Agora

Tokenomics
Overview

Swiss Lab & Foundation for Digital Democracy

Agora Tokenomics Overview
This document provides an overview of the Agora eco- We’re excited to announce that Agora’s VOTE token pre-
system asset: the VOTE token, as well as additional infor- sale has commenced and is now available to contribu-
mation pertaining to Agora’s token sale. tors of every country except the United States, Canada
and China. Agora will be raising $20 million through the
VOTE token sale.

Introducing the VOTE token

VOTE is the native token of the Agora ecosystem. The In Agora’s ecosystem, not only can each voter verify
VOTE token is used to incentivize citizens and selected that his or her vote was accurately recorded and that it
organizations to contribute to a secure and transparent remained unaltered, but voters can audit the results of
election process by acting as authenticators of elections their own elections or those of other nations or organ-
worldwide. izations and get rewarded for it. In this way voters play
a key role in ensuring fair elections and can place their
The VOTE tokenomics model has a wholistic function on trust in the electoral procedures.
Agora’s platform, creating a decentralized mechanism for
validating and auditing election results. VOTE is the first With the VOTE token, Agora makes elections a
token to encourage civil societies and investors to verify crowd-participatory and incentivizing project for citizens
real election results. and a cheaper, safer enterprise for election administra-
tors.

Disclaimer
This document is presented for informational purposes only.
Content may change for legal and/or operational reasons

Notice
Contributors should be aware that by buying VOTE tokens they will have two types of utility: use their tokens
to purchase the services of Agora to run an election, and being able to become a Citizen Auditor Node to audit
Agora election results.

Swiss Lab & Foundation for Digital Democracy 2

The Agora Ecosystem
Agora is a global community of node operators maintain- citizen token holders auditing the consensus mechanism
ing a verifiable blockchain network which ensures a tam- (Citizen Auditor Nodes).
per-proof and 100% verifiable election process.
Each time Agora enters a contract with a government
To ensure the maximum level of security, Agora’s system or private organization that intends to run an election,
combines the most advanced level of cryptography with a portion of the cash inflow is allocated to purchase the
a two layers participatory consensus security infrastruc- required Election Reserved Tokens. At the end of the
ture. It consists of two types of nodes operators : a net- election period, Agora pays the node operators with the
work of carefully selected nodes providing consensus on purchased VOTE tokens for their processing and verifi-
Agora’s permission blockchain (Consensus Nodes), and cation work.

Overview of Agora’s ecosystem

Election officials Agora Election Reserved Tokens

Consensus Nodes
Cititizen Auditor Nodes

Election Officials: pay a blockchain network fee to run Consensus Nodes: a distributed network of independ-
an election on Agora’s system ent witness servers, together they form the “Cothority”,
a permissioned collective authority providing consensus
Agora: purchases VOTE tokens on the secondary market on the Agora blockchain
to pay node operators
Citizen Auditor Nodes: a global decentralized network
Election Reserved Tokens: a reserve of VOTE tokens of trustless nodes, together they form the “Valeda Net-
purchased by Agora after signing an election contract work”, which watches and verifies that the consensus is
with a government or an organization. To be paid to processed correctly
Consensus Nodes and Citizen Auditor Nodes as a com-
pensation for their services

Swiss Lab & Foundation for Digital Democracy 3

What are Consensus Nodes
and how are they incentivized
to participate?
Consensus Nodes consist of our invite-only network For every election, 5% of VOTE tokens that Agora pur-
of NGOs, universities and other politically-neutral third chases are paid to the successful Cothority network as
party organizations. Together, Consensus Nodes form payment for services provided.
the Cothority, which processes transactions and pro-
vides consensus for data stored on Agora’s blockchain. In the event that the Consenus Node does not intend to
be paid commercially for their services then the service
The Consensus Nodes are contracted and paid by Agora fee will be paid to the Agora Foundation to undertake
in VOTE tokens for two services: humanitarian projects in collaboration with the organiza-
• Technically maintaining a node, making sure that the tions operating the Consensus Nodes. Possible projects
infrastructure is stored safely and is working when include holding educational sessions for children, provid-
needed; for pilots, tests and real elections. ing coding lectures, educating adults about blockchain
• Providing consensus; meaning actively participating and elections all over the world.
to make an election trustworthy thanks to the pow-
er of distribution and decentralization.

What are Citizen Auditor Nodes

and how are they incentivized
to participate?
Eligible KYC verified token holders can act as Citizen Au- holder abusing the system for e.g. spreading fake news
ditor Nodes for any election worldwide (subject to them or other bad actions will be penalized from the tokens
meeting Agora’s eligibility criteria). Citizen Auditors act they pledged as collateral.
like observers comparable to election observers of our
current paper ballot voting systems, they are able to view All Citizen Auditor Nodes holding tokens for 90 days or
the open source transaction code of an election to pub- more are eligible to receive auditor rewards when elec-
licly verify its authenticity. tions or null elections occur on Agora’s network.

In order to act as Citizen Auditor Nodes during an elec- Once an election period has ended and ballots have
tion token holders must provide a pledge of VOTE to- been computed by the Cothority, all Citizen Auditor
kens to Agora for 90 days. Citizen Auditors are paid for Nodes will run verified validations on the election. All of
their services in VOTE tokens, them will have equal opportunity to report on any given
election, provided they meet the minimum 90 day and
Token holders who do not pledge their VOTE tokens for uptime requirements.
at least 90 days will not comply with the contract with
Agora as a Citizen Auditor Node. Agora reserves the Cumulatively, Citizen Auditor Nodes will be paid by Ago-
right to refuse someone to participate and any token ra from 95% of the Election Reserved Tokens.

Swiss Lab & Foundation for Digital Democracy 4

What are Election Reserved Tokens?

Election officials Agora Election Reserved Tokens

Each election on Agora is required to prepare Election Election administrators pay Agora for the blockchain vot-
Reserved Tokens to pay Consensus Nodes and Citizen ing service. Agora then purchases VOTE tokens from the
Auditors for their services. secondary market to pay Consensus Nodes and Citizen
Auditor Nodes for their processing and verification work.

Election Reserved Tokens Formula

Election Reserved Tokens are charged to governments this metric on the total voter population rather than the
and other customers in USD according to the following number of participating voters allows Agora to remain
formula: unbiased to the voting process itself. The USD value ap-

TUSD = k * P
plied to Election Reserved Tokens also follows a formu-
laic system which itself is not driven by market prices.

TUSD: Election Reserved Tokens in USD for election a The formula for k, which represents the weighted aver-
k: Blockchain network fee (weighted average per unit) age blockchain network fee per eligible voter, is derived
P: Voter population from a fixed unit fee that scales with voter population.

The formula for Election Reserved Tokensl TUSD scales The table on the next page states how a blockchain net-
with the total voter population of a country, e.g. the work fee will be applied as voter population for a given
number of people eligible to vote. We believe basing election grows.

Swiss Lab & Foundation for Digital Democracy 5

Token Details
Symbol VOTE

Total token supply 1 billion

Soft cap $1.25 million

Hard cap $20 million

ICO price $0.041

Type Utility token

Type ERC20

Presale start May 14th, 2018

Crowdsale start October 1st, 2018

Token Distribution
Token sale
Includes tokens for null elections
8.5%
Company
11.5% Subject to a 4 years lockup with 1 year cliff

50% Team
15% Subject to a 3 years lockup with 1 year cliff

Partners
15% 1.5% of total tokens reserved for
community airdrops and bounties

Advisors
Subject to a 3 years lockup with 1 year cliff

Swiss Lab & Foundation for Digital Democracy 6

Use of Proceeds

5%
Legal
10% 40%
Buffer Product and
R&RD
10%
Operations

35%
Business
Development

Proceeds from Agora’s token sale will be used to support Our ICO will finance Agora’s growth on a 10 year time-
development and widescale adoption of our technology. line with a safety buffer. The cost of our sales force and
Agora offers an end-to-end verifiable voting software, adoption is a major component of our expenses and will
which provides governments and institutions with a be fundamental to Agora’s success. In many jurisdictions,
powerful platform that can bolster confidence in democ- converting leads into customers will take many years and
racies across the world. This is a large undertaking, and involve highly connected and skilled people in each ge-
our raise is intended to fund a project of a global scale. ographic region.

Swiss Lab & Foundation for Digital Democracy 7

Project Timeline
Agora began building blockchain voting technology two- With our core platform developed, we are now in the
and-a-half years ago to meet the mission-critical require- early stage of executing our growth strategy.
ments of government elections.

2015
Research new types of consensus mechanisms and reliable voting products.

2015-2017
First use cases of permission blockchain. Moving from prototypes to working product.
Improving the permission infrastructure from alpha to beta.

February 2018
Ready to use permission blockchain. Penetration tests succeeded.

March 2018
First presidential use case in Sierra Leone. A sample of votes is recorded on Agora’s blockchain.

April 2018
Business development in South East Asia and North America.
Penetration tests succeeded on the voting system.

May 2018
Begin VOTE token presale
First paperless votes. 20’000 users on the permission infrastructure.

June 2018
Business Development in West, East and South Africa.
Improving large scale paperless use case.

October 2018
ICO / Token crowdsale

Q1 2019
Expanding the production, expatriate voting, targeting the voting machines market
and correspondence voting. Lauching permission-less infrastructure.

Q3 2019
New app for government officials: tracking of elections supplychain.

Swiss Lab & Foundation for Digital Democracy 8

Join Agora’s
Token Presale

Agora’s VOTE token presale has

commenced on May 14th and is
now available to contributors of
every country except the United
States, Canada and China.

Contact us
hello@agora.vote

Swiss Lab & Foundation for Digital Democracy