Kraken wants to pay users to name its new mascot for the Ink Layer 2 using JokeRace

Crypto exchange Kraken is looking to pay users who can name the new mascot for its Ethereum Layer 2 network, Ink. The company is tapping blockchain-based “contests” platform Jokerace for the occasion, according to an announcement on Thursday.

“he’s gone too far. too many events. too much attention. and now he’s just down bad. because everyone keeps asking the one question he can’t answer. his name. now, he's spiraling… you name him,” the firm wrote on X, introducing the purple, spiky, cartoon monster that will represent the Optimism-based chain Kraken is building in-house.

JokeRace, founded in 2022 by David Phelps and Siobhán McCaffery, is a platform designed to facilitate no-code, onchain contests on over 90 EVM-compatible blockchains. Users vote on the results of anything from governance decisions, hackathon results, grant funding, and other community events.

The platform is notable for its sybil-resistant voting mechanism, where users pay per vote to prevent spam, and its ability to trigger onchain actions via smart contracts, such as token transfers or DAO proposals, based on contest outcomes. Jokerace has been used by Polygon, Farcaster, and The Block.

"The most notable piece is that we have two types of contests: enter-and-earn (earn from submitting a winning entry) and most significantly, vote-and-earn (vote on winner(s) and earn)," Phelps told The Block in a direct message. "It's part of what i call a persuasion market, or vibe market, where you get paid for curating the internet."

In July 2024, Maven 11 led a $3 million funding round, which the team said at the time would go toward expanding its marketing and business development operations. The startup is known for having a multitude of angel investors, over 100 at last count, Phelps previously told The Block.

Ink is a Layer 2 network developed by Kraken using the OP Stack. The recently formed Ink Foundation plans to launch a native INK token in 2025 to incentivize ecosystem growth and liquidity, with a capped supply of 1 billion tokens.