Onyx
About
Onyx is a modular Layer 3 blockchain built on Arbitrum Orbit and settled on Base (via the OP Stack), designed for financial-grade applications with near-instant confirmations and low fees. The ecosystem is powered by Onyxcoin (XCN), an ERC-20 token that functions as the native gas, governance, and staking asset of the network, with protocol decisions managed by the decentralized Onyx DAO. Onyx offers a suite of products including XCN Staking, a non-custodial gas-free wallet (Onyx Wallet using ERC-4337 account abstraction), and Onyx AI, a blockchain-native autonomous agent for on-chain task automation.
Where Does Yield Come From?
Yield on Onyx has several sources, all managed by the community through the Onyx DAO (the project's decentralized governance system).
XCN Staking
XCN holders can lock up ("stake") their tokens in the DAO's smart contract on Ethereum to help secure the network and earn voting power. In return, they receive periodic staking rewards. These rewards come from the XCN DAO emission contract, which releases up to 200 million XCN each month. If some of that amount isn't claimed, it rolls over into the following months. Stakers can collect their rewards when they claim them on-chain or when an Onyx Improvement Proposal (a formal DAO vote) gets executed.
Onyx Points Program
This is an extra rewards system. In Season Two, 10 million Onyx Points are handed out every day, split equally between two groups:
- 5 million points go to XCN stakers (proportional to how much they stake)
- 5 million points go to XCN Ledger participants
These points cannot be transferred to others, and they are tokenized as NFT-based positions so they can be used in other applications later.
Fee Burning (Deflationary Pressure)
Onyx uses an EIP-1559 fee model on its Layer 3 ledger. Every time someone makes an XCN transaction (paying gas), a part of the base fee is permanently destroyed (burned). This reduces the total supply over time, which benefits all holders.
Similarly, the Onyx Smart Wallet (which uses account abstraction to let users make gasless transactions) burns a proportional amount of XCN each time it sponsors a transaction. So more usage means more XCN gets burned, making the token scarcer.
DAO Treasury Deployments
The Onyx DAO Treasury holds a portion of the XCN total supply. Through on-chain voting, staked XCN holders decide how to deploy this capital — for example, funding ecosystem grants, providing liquidity incentives for DeFi protocols on Onyx (such as lending/borrowing pools for Bridged USDC or automated market makers), and supporting strategic partnerships.
Cross-Chain Activity
Bridged USDC and XCN move between blockchains using Wormhole (to BSC) and Superbridge (to Base and Onyx L3). This lets users participate in DeFi across multiple chains.
Who Controls All This?
The DAO governs everything. Through Onyx Improvement Proposals (OIPs), the community can adjust staking parameters, emission rates, and reward allocations whenever needed.
Audits
| Audit / Date | Findings | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
Halborn12-02-2025 - 21-02-2025 |
| The audit revealed no critical, high, or medium severity vulnerabilities, with only four low-risk and eight informational issues identified, all of which were either accepted or acknowledged by the Onyx team, indicating a relatively low overall risk profile for the governance contracts reviewed. |
| No audit content could be retrieved from the supplied URL, so no assessment of protocol safety can be made from this source. | |
PeckShield22-10-2024 |
| The audit found one medium-severity issue (admin key centralization, mitigated via multi-sig) and three low-severity findings (all confirmed), with no critical or high-severity vulnerabilities; overall the contract implementation is well-structured and the residual risks are manageable with the planned governance controls. |
CertiK07-11-2021 |
| The audit identified two centralization-related Major findings, both acknowledged with mitigating actions already taken (token distributed, owner key destroyed), and no critical vulnerabilities, indicating a reasonable security posture for the token contract at the time of review. |
CertiK06-03-2022 |
| The audit found no critical or high (major) severity vulnerabilities requiring an urgent code fix—the single major finding was a centralization risk that the team acknowledged rather than resolved. Overall the XCN token codebase appears reasonably sound, though the acknowledged initial token distribution concentration remains a governance trust consideration. |
Backers
No investor or backer information is publicly disclosed on any official Onyx sources. The main website, documentation hub, whitepaper, GitHub organization, and token distribution pages do not mention any venture capital firms, angel investors, institutional backers, or funding rounds. The whitepaper references technology/ecosystem partners such as Conduit (Rollup-as-a-Service provider), Thirdweb (developer tooling), Superbridge (cross-chain infrastructure), and Chain (financial infrastructure), but these are integrations and ecosystem partners rather than equity investors in Onyx. No fundraising rounds, amounts, or dates were found on any first-party source.
Legal
Legal form
Limited (Ltd.) company — Chain Global Ltd.
Registration jurisdiction
Registered address in Saint Kitts and Nevis (Midtown Building Suite 3, Charlestown, Nevis, Saint Kitts and Nevis); token-related rights and obligations governed by laws of British Virgin Islands; MiCA Home Member State: Lithuania
Status and notes
The operating entity is Chain Global Ltd., registered on 21/10/2024 (identifier C53079) at Midtown Building Suite 3, Charlestown, Nevis, Saint Kitts and Nevis. Management: Deepak Thapliyal (Director). Contact email: [email protected]. The Onyx DApp (app.onyx.org) Terms of Service state the Interface is hosted on GitHub by 'Onyx DAO' and governed by the laws of London, United Kingdom (LCIA arbitration). The main website footer reads '© 2026 Onyx. All rights reserved.' The MiCA whitepaper (dated 21/10/2025) filed under Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 discloses Chain Global Ltd. as the entity seeking admission to trading of XCN, with the token governed by BVI law and BVI courts. No foundation, Swiss Verein, or other non-profit legal structure was disclosed.