Putting the Stack to Work: Month Two of Umia

Last month's update closed with Slop Cash's Tailored Auction and cross-chain bidding coming up next. One month on, both are done, and more launches are being prepared.

The short version of month two: for the first time, a team other than Umia's own launched on Umia. Most of what shipped this month was built to make that launch work, and it will be there for every launch after this one, with improvements still being worked on.

Month Two in Numbers

Alongside the launch, the protocol's own numbers kept moving. Figures cover roughly 14 October to 12 November.

• About $50K in fee revenue over 30 days, on roughly $5.5M of trading volume.
• About $18K a month in treasury yield, from USDC positions on Aave and Steakhouse.
• Close to 2,000 UMIA holders, up 22% over the period.
• Nearly 1,000 new traders across the last four full weeks.
• Roughly $1M raised for Slop Cash by close to 600 bidders, with 2% of the SLOP supply now held by the $UMIA treasury.

Building the Team

Two senior hires joined just before the Slop Cash early bid opened: Rodrigo Rivas as Head of Marketing and Andy Carta as Head of Pipeline.

Rodrigo takes on marketing and branding. His first weeks produced the new visual system used across this update and the Slop Cash decision market content, and he will go on to shape Umia's identity and voice.

Andy leads the work of bringing new projects through onboarding, from first conversations to due diligence and launch preparation.

With more launches being prepared, those are the two areas that needed the extra capacity most.

The First Launch After $UMIA

Slop Cash is a noncustodial funding rail for open source, built by elizaOS creator Shaw Walters and Drew Pierson. It's the first project other than Umia to go through the whole Umia setup, from the early bid to the creation of the legal wrapper. Its Tailored Auction ran on Robinhood Chain, so it's also the first Umia launch beyond Base.

The early bid opened on 5 November and passed the $400K minimum in under 24 hours. That minimum is a hard line on Umia: had the auction fallen short, every bid would have been refunded and no legal wrapper would have formed. Two days later, the public round opened, with the remaining allocation filled in about 15 minutes. The auction closed at its cap of roughly $1M, with close to 600 bidders taking part.

From there, Slop ran on the same launch rules as $UMIA: 20% of the proceeds seeded a protocol-owned pool and the rest went to Slop's noncustodial treasury. The team works from a fixed $35K a month, which covers about 23 months, and any spending beyond that has to pass a decision market. As part of the tokenomics, Umia received 2% of the SLOP supply, held by the $UMIA treasury.

SLOP went live on 10 November, and bidders can claim their tokens from the auction page. A day later, Slop's first decision market opened: a proposal to move 2M SLOP from the treasury's ecosystem allocation into a referral program for people who bring new projects to Slop Cash. It passed and was executed on 12 November.

Thank you to everyone who took part, and to Shaw and Drew for going first.

A Way In for Holders and Contributors

Until this month, the early bid of a Curated launch had two doors: a whitelist for funds and angels, and proofs for the project's own community. UMIA holders had no route of their own, despite being among the audiences most aligned with the token ownership ethos. This changed with the introduction of Umia Pass.

For the Slop Cash auction, any wallet that had held at least 1,000 UMIA for seven continuous days qualified. The Pass started at a $250 allocation in the early bid, and boosts could raise it as high as $2.5K. Holding 5,000 or 20,000 UMIA added a boost, as did privately verified proofs such as having taken part in an Echo sale or average holding time on fomo. Pass holders still bid with their own funds, at the same clearing price as everyone else, and 132 wallets used the Pass in Slop's early bid.

Those terms applied to the Slop launch only. The Pass is still evolving: thresholds, allocations and boosts can change from one launch to the next, and new criteria and verification methods are being worked on for the next one. The Slop terms are set out in Introducing Umia Pass.

Contributors to the elizaOS and Slop Cash repositories also had a route in, qualifying for the early bid through the Umia Extension with their merged or reviewed pull requests.

Bid from Any Chain

Last month's update said cross-chain bidding was being prepared. It shipped in time for Slop.

The auction settled in USDG on Robinhood Chain, but users could bid from well beyond that. With cross-chain bidding, a bid can be funded from tokens already held on another supported chain, inside the app, with no bridging beforehand. The bid itself behaves like any other. For a project that picks a newer chain, it means the community can show up with what they already have.

Lessons from the Public Round

The public round filled faster than planned for. Traffic at the open was well beyond what retail users alone would bring, and the rate limits slowed some real bidders down along with the scripts.

The team has gone through the launch data since. Load testing against the traffic actually seen and stronger protection against automated bidding are now under way, ahead of the next launch.

Also This Month

The app has a new homepage and navigation, live since mid-October. Umia was also presented to the founders in Base Batches 004.

On the writing side, recent posts covered some of the less glamorous parts of the system, including what happens to tokenholders when a project winds down and why no legal wrapper forms if an auction misses its minimum.

What Comes Next

Slop was the first, and more projects are in discussion and onboarding now. Every project goes through onboarding and legal review before anything is said about it publicly, and that process has taken longer than last month's update suggested. Each launch will be announced when it's ready. As always, timelines can shift.

Before then, expect a closer look at Umia Pass and how it will work for future launches.

Month one showed the system working for Umia's own token. Month two showed it working for someone else, and showed where it creaks.

This post is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Trading in any market carries risk, and returns are not guaranteed.