About Universal Market Access (AMA)

Universal Market Access is a decentralized platform that allows developers to create synthetic assets on the Ethereum blockchain. UMA is the governance token of the UMA protocol.

The set of UMA protocols was specifically created to remove third-party intermediaries from the financial derivatives market, ushering in an easily accessible global marketplace in which anyone, anywhere, can create and trade contracts. 

Co-founded by Hart Lambur and Allison Lu, both formerly of Goldman Sachs, the platform enables investors of all sizes to trade any asset using ERC-20 tokens but without actual exposure to the asset itself.

Smart contracts allow users to gain exposure to the price movement of any financial asset – provided a market maker on the platform is willing to provide exposure. Users can go long or short financial instruments and cryptos that otherwise would be difficult to access on centralized exchanges or over-the-counter (OTC) markets. 

Ultimately, the UMA goal is to build bespoke contracts tailored to individual needs and risk profiles. An investor may choose to collateralize his/her position represented on a UMA contract (let’s say, long equities) and then tokenize this risk via an ERC-20 coin. 

UMA coins are utilized by holders to vote on issues surrounding policies and potential upgrades of the underlying protocol. Token holders may vote on disputes/issues that come up in UMA’s Data Verification Mechanism (DVM). 

How the DVM works: Instead of adopting and constantly referencing a real-time price feed for financial assets/derivatives on the blockchain (an approach that could be prone to manipulation), the UMA protocol instead incentivizes users to be ever-vigilant in checking token issuers’ smart contracts (validating that they meet collateral requirements). 

The supply of UMA is capped at 101 million tokens; and the current circulating supply sits at 55 million. 

UMA’s total value locked (TVL) is roughly $63 million. Some $21 million worth of synthetic tokens have been minted on the platform since its inception in 2018.

What is the price of UMA?

As of early February 2021, UMA was trading near $20. It has returned 631% since its initial coin offering (ICO). During 2020, the token dropped as low as $1.15 and as high as nearly $28. The trading activity of UMA tokens is relatively mild. Its ten-day average daily trading volume: just $45 million. 

The protocol’s utility as a global marketplace for the decentralized trading of synthetic assets is something that could very likely find its way into emerging markets during the coming years. That’s because the protocol provides secure and liquid transactions in ways that still-developing capital markets often have trouble accommodating. 

Given the recent social-media fueled push towards the democratization of investing, UMA represents an open door just waiting for retail investors to come running through – without any financial intermediaries waiting to cut into their profits.