Here’s how Indian crypto firm Biconomy is gearing up for web3

• Biconomy was founded in 2018 and was the first Indian crypto company to list a token on Coinlist.
• In the web3 world, Biconomy basically wants to become the payment gateway for crypto transactions.
• The BICO token is the network’s native governance token.

Amongst the handful of web3 companies from India making waves in the web3 space is Biconomy. The company provides a non-custodial and gas efficient scalable relayer infrastructure that aims to simplify transaction processes for web3 firms. The company also has the BICO token, which is listed on many large exchanges, including WazirX right now.

Among its many plaudits, Biconomy was also the first Indian web3 firm to list a token on Coinlist, which in itself is a sign that the platform is not in the web3 space to take advantage of the crypto craze. Coinlist is an initial coin offering platform, and has a diligence process that keeps just any web3 firm from listing a token on its lists.

What is Biconomy?

In simple terms, Biconomy wants to become the Stripe of the web3 world. The company was founded by Aniket Jindal who studied from Fudan University in Shanghai and worked at Binance in 2017. He moved back to India in 2018 and decided to launch Biconomy with co-founders Ahmed Al-Balaghi and Sachin Tomar in an effort to make the adoption of decentralised apps easier. While Balaghi was an advisor and seed investor at Matic Network, which is now called Polygon, Tomar was a software engineer at Samsung Electronics before coming to Biconomy.

“We are solving for the makers and players of web3. Our mission is to simplify the future of transactions, ensuring that decentralisation is truly accessible to all,” the company says on its website.

The company raised $9 million in a private funding round led by DACM and Mechanism Capital in July last year. It also has strategic investments from Coinbase, Bain Capital, Coinfund, NFX True Ventures, Proof Group, Ledgerprime and more. DeFi firm Aave’s founder Stani Kulechov has also backed the company.

So far, the company has partnered with 100+ dApps including DeFi platform Curve Finance, trading platform Perpetual Protocol, gaming platform Decentral Games, social blogging platform Sapien Network and more. At the time of writing, the BICO was trading at around ₹148 on WazirX.

BICO Token is the network’s native governance token

The BICO token is the primary driver of the Biconomy platform. The token has a market cap of over $189 million as of February, according to Coinmarketcap, and a circulating supply of over 106 million tokens. Its total supply is one billion.

The BICO token is the native governance token of the Biconomy network, and it has two main objectives — providing network fees and incentives to stakeholders. This means that node operators on Biconomy pay the network fees, while they are also paid in BICO for the work they put in for validating transactions on the network.

Node operators have to stake BICO tokens in order to join the Biconomy network, and the token also helps in other aspects of running the network.

Perhaps most importantly though, the token also acts as a mechanism that allows others a say in the network. Being a governance token, BICO token holders can propose and vote on decisions that affect the network’s progress in the long run. Any token holder is allowed to propose changes to the network, and such changes can only be passed once there’s a consensus amongst the majority of the holders.

What role does Biconomy play in web3?

The Biconomy network is basically meant to allow gasless transactions, which essentially means that it will bring down costs for DeFi platforms which are facilitating transactions in the web3 world. The company has three main products — Mexa, Forward and Hyphen.

Mexa is the one that allows gasless transactions in decentralised applications, while Forward allows users to pay transaction fees using tokens instead of cash. Hyphen, on the other hand, is meant to provide faster and inexpensive token transfers across different blockchain networks.

Together, the three products give Biconomy multiple use cases. On the one hand, it provides gasless transactions, but on the other, it also allows interactions between layer 1 and layer 2 solutions, and in the long run can become part of any web3 platform that incorporates crypto transactions in any way.

Importance of the BICO token

While tokens like BICO have more applications than simple utility tokens, they too are traded on exchanges like WazirX. In the long run, tokens like BICO will attract serious crypto investors, who invest in the long term development of a company like Biconomy that helps decentralised apps and finance, rather than single tokens that may or may not survive. The token can be traded on WazirX in both INR and USD, and was trading at around ₹148 at the time of writing.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post in partnership with WazirX.