WOO is the native token of WOO Network, a zero-fee crypto trading platform that also offers decentralized finance (DeFi) services.

WOO went live in October 2020 at 40 cents. It sank almost immediately to about 3 cents and stayed there until the crypto boom of 2021. The token’s ascent began in February 2021, first stopping off at 52 cents before surpassing $1 in April 2021. In May 2021, WOO hit a high of $1.34.

A period of volatility followed when the crypto market crashed in the middle of 2021. The bull market’s second wind carried WOO along with it by the third quarter, and in the middle of November 2021, the token hit its all-time high price of $2.48. The token crashed after that and sank to 15 cents by June 2022.

WOO Network, the company behind WOO, created 3 billion WOO tokens initially. The tokens were based on the Ethereum blockchain’s ERC-20 token standard. In May 2021, WOO launched as a BEP-20 token on the BNB Smart Chain.

At launch, the network designated half of the tokens for the growth of the WOO Network. Those tokens were designed to provide incentives for liquidity, provide resources to an insurance fund and reward projects that supported the WOO Network. Another 5% of the supply would go to WOO Ventures, a venture-capital fund that invested in early-stage projects.

As for the other half, the team kept 20%, advisers reserved another 5%, and 20% was sold in public and private sales. A final 5% was reserved to manage the protocol’s liquidity. These tokens will take many years to unlock. WOO estimates that only 40% of tokens will be unlocked by late 2024.

WOO’s token supply, however, is deflationary. On the 10th of every month, the network spends half of its income to buy WOO tokens in the open market and then burns them. Burning permanently removes tokens from public circulation by sending them to a wallet that nobody controls.

The WOO Network offers three core functions. The first is WOO X, a crypto exchange. The second is Wootrade, a liquidity pool that provides extra crypto to exchanges, over-the-counter desks and wallets that require it. The third is WOOFi, a line of DeFi products that includes a decentralized exchange, yield farm and staking service.

The WOO token is used in all of these services. It can be staked to reduce trading fees and unlock zero-fee trading on WOO X, as well as rebates on trades and free withdrawals. Trading shops can stake WOO to raise their trading limits and further reduce their fees.

Stakers are also entitled to share in the profits earned by WOO Ventures, or the yield-farming adventures of WOOFi. The token can also be used as collateral for loans on SushiSwap’s lending and margin trading protocol, Kashi, and lending protocol and yield farm Rari Capital.

WOO raised $30 million in a Series A funding round in November 2021. It was incubated by Kronos Research, a Tawaini-based high-frequency trading firm that trades about $5 billion to $10 billion on crypto exchanges each day. Kronos’s co-founders, Mark Pimentel and Jack Tan, still lead WOO Network. Ran Yi Chief is WOO’s chief operating officer and Terence Ng its chief technology officer.

WOO Network governs everything aside from the validation of transactions on WooFi Swap, the platform’s DeFi decentralized exchange.

WOO plans to decentralize through the WOO DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. It is split across four working groups that govern operations, treasury management, business development relations and marketing.

The WOO DAO operates on Discord. Those who stake more than 1,800 WOO on WOO X or who hold more than 1,800 WOO on the Ethereum, SDC or Polygon platforms are eligible to vote on proposals on WOO’s Discord server.