The native digital cryptographically-secured ecosystem utility token of Hot Cross ($HOTCROSS) is a transferable representation of attributed functions specified in the protocol/code of Hot Cross, which is designed to play a major role in the functioning of the ecosystem on Hot Cross and intended to be used solely as the primary utility token on the protocol/network which allows users to access a various number of products in the Hot Cross suite.

This includes access into Cross Pool, discounts or rebates on cross-chain B2B tool creation and associated B2C analytics, and DAO-style power over the decision making and governance of select portions of the Hot Cross ecosystem. We have found that overpromising token utilities can be dangerous, so from a top-level our primary objectives are as follows:

• $HOTCROSS acts as the native currency of the suite of cross-chain tools that are developed for the Ethereum and other EVM-compatible ecosystems, including, but not limited to, Binance Smart Chain, Huobi ECO Chain, and OKExChain. This means that $HOTCROSS may be spent for access into Hot Cross products, including, but not limited to, Cross Mint, Cross Pool, Cross Bridge, early alpha/beta access into components like Cross Connect, and preferred access into the set of API's that we are developing under Cross API;
• If in the future $HOTCROSS itself moves canonical from ERC20 to BEP20, Substrate, Solana, NEAR, et al. then the same ethos around utilities apply. Nothing fundamentally about the token itself is dependent on one chain surviving;
• The intention of Hot Cross is to start out centralized and then move into a DAO such that $HOTCROSS holders have say in how the protocols, tools, and blockchains related to Hot Cross operate. We are very aware that DeFi and governance have many problems that are incredibly hard to overcome and do not pretend to believe that simply holding a protocol's tokens has any merit in and of itself without meaningful contributions made. Some of the tools that Hot Cross builds are strictly B2B and some are B2C (or DTC); we will take a wait-and-see approach towards a DAO;
• $HOTCROSS will be a staked asset to protect the blockchain - tentatively called Hot Cross Chain - that's created to ensure that ecosystem actors are being responsible. This is similar to the rationale behind the use of PoS, PoSA, hybrid consensus, and PoH. Hot Cross Chain itself does not own or run any computing/storage servers, yet third-party computational resources are required for protecting a chain state, so providers of these resources (i.e. validators) would require payment for the consumption of these resources to maintain network integrity, and $HOTCROSS will be used as the network currency to quantify and pay the costs of the consumed computational resources;
• And during the lifespan of $HOTCROSS, we will pay close attention to ecosystem actors and reward them for participation and contributions for the benefit of the entire ecosystem. This can mean creating on-chain liquidity, minting NFTs via Cross Mint, staking LPs or single-sided tokens in Cross Pool, or staking $HOTCROSS to access our suite of premium API endpoints (Cross API). This also means retroactive rewards that we do not communicate ahead of time; we have found that rewarding participation in an ecosystem in a retroactive manner creates more psychological stickiness to a product suite.

<aside> 📌 If we discover that other blockchains are more suitable for our needs, then we will quickly pivot that way. In particular this means Substrate, Solana, NEAR, or any other chain that develops out an ecosystem that we are able to tap into with relevance. We remain agnostic about the technologies that we use and $HOTCROSS itself is meant to be cross-chain from the first day of its launch. Hot Cross as a team is focused on tooling and eschews dogma; if we find niches to fill then we will aggressively go after them regardless of where they are located.

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Last Update: July 4th, 2021