The DIA Association was co-founded by a team of approximately twelve individuals, with key leadership roles held by Paul Claudius, Michael Weber, and Samuel Brack. Paul Claudius serves as the primary spokesperson and lead advocate for the project, sometimes referred to as the Chief Business Officer (CBO). He has attained a master's degree in international management from ESCP Europe and a bachelor's degree in business and economics from Passau University. In addition to his contributions to DIA, he is a co-founder and CEO of BlockState AG and C Ventures. Prior to his involvement in the cryptocurrency sector, Claudius was a director at a nutrition company named nu3. Michael Weber is the Founder and President of the DIA Association. He holds degrees in management from ESCP Business School, and in economics and physics from the University of Cologne, Germany. Before transitioning to the crypto industry, Weber amassed experience working in several banks and financial institutions and later founded projects including Goodcoin, myLucy, and BlockState. Samuel Brack acts as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for DIA, sharing similar roles with Claudius and Weber at BlockState. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from Humboldt University of Berlin, where he was, as of January 2020, pursuing a PhD.

DIA aspires to become the equivalent of Wikipedia for financial data. It aims to tackle the challenges associated with outdated, unverified, and difficult-to-access data in the realms of finance and cryptocurrency, particularly within decentralized finance (DeFi). DIA proposes addressing these issues by implementing a system of financial incentives that encourages users to maintain open-source, validated data streams for the oracles. DIA contends that the current oracle designs are non-transparent, challenging to scale, and susceptible to attacks. The DIA governance token is intended to fund data collection, data validation, governance decision-making, and to encourage the platform's development. Users can stake DIA tokens to incentivize the introduction of new data onto the platform; however, access to historical data through DIA remains free.

The overall supply of DIA tokens is capped at 200 million coins. Initially, 10 million tokens were sold in a private sale, with early investors and advisors, including Outlier Ventures, receiving 19.5 million tokens. In August 2020, 30 million coins were made available through a bonding curve sale, during which 10.2 million coins were purchased by the public, while the remaining 19.8 million were burned. An allocation of 24 million tokens has been set aside for the founders and team, subject to a 29-month vesting period, and an additional 25 million tokens are reserved for future development of the DIA ecosystem. Furthermore, 91.5 million DIA tokens are maintained in the company’s reserve, to be released in equal installments over a 10-year period each December. Of the first portion that was unlocked, half of the tokens were immediately burned following a community decision. The implementation plan includes the use of DIA oracles in smart contracts, which will earn DIA Governance Tokens daily via "proof-of-use" and "proof-of-truth" mechanisms.

DIA is a standard ERC-20 token, relying on the Ethereum network for its functionality and thereby inheriting both its advantages and limitations. The Ethereum network is among the largest and most robust due to its decentralized nature, with all transactions secured by the Ethash proof-of-work function. The ERC-20 standard establishes a set of operational rules for tokens. However, certain drawbacks of Ethereum may be observed: congestion can increase the gas prices required for transactions, resulting in delays and unusually high transaction fees, affecting all users.

DIA is a freely tradable token with available trading pairs including BTC, USDT, and ETH. The leading exchanges for trading DIA are currently Binance, OKEx, HBTC, Bidesk, and BiKi. Additional exchanges can be found on our crypto exchanges page at Eulerpool. If you are new to cryptocurrency and want to learn how to purchase Bitcoin (BTC) or any other token, you can find further information here.