Chips: Cobia Utility Tokens

How Cobia Uses Chips to Facilitate Transactions

Before using Cobia, users are required to deposit funds into their Cobia account. Under the hood, this performs a lock-and-mint transaction: the users' assets are locked into a smart contract while Cobia issues them 'chips' to their wallet. These chips serve as the currency for all interactions within the Cobia ecosystem.

Chips are simple ERC-20 tokens designed to facilitate transactions on Cobia. They act as Cobia's internal accounting system by representing the liquidity held by a user in the smart contract. Each collateral asset listed on Cobia is represented by its own chip; for instance, users depositing SEI receive SEI-chips. As users engage with Cobia, chips are moved accordingly between the users' wallets and the appropriate Cobia contracts. At any point in time, users can redeem their chips and receive their assets back.

Note: Chips are designed for use within Cobia, enabling them to be transferred between contracts without prior approvals. Chips are not meant to have utility outside of Cobia.

Non-Custodial Trading Solution

Depositing funds to a user's Cobia account mimics the user experience on a centralized exchange but in a fully decentralized manner. Instead of transferring assets to a CEX and getting credits within their servers, users transfer assets to a Cobia smart contract and get tokens to their wallets. While CEXs rely on private, internal accounting to track the movement of credits on their exchange, Cobia leverages the transparent, decentralized nature of blockchain and smart contracts to account for the movement of chips. Doing so ensures Cobia remains a non-custodial, decentralized exchange where users retain full ownership over their funds at all times.