On December 11, 2019, the updated, latest information on Aergo token metrics appeared on the Aergo official page in Medium.

Here you can read the full version of this article:

Aergo Token Metrics Update December 2019

A full AERGO token metrics update and breakdown for December 2019

Dear Aergo community and all other stakeholders,

As we close out 2019 and approach our two-year anniversary (since the Aergo concept and project) was formed, we would like to update everyone on our latest token release metrics.

Since we released our first-ever Quarterly Project Update (QPU) report in January of this year, we have committed to consistently offering clarity and full transparency. Our latest report was released over a month ago. Once again, we provided our latest token release metrics and treasury update in that report.

This article is now our official end of 2019 year Token Metrics Update.

Any future material changes to our token release data and the project’s financial (treasury) position will continue to be shared in our ongoing Quarterly Project Update (QPU) reports.

Technical & Business Project Progress

By way of a quick project status summary, we have continued (and in fact accelerated) our technology, ecosystem and business development investment efforts during the year. We are glad to share that we have delivered every major roadmap commitment since the release of our technical and business papers in early 2018. We are proud of our execution track record.

Whilst other projects are still hiding behind their whitepapers, our full production-ready Aergo mainnet is now in its 2nd (generation) release cycle. As part of this we recently shipped our voting rewards (staking) architecture, a new system for more accurate and fairer fees which can also be delegated to the provider, our two-way token swap functionality, our new DAO governance and voting model, our new Aergo GEM stable coin, new dApps, Aergo wallet and Aergo Connect API. Finally, we are very close to delivering our ground-breaking (practical and highly efficient) Merkle Bridge capability. This will enable direct interchain transfers of Aergo tokens from the Ethereum blockchain (in ERC-20 form) to the Aergo mainnet (in native coin form). In the future other chains will also be supported unlocking huge new potential use cases and business models.

We have a large number of talented engineers working on Aergo technology full-time, so we aim to keep up the current rate of platform upgrades and new innovation feature releases!

In parallel with the above technical efforts (and through our strategic technology and business development partner Blocko in South Korea) we now have an extensive pipeline of large-scale enterprise clients looking to embrace Aergo. Many of these clients were early adopters — having built, delivered and released commercial solutions on a prior version of Aergo that was initially developed by Blocko. Moving to our new hybrid (Aergo public and Aergo Enterprise private platform) is the priority for many of these clients.

We were one of the first serious projects to espouse the virtues of a practical hybrid blockchain coupled to a hybrid IT architecture. Many projects have since abandoned their singular (public vs. private) blockchain strategies and are adopting our approach. However, few projects have the level of combined blockchain, enterprise IT/cloud computing and open source software delivery and integration expertise of our team; coupled with deep technical know-how that we are lucky to have with our partner Blocko. Even fewer projects have the level of production deployed use-cases that Aergo and Blocko already can boast today.

We call the above our “Execution Intelligence” (aka EI for short). Our EI is why we frequently get approached to solve real problems with our Aergo technology and Blocko expertise.

Some large customers (including many banks) have tried to build their own enterprise-IT blockchain capabilities. Many have since found out that this needs a dedicated software product and solutions-focused mindset. Most have now abandoned these efforts to look for specialist vendors like us. They simply don’t have the skills or capabilities, in what is often termed “the Innovator’s Dilemma” for firms that try to become software experts in new advanced fields like blockchain. These companies are now actually building partnerships and working with other providers in the market. The exact same thing happened 20 years ago with Linux (remember what we said…IT history does not repeat itself…but it almost always rhymes!).

A recent example of the market recognising our EI capabilities is our international expansion and focused efforts in the Middle East. Specifically, our recently formed business partnership (through Blocko) with the Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum in The UAE. We were invited to enter this market as many influential Middle Eastern companies and government organisations had apparently failed to realise the benefits of blockchain. It seems they had been working with firms that simply could not deliver. Within three months we have established our brand, capabilities and built our reputation with our target future clients. We are now in active discussions with government level and large-scale enterprise projects who are looking to adopt Aergo as part of their regional digital transformations.

In fact, next week we will be hosting with our middle east partner in Dubai a private confidential event with over 30 of the regions CIO/CTO/CDO IT executives. Here, Aergo, Blocko and one of our new strategic technology partners will showcase a new innovative blockchain Digital Civilization Platform. This can be used for example to build the most secure decentralised Digital Asset Bank (more on this exciting area of development in our next QPU).

Whilst we remain bullish and confident about Aergo’s future, the crypto market is still in what can only be described as a prolonged “deep-freeze winter”. Many projects have either already failed or have delayed releasing their technology. Others have slowed down investments in building up their ecosystem and business footprints.

Despite these challenges, we decided to push ahead with our partner Blocko and have kept moving forward with speed, focus and momentum. We have a grand vision in what is potentially an enormous target market and where our hybrid blockchain may play a major role.

We aim to reach our objectives with an amazing team, great ecosystem partners and our world-class practical blockchain technology platform. No change there then.

Aergo project token categories and token release strategy…

There are a total of 500,000,000 Aergo Tokens in existence (i.e., Total Supply). This total is locked as per the Aergo Organisation Articles of Association (AoA).

The 500 million Aergo tokens are grouped into five major allocation (i.e. usage) categories:

1. Private Sale
2. Marketing and Community
3. Advisor and Backers
4. Foundation and Blocko R&D
5. Reserve

Aergo tokens are being released over a ten-year time frame. Some earlier than others.

The Private Token Sale holders had their tokens locked with a commitment to release these by the end of 2019. Other stakeholder tokens are being released over one to three years (e.g. Aergo Foundation Team and Blocko R&D). The majority of Aergo Team and Blocko R&D Tokens will have been released by end of 2020.

AERGO Token Long-Term Allocation By Category

The 500 million Aergo tokens are split into the above five major allocation usage categories.

The long term Aergo token allocation split by category is as follows:

• 135,392,289 — Private Sale (27.1% of Total Supply)
• 25,000,000 — Marketing & Community (5% of Total Supply)
• 21,000,000 — Advisors & Backers (4.2% of Total Supply)
• 62,000,000 — Foundation & Blocko R&D (12.4 % of Total Supply)
• 256,607,711 — Aergo Platform Reserve (51.3% of Total Supply)

¹ We made some minor allocation and category adjustments to our long term Aergo Token allocations since our very early (originally published) White Paper of 10th July 2018. We do not expect any further changes from hereon as we now have a much clearer and accurate view of the project’s future execution needs. During 2019, we also entered into a long-term strategic technology and business partnership with Blocko Inc. from South Korea and have released sufficient tokens to support this partnership over the years ahead.

We allocated a large portion of Aergo tokens in our Reserve category as we know it will take both time and a large network of ecosystem partners for Aergo to reach its full potential.

Building our ecosystem is complex and will involve a lot of hard work (and tokens). Of the total 256 million tokens in our reserve, approximately 222 million tokens have been reserved for building, supporting and sustaining the Aergo Platform and supporting ecosystem. These are what we call the Aergo Platform Token Reserve (ATPR).

Some of the ATPR will be released and used within the first five years for our ecosystem build-out. However, the vast majority of these tokens will be released and utilised over a longer 10-year period (179,416,997 tokens; 36% of Total Supply). In fact, many of these Aergo Tokens (exactly 125,000,000 i.e. 25% of total supply) will never be released, as they will be used as long-term staking tokens to secure and run the Aergo mainnet network.

Our long-term strategy and execution plans have not changed. Furthermore, we have reserved enough tokens to fuel these plans over the many years ahead. We even have special reserve tokens for future (unplanned) needs.

As we continue to move at our chosen accelerated pace and momentum we are carefully deploying and releasing Aergo tokens to various stakeholders to sustain our growth.

We provide detailed information about these released tokens in the next section.

Completion of All Private Sale Token Releases

As has been communicated previously, mid last year we had a successful private pre-sale allocating 135,392,289 tokens (i.e. 27% of total supply) to qualified token holders.

We announced exactly a year ago that we will release all these tokens by the end of 2019. This commitment has now been met as we released all remaining presale tokens over the past few months (specifically 81,235,374 tokens).

In summary a total of 135,392,289 tokens (27.1% of Total Supply) have now been completely released to the private sale purchasers. No more tokens are due to be released in this area.

Summary updated AERGO token metric figures…

500,000,000 — AERGO Total Supply

259,731,447 — Total current Circulating Supply (52% of Total Supply)

• 135,392,289 — Private Sale (27.1% of Total Supply)
• 13,308,321 — Marketing & Community (2.7% of Total Supply)
• 20,763,411 — Advisors & Backers (4.1% of Total Supply)
• 61,884,576 — Foundation & Blocko R&D (12.4 % of Total Supply)
• 28,382,850 — Aergo Platform Reserve (5.7% of Total Supply)

Detailed Breakdown of Token Metrics

135,392,289 — Private Sale (52.1% of Circulating Supply)

The Aergo token is a specialised IT utility token that can be used to power the various enterprise-IT focused capabilities built on or around Aergo mainnet and our Aergo ecosystem. As such the pre-sale of Aergo tokens were only made to qualified and fully KYC/AML approved token holders. No public-sale took place as this would not be appropriate for a business focused project like Aergo. Private token holders had their tokens locked-up for a period of one year following our original token generation event in late 2018. The vast majority of these tokens were released over the past few months (81,235,374 tokens) and have since been added to the current Aergo circulating supply.

13,308,321 — Marketing & Community (5.1% of Circulating Supply)

Marketing and Community tokens are released at various points of the year to support specific ecosystem building, technical, partnering and business activities and programs. These are very important activities for recently launched projects. When released they are fully unlocked and added to the circulating supply immediately. We have approximately 12,000,000 tokens left for these future activities. We expect to release these Marketing and Community tokens on an on-going (be it smaller) longer term basis from hereon.

20,763,411 — Advisors & Backers (8% of Circulating Supply)

Backer tokens have a one-year lockup period from our original initial token generation event in December 2018. All backer tokens have now been released. Advisor tokens have a one year lock up period from the start of each advisor’s engagement with Aergo. This is in-line with their one-year contracts. Most advisors were recruited in mid to late 2018 and have now had most of their tokens unlocked. We do not expect any more tokens to be released in this area from this point onwards.

61,884,576 — Foundation & Blocko R&D (23.9% of Circulating Supply)

Foundation and Blocko R&D tokens have a lockup period of between sixteen months and three years once they are granted. We want (and do) reward exceptional talent in the long run.

The Aergo project has from the outset been established as a not-for-profit open source based foundation (headquartered in Hong Kong). Foundation tokens are used to attract the best people to Aergo and to fund the most strategic business development efforts. These include long term technical and business development activities with our strategic partner Blocko; but also, with other technology and business partners such as SantoshiPay (micropayments solution provider); as well as our most recently formed partnership with the SEED Group in The UAE.

We often use Foundation tokens to reduce the cash-burn on the project — electing to reward our key members of staff and strategic associates with tokens instead. The Foundation also occasionally uses tokens to fund certain third-party service payments (e.g. legal, compliance, auditing and accounting fees); as well as to ensure that our Aergo Treasury has enough cash resource to fund the project as part of our rolling 18-month execution roadmap. A limited number of tokens were used to date as part of this treasury replenishment program (specifically 15,297,978, i.e. approximately 3.1% of Total Supply).

One of the most important stakeholder groups for the Aergo project is the highly specialised, talented and committed Blocko blockchain R&D team. Blocko R&D tokens have a grant and lockup period of up to three years. Most of these Blocko R&D tokens have now been released. Even though some of the granted Foundation tokens have now been released to the Aergo and Blocko leadership teams, they have agreed to unlock these tokens over the coming years only.

Finally, during the year, and as part of our long-term strategic business and technology partnership with Blocko, we completed the release of all other allocated Foundation tokens.

We will use our Aergo Treasury to fund the project’s Foundation needs from hereon.

28,382,850 — Aergo Platform Reserve (10.9% of Circulating Supply)

As stated earlier, we have allocated a large portion of Aergo tokens to help create, test, deploy, secure, and maintain the core Aergo main network over a ten-year period. We know it will take both time and a large network of partners for Aergo to reach its full potential.

In addition to the circa 28million tokens already used, we have approximately a further 103million tokens extra tokens reserved for long-term ecosystem building activities. We expect to release these ecosystem building tokens gradually over the next eight years.

The vast majority of remaining Aergo Reserve tokens (i.e. 125,000,000 that is 25% of Total Supply) will never be released, as they will be used as long-term staking tokens to secure and run the Aergo network.

In effect, 125million tokens are being locked longer-term.

Future Circulating Supply Token Metrics

Now that we have technically enabled staking in our platform and have successfully deployed a delegated (more accurate and fairer) fee structure, we have a much better understanding of the required staking needs to secure and operate the Aergo mainnet longer term.

We have therefore decided to slow-down the release of most of our remaining Aergo Reserve Foundation and ecosystem tokens over the coming years.

Based on our recently board approved long-term execution plan, we estimate the following end-of-year token release Circulating Supply metrics over the next five years (2020–2024).

• 315,809,189 Estimated number of tokens in circulation by the end of 2020 (63.2% of supply)
• 328,309,189 Estimated number of tokens in circulation by the end of 2021 (65.7% of supply)
• 340,559,189 Estimated number of tokens in circulation by the end of 2022 (68.1 of supply)
• 352,059,189 Estimated number of tokens in circulation by the end of 2023 (70.4% of supply)
• 363,309,189 Estimated number of tokens in circulation by the end of 2024 (72.7% of supply)

Our next project update will be in the first quarter of 2020 with the release of our 1Q2019 Quarterly Project Update report (QPU).

Let us end by thanking everyone involved with the Aergo project for your ongoing support.

We would also like to make our community aware that we are in discussions with CoinMarketCap to have the circulating supply figure for AERGO updated to the correct amount of 259,731,447. This process will be completed within the next few weeks.

We wish everyone season’s greetings and a healthy, peaceful and prosperous New Year!

— Team Aergo