Everything you need to know about the $PICA Token

TLDR

- Token utility & value accrual mechanism
- Token distribution, unlocks & supply schedule
- Investors and funding
- $PICA V2 tokenomics revamp (buyback & burn)
- IBC everywhere, Sol Restaking, Interchain Security?

What is Picasso?

Picasso is a L1 Appchain built on the Cosmos SDK with an emphasis on secure interoperability.

As an interoperability Hub, Picasso has connected Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos and Polkadot via cross-ecosystem IBC.

Picasso was the first team to bring IBC out of Cosmos.

Picassos History

- Early 2017 project inception
- Late 2021 launch as Parachain on Kusama
- 2022 Polkadot/Kusama IBC connection
- 2023 launch of Picasso L1 Appchain
- Early 2024 IBC connection to Ethereum
- Q3 2024 first IBC connection to Solana

Token Overview

- Genesis supply: 1.5B
- Max supply: 10B
- Circulating supply: 7.4B
- Market Cap: $4.1M
- FDV: $5.5M
- Token Price: $0.00055

$PICA Token Utility & Value Accrual

1) Staking rewards: For securing Picasso's L1 chain

2) Bridging fees: 20% of bridging fees go to PICA stakers

3) Restaking rewards: 20% restaking fees go to PICA stakers

4) Governance: Stakers can vote on AVS/Operator onboarding

Buy Back & Burn

With PICA V2 80% of fees generated via IBC transfers are now used to buy back and burn $PICA.

Via the latest update:

- 2M PICA have been distributed to stakers.

- 8M PICA have been burned.

PICA Token Distribution

- Crowdloan: 20.9% (Sold via Kusama Parachain auction to the public)
- Liquidity Programs: 15%
- Ecosystem Incentives: 10%
- Team: 20%
- Series A Funding: 7%
- Treasury: 27.1%

Supply Schedule & Token Unlocks

- Crowdloan: 50% was unlocked upon TGE, with the remainder released linearly within 48 weeks.
- Team: 2 year linear vesting with an initial cliff of 6 months.
- Treasury: 2 year linear vesting with a big unlock after 1 year.

PICA Rich List

- There are a total of 7596 unique PICA holders (on Kusama)
- #1 wallet is the IBC escrow, holding 45% of the total supply
- wallet #2-#10 hold together 2.6B PICA or 26% of total supply, with 558M locked

PICA outside of Kusama

The PICA token is well distributed across various DEXs with a total of ~330M PICA on other ecosystems.

1) Osmosis: $120K of liquidity

2) Orca on Solana: $98K liquidity

3) Uniswap on ETH: $23.4K liquidity

4) Pablo DEX on DOT: $17K (being sunset)

Inflation and staking APR

- Inflation on Picasso is 1.19%

- With 1.63B out of 7.4B circulating PICA staked, this results in a staking APR of 5.29% as of now.

Investors and Funding

Composable Foundation which oversees the development of Picasso has completed two funding rounds to date:

Seed Round:
- Date: July 2021
- Amount raised: $7M
- Investors: Advanced Blockchain, SOSV

Series A:
- Date: March 2022
- Amount raised: $32M
- Investors: Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain Capitals

Total money raised: $39M

* Price per token: Was not publicly disclosed

Future Plans / Roadmap

- Picasso discussing adoption of Interchain Security
- Osmosis Prop for waving fees & intro revenue share model
- Mantis airdrop for PICA stakers?
- IBC everywhere continuation (Bitcoin, Monad, Ton)

Picasso exploring ICS as an option

- Picasso opened discussions about adopting ICS & joining the AEZ
- They discussed implementing Partial Set Security (PSS)
- This could require only 10 Hub validators to secure the chain
- Prop is currently on the Hub's forum for discussion

$PICA V2: Tokenomics Revamp

- Revamp the revenue diversion from IBC bridging and SOL Restaking and introduce back-bay and burn.

- 100% of this revenue is now diverted towards the community, via Rev Share and a buyback & burn mechanism split as follows:

1) IBC Revenue Share:

- 80% buy-back & burn
- 20% to PICA stakers

2) Restaking Layer

- 40% buy-back & burn
- 40% to restakers
- 20% to stakers

The token buy-back & burn would happen on a regular basis on Osmosis, favoring value accrual of the PICA token.

Revenue Share Proposal with Osmosis

- Picasso proposes to waive bridging frees for transactions originating and terminating on Osmosis.

- In return, a proportion (10%) of taker fees generated by trading "Picasso bridged assets" on Osmosis would be shared with Picasso.

Future potential Airdrop?

There are rumors that Picasso stakers might get an allocation of the upcoming Mantis airdrop.

Mantis is a Solana L2 enabling chain abstraction to access DeFi yield on any chain.

Picasso cross-ecosystem IBC stats:

- 104.000 transactions
- 19.124 users
- 30 supported networks
- 70 supported assets

To sum it up: The Good

a) Continued success of extending IBC beyond Cosmos.
b) The more cross-ecosystem IBC connections are routed through the Picasso Interoperability Hub, the more value accrues to PICA holders.
c) Buyback & burn mechanism.
d) Multiple revenue sources.

The Bad

e) ~30% of the supply will be unlocked over the next one and a half years.
f) There's a lot of competition in the interoperability & restaking market.
g) Low liquidity across CEX and DEXs.

Conclusion

Despite the PICA token being down, the team continues to execute on its promises.

If they continue to execute on their "IBC everywhere" mission, connecting BTC, Monad, Ton, etc via IBC, Picasso has a good chance to become a sustainable and yield bearing protocol.

Thanks for reading folks, we hope you've found this article helpful.

Disclaimer

This article is intended to educate readers about certain topics and should not be considered financial advice in any way.