches found.
Twitter: https://x.com/0xzak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zak-cole/
Competitors and evaluation
At first glance, there are no competitors, none of the L2 on Ethereum uses BTC as gas.
It is also difficult to give a preliminary estimate. There was only one round of funding, and it was a seed round, which usually does not raise much.
Large L2s (both on Ethereum and Bitcoin) are trading at valuations of over $1 billion, but exceptions include BounceBit (FDV $686 million, Binance Labs as investors), Neon (FDV $389 million), Manta Network (FDV $787 million, Polychain Capital and Binance Labs as investors).
For example, in Polyhedra Network Polychain Capital and Binance Labs participated in a strategic round worth $10 million, after which there were three more rounds and OKX Jumpstart, and now the project's FDV exceeds $1 billion.
Very cautiously summing up, Corn can be expected to be valued at least $400-500 million.
We are taking part in the project
- The point program was launched on August 22: https://x.com/use_corn/status/1826650933050442117
- Official announcement: https://blog.usecorn.com/corn-the-genesis-of-the-super-yield-network-f52170ffbe84
- For providing liquidity, we will receive Kernels points, which will later be converted into CORN tokens.
- TVL is currently over $8 million: https://dune.com/0xtoolman/corn
- Retroactivity bonus is available on the following protocols:
- MakerDAO: If you held 0.01 sDAI for three months or more, or borrowed against WBTC on Spark for a year before July 12, 2024;
- Kepl: If you held rsETH for the last 3 months or were in the top 500 liquidity providers;
- WBTC: If you held at least 1 wBTC for a year before July 12, 2024;
- Ethena: If you held USDe and staked to earn SUSDe for a year before July 12, 2024)THORChain;
- Ether.fi: If you held 0.01 eETH or weETH for two months or more in the last six months before July 12, 2024;
- Babylon: If you participated in either of the last two testnets;
- Thorchain: If you swapped at least $100 in native BTC, used savers, or provided liquidity on Thorchain in the year before July 12, 2024;
- Galxe: If you staked at least 300 GAL since the launch of Galxe;
- Pendle: If you traded or provided liquidity for the Silo Asset on Pendle or staked PENDLE to earn vePENDLE in the year before July 12, 2024;
- Spark: If you took debt under WBTC.
At the moment, only those who participated in the above protocols, or by invitation, can participate.
We take part in the campaign:
- We look for an invite code, for example, in the channel #invite-codes in Discord.
- Follow the link: https://usecorn.com/app
- Enter the invite
- Connect the wallet
- We provide liquidity (wBTC, wETH, rsETH, USDC, DAI, sDAI, USDe)
The following assets are eligible for a boost:
- wBTC (2x)
- weETH (1.25x)
- sDAI (1.25x)
Every 210 minutes, 1 point is credited per dollar deposited (or 6.857 points per dollar per day).
Liquidity can be withdrawn at any time without penalties or fees. Earned points will remain.
Next, we complete quests in Galxe: https://app.galxe.com/quest/CORN/GChehtx83p
1 point on Galxe = 1 Kernel (point) in Corn.
Let's summarize
The project is in its early stages. If the fall is what everyone predicts, then the team has chosen a good time to enter. Perhaps, instead of points, it was possible to come up with something else, but we work with what we have.
In case of a successful market, three growth narratives will be picked up at once - BTC growth, ETH ecosystem growth, and the general altseason. As we can see from the previous BadgerDAO project, the first co-founder knows how to pump.
You need to remember the risks, but still, the team is well-known in narrow circles, some kind of audit has been done, and Binance and Polychain act as a guarantor of quality. It is also worth noting that Ether.fi, Ethena Labs, Pendle and Galxe made posts on their Twitter accounts mentioning Corn, which is encouraging.
