Ampleforth was established by Evan Kuo, an accomplished product manager and serial entrepreneur with a Bachelor of Science in Mechatronics, Robotics, and Automation Engineering from UC Berkeley. Kuo is characterized as an enthusiast of both art and mathematics and has experience in developing predictive auction products. Formerly, he served as the CEO of Pythagoras Pizza, a pizza delivery service based in San Francisco. He now holds the position of CEO at the Ampleforth Foundation, the organization responsible for the development and management of the Ampleforth protocol. In addition to Kuo, the Ampleforth Foundation team is predominantly made up of engineers, including Brandon Iles, a former senior software engineer at Uber and Google, who is also recognized as a co-founder of the project. According to its LinkedIn page, Ampleforth currently lists slightly more than a dozen team members, most of whom are based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ampleforth distinguishes itself by providing a non-correlated asset aimed at diversifying cryptocurrency portfolios, serving as reserve collateral for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, and eventually offering an alternative to central bank money that is resilient to economic shocks. Ampleforth achieves this through an innovative system that adjusts the circulating supply by expanding and contracting in response to consumer demand, all without diluting any individual stakeholder. This approach positions Ampleforth as a potential new form of base money for the digital economy, akin to how gold functioned as the foundation for many fiat currencies before the end of the Bretton Woods agreement. Due to its supply being unaffected by inflation or other dilutive influences, Ampleforth is uniquely positioned to maintain its purchasing power relative to other assets. This makes it an attractive option for hedging and as an alternative to fiat currencies that are experiencing significant devaluation.

Ampleforth distinguishes itself from most cryptocurrencies by not having a fixed minimum or maximum supply. Instead, the quantity of AMPL tokens in circulation increases if the price exceeds $1 and decreases if the price falls below $1. Ampleforth garnered $4.9 million through an initial exchange offering (IEO) conducted on Tokinex, in addition to multiple private investment rounds. During this sale, AMPL tokens were offered at $0.98 each. At its inception, Ampleforth had a circulating supply of 50 million tokens. According to the initial transparency report, the distribution of these tokens was as follows: 23.2% allocated to the ecosystem; 18.5% to seed investors; 3.3% to Series A investors; 10% to Tokinex IEO participants; 25% to the Ampleforth team and advisors; and 20% to the treasury. Based on a later report from August 2020, significant changes in supply distribution include approximately 42.5% of AMPL being held by the community and 23.5% allocated to liquidity mining programs.

As an ERC-20 token, Ampleforth is built on the Ethereum blockchain and benefits from the strength and security provided by its extensive network of nodes and miners. Furthermore, the integrity of the Ampleforth network is maintained by a decentralized network of oracles, which supply the price data necessary to determine whether a positive or negative rebase is required. Until December 2019, Ampleforth relied exclusively on its own oracles to source market data. However, it has since integrated Chainlink oracles to serve the same purpose, thereby reducing the centralization of oracle data. Currently, data from multiple aggregators is utilized in the logic behind the rebase function.

Ampleforth tokens, often referred to as amples, are available for purchase and trading on numerous cryptocurrency platforms, against both other cryptocurrencies and fiat assets. Currently, KuCoin is the leading centralized exchange for AMPL, while Uniswap is the most popular decentralized exchange for AMPL. If you intend to buy AMPL or other cryptocurrencies using a credit or debit card, our straightforward guide can help you get started.