Axion has been one of the most fascinating projects in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space since the DeFi boom on the Ethereum blockchain in the last year. In this article, we take a look at what Axion is, including a thorough look back on the events that have transpired since Axion’s official launch and the incredible growth it provided. From the very beginning to the present day — and beyond! — the future of Axion has never been more exciting.

To date, Axion has built a whole ecosystem around ethical finance, working to build a powerful community filled with like-minded individuals from all over the world. Crypto is a highly volatile and traditionally short-sighted market, with people buying and selling on a daily or hourly basis in order to try and maximize their immediate gains. Axion is the answer to a whole new era of investors who are looking for long-term stable growth and who don’t want to pay the paltry interest rates of modern banks or get penalized with fees and charges prevalent in the investing world. Axion’s ethical finance Ecosystem is providing a safe haven for people of all ages, incomes, beliefs, and histories, who value the big picture outlook. Axion is the place for those who value long-term thinking and the financial freedom that cryptocurrencies can provide.

Axion is also unique in that it takes a different approach than merely asking its token holders and shareholders to merely HODL — or “hold” their Axion and wait for a future value appreciation as its primary means of wealth generation. Axion provides immediate and tangible benefits to anyone who stakes their AXN; through its innovative Auction System, its DAO voting system, and curated Axion Launches.

With the Venture Capital Auctions, staked Axion shareholders earn liquid Bitcoin dividends that can be withdrawn at any time and spent — true passive income without having to touch the principal investment. At publishing, over 135 BTC has been distributed to all shareholders, an impressive achievement! Additionally, Axion’s Regular Auctions pass on the proceeds to all shareholders, granting additional dividends in AXN paid to all stakers, increasing the average APY for investors.

With the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), shareholders with stakes over a year can vote on important policy changes, adjustments to the tokenomics, and updates to the Axion ecosystem; creating a truly community-driven token.

Finally, Axion Launch brings unique and curated partnerships with airdrops, IDO/IEOs, and fundraisers exclusive to the Axion community, with tens of thousands- up to hundreds of thousands-of dollars given out to Axion shareholders, alongside unique investing opportunities.

Therefore shareholders are not just holding Axion, they are getting to participate in a whole ecosystem, all in one place.

But how did Axion get here? Where did it start? The road to the development of Axion has not been frictionless, with many bumps and learning experiences along the way. The Axion Team does not hide from its past, instead choosing to adopt the adage that our past makes us stronger, smarter, and better prepared to deal with an ever-changing world.

The Launch of Axion.

The official launch of Axion on November 2nd, 2020 was highly anticipated by our investors and community for months on end. Axion’s contract(s) were audited by some of the most respected firms in the crypto industry — CertiK and Hacken. At approximately 11:00AM UTC, the Axion contracts were deployed onto the Ethereum mainnet — then almost immediately exploited via an individual developer assisting with the contract deployment. Although CertiK successfully conducted their audit, the hack functionality was maliciously injected right at contract deployment from the hacker post audit completion. This function allowed the hacker to mint almost 80 billion AXN tokens which were immediately unloaded on the open market via Uniswap. This dropped the token price to zero just minutes after the anticipated mainnet launch, effectively draining Axion of all its hard-earned liquidity.

To say this was shocking to the entire community is an understatement. For months prior, Axion’s community grew with investors from all around the world. Investors that placed their faith in an ecosystem based on trust and transparency. Investors that saw the power in a one-of-a-kind community; full of co-operation and unparalleled levels of support and camaraderie. A community that, we are proud to say, still exists and flourishes to this day. But at the moment of the hack, Axion had been deeply wounded before it had the chance to fly.

Several thousands of messages rolled into Axion’s social channels, community servers, and direct messages — and expectedly so. Great damage had been done, and time was of the essence. The community demanded answers and Axion’s development team needed to react quickly, make changes and announce next steps. Axion’s auditors released an official article on the prominent cryptocurrency news site CoinTelegraph ensuring best practices were had. But was it enough?

Traditionally, this sort of hack would have resulted in the death of any project, and the loss of support from all current and interested investors. News articles were released denouncing the hack and calling Axion a scam, using the exploit as a classic case for why crypto projects were not to be trusted. However, Axion is not like most projects, and through the uproar, the budding Axion community saw the hack as a rallying effort.

Support came from community members that understood the debacle and offered their help in all possible aspects. The team grew stronger almost overnight. A group of developers, programmers, liquidity providers, strategists, and others offered their personal and professional support throughout Axion’s relaunch period. Within a single week, this community team worked tirelessly to ensure that Axion would launch again without any flaw, vulnerability, or malicious intent — the way it was meant to be. In just a few days, the community rallied to raise $500,000 USD to create a liquidity pool for the new token launch, an incredible vote of confidence in Axion’s long-term benefit.

On November 11th, 2020 at 9am, just nine short days after the hack, Axion officially deployed its second contract. A message was posted in the community that announced that all investors who had contributed to the initial token would be compensated, and would be given the same amount of tokens that they had purchased at no cost. This is rather notable, because the vast majority of hacked projects never return, and rarely ever honor their initial investors with a sincere and ethical solution. This moment changed Axion forever. The Axion legacy was reborn.

That fateful month of November was an incredibly stressful and complex one within Axion. However, without these complexities and hindrances, Axion wouldn’t have formed the stronghold that now forms its most dedicated team. Many members of the community that rose up from the ranks to assist in the relaunch now form much of the core development, moderator, and marketing teams. Instead of representing the death of Axion, it represents a solidarity of sorts for those that lived through it, and an ode to Axion’s power as a community for all new investors. Axion was no longer just a project made by a few people, launched to the network. It was now truly a community-created token.

In short, Axion experienced one of the most public hacks in DeFi, and came back from it with finesse, professionalism, and a community-centered mindset that lasts to this day. This is why we, the Axion Team, believe Axion to be one of the most interesting projects in the crypto space. Each of us was drawn here for different reasons, but we all stayed because we believe in the Ethical Finance ecosystem that birthed through trial-by-fire.

Here’s a timeline of notable events in Axion’s journey since the relaunch.

The Axion Roadmap.

• A massive community onboarding campaign commenced.
• Re-launch initiated.
• Developers, programmers, strategists, moderators, and additional core team members vetted and onboarded.
• Security & Strategy solutions implemented.
• Weekly open discussion meetings between prominent investors and community members to discuss the future.
• Code overhaul and ownership changed from previous developers to internal development team.
• Initial marketing discussions between prominent community members.
• Internal company spend allocated to build foundation.
• NFTs created and distributed for specific member initiatives.

• Internal communications finalized across team of 15+
• Significant marketing budget proposal presented for community feedback.
• Additional moderator onboarding.
• Continued auction contract development & optimization.
• Connect Financial partnership offered to OG-5555 NFT/members.
• Continued CTO interviews among the leadership team and dev team.
• Additional strategy discussions among prominent early investors.
• Network upgrades planned with dev team.
• Information and APIs provided to large cryptocurrency tracking websites.
• Axion Today initial partnership to provide platform for community updates.
• Team multisignature wallet creation to ensure multiple validation points needed for contract upgrades / changes.
• Initial evaluation and redesign of Axion’s branding.
• Strategic proposals presented for community discussion (VCA).
• Initial pre-DAO voting system implemented on Discord.
• Dev contracts approved.
• Large 5-page update on the auction economics released to community

• Liquidity Amplifier developed.
• Initial gas optimization changes to the code developed.
• Venture Auction coding developed and tested.
• Initial Website redesign begun.
• Adjustments to the Share Rate initiated -
• New mathematical tokenomics and economic model built.
• New auction implementations implemented.
• Consistent Axion moderation team meetings performed to discuss customer satisfaction and track community happiness.
• Continued meetings with potential CTO’s and lead engineers.
• Continued team onboardings.
• Potential CMO onboarding discussions.

• 5555 “Max Shares” stake & re-stake event initiation.
• Axion logo redesign.
• VCA codebase completed. VCA testing begins.
• Token economic simulations underway via in-house mathematicians.
• $80,000 USD gas compensation event for stakes.
• Freelance graphic and multimedia designer onboarded.
• CMO onboarded.
• Marketing plan and strategy released for community and leadership feedback.

• Creative director onboarded.
• Axion Branding Guide released.
• New comprehensive whitepaper featuring full tokenomics, mathematical analysis, strategic marketing roadmap and use-case scenarios released.
• Max Shares event completed with over 70 billion AXN staked for Max Shares (15 years / 5555 days).
• SEO firm onboarded.
• Venture Auction codebase successfully audited.
• Complete overhaul and new design to the Axion staking & auction platform UI.
• Largescale AMAs with the Axion team performed across all social and community platforms.
• Dev team re-organization and new onboarding of additional developers.
• Intercom platform purchased and work on comprehensive knowledge base begins.

• Additional team onboardings and strategic restructuring.
• Initiation of the BOI (Board of Investors) — an independent coalition of Axion shareholders working for the economic benefit of the Axion ecosystem.
• COC — the Community Oversight Committee — onboarded to represent the Axion community’s interests to the BOI and provide accountability and transparency reporting.
• V1 of Shares-based DAO voting system implemented.
• Development team begins work on Axion v3, a comprehensive overhaul of the entire Axion contract, written from the ground up by the internal development team.
• Social Media ad pushes & additional marketing continues.
• Axion Launch release featuring curated launches to the Axion community.
• Partnership with Sekuritance for Axion Launch and KYC integration for future Launches.
• Community town hall meetings with Axion’s CSO discussing auction systems.

• Intercom support chat system launched on Staking Portal and website homepage.
• Additional Axion Launch partnerships formulated.
• Milestone: One hundred billion (100,000,000,000) AXN tokens staked for over 15 years from over 7,000 individual stakers.

• Axion v3 announced to the community.
• Axion Launch: $SLEEPY (Sleepy Sloth Finance) token airdrop to community.
• Axion Launch: Additional $SKRT (Sekuritance) allocation.
• Additional wallet support added to Axion — over 70+ wallets supported.
• 1 year anniversary of Axion initial presale.
• New v2 website homepage launched.
• Comprehensive Knowledge Base launched.

• New code implementation for auctions developed, tested, and launched.
• Additional UI updates for the Axion Staking Platform.
• Founder update & AMA.
• New and updated Axion Foundation revenue model developed.
• Marketing team strategic adjustment.
• Social Media Director onboarded.
• New Marketing Strategist and Analyst onboarded.
• New in-house HTML5 ad designer onboarded.
• Axion Launch: Direwolf airdrop and fundraiser.
• Axion Launch: Vabble presale, IEO, and airdrop.
• Community town halls preformed discussing Axion Foundation structure change
• 90% of Axion v3 code completed.
• Axion v3 testing contract launched to Ropsten test network.
• Semetrix Digital onboarded for programmatic ad campaigns.
• Brave Browser push notification campaign begins.
• Development began on the Vesting Engine for Axion Launch.

The Path Forward.

• Website v3 launch with multi-lingual support.
• Axion v3 upgrade finalization and release.
• Additional ongoing Axion Launch partnerships.
• Launch of new Axion Launch Vesting Engine for redeeming launches.
• New and ongoing marketing initiatives.
• Several community DAO votes.
• Connect Financial credit card release.
• Centralized Exchange (CEX) listings.
• Automatic Arbitration system implemented for CEX balancing.
• Axion Portal Launch — the one-stop-shop for the Axion ecosystem.
• Interactive roadmap update(s).

Axion has always been growing and developing, as shown by this development roadmap. There has been a substantial amount of progress within Axion’s ecosystem over the last year, and this is just the beginning. With over 8,600+ individual 15-year stakes across our network, it is clear that both Axion’s community-sourced development team and the Axion community as a whole believe that Axion is here to stay as an ethical, community-driven cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Stay tuned across our community channels, blog, and social media for more updates and exciting news.