01 · Documentation
Introduction
What Ostrakon is, the problem it answers, and where the idea comes from.
A token with an exit for everyone but one.
Ostrakon is an on-chain ostracism protocol for Elysium, the Hyperliquid L2 built by Kinetiq. It lets the holders of a token remove one address from it. Not by force. By leaving together.
The problem
Every launchpad token has one address the community wants gone. The deployer who kept 15 % of supply. The bundle that bought the first block. The dev who left with the X account and kept the bag.
Everyone can see the address. Everyone can see the bag. No one can touch it. An immutable ERC-20 cannot take a bag from a wallet, and it was never meant to.
So holders wait. They wait for the sell, and the sell always comes.
The answer
Ostrakon gives holders the Athenian answer.
They vote to exile one or more addresses. The token is re-minted identically for everyone except the exiled. The liquidity of the old pool is transplanted into the new one.
Nothing is confiscated. Nothing is frozen. The old contract keeps running, untouched. The holders move to a new city and take the market with them.
The exiled keep their bag. Not the city.
The origin
In 5th-century BC Athens, once a year, citizens could vote to exile one man for ten years. Each citizen wrote a name on a shard of pottery, an ostrakon. With enough shards cast, a quorum of 6,000, the man named most had to leave the city. He kept his property and his rights; he only lost his place in the city.
Ostrakon keeps the same terms. The exiled lose nothing they own. They lose the room.
The protocol
Five immutable contracts run the whole cycle, in order. A sixth receives a small tithe.
| Contract | Role |
|---|---|
| Shard | The proposal. A holder names the addresses and posts a bond. |
| Ekklesia | The vote. Holders weigh in with their snapshot balance. |
| Exile | The new token and the claim. Holders swap old for new, one for one. |
| Walls | The liquidity transplant. Old tokens are sold, a new pool is raised. |
| Stele | The public registry. Every exile is written down for good. |
| Treasury | Receives 1 % of every forged supply and uses it to buy back and burn $OSTRA. |
There is no owner. There is no admin key. There is no upgrade path.
No owner. No pause. No second vote.
Read next
- How it works walks through one full cycle, day by day.
- Risks and limits says plainly what Ostrakon does not do.
- Contracts lists the testnet addresses and every interface.
Teams promise. Holders decide.
Announcements come from one place only: @OstrakonElysium.