Hey Hydration community!

Acurast (Mainnet: Polkadot ParachainID: 3396 / Canary: Kusama ParachainID: 2239) is one of the fastest growing DEPIN projects, with more than 240'000 smartphones onboarded. Acurast is a decentralized compute network powered by smartphones. Rather than relying on traditional data centers, it harnesses ten thousands of mobile devices to provide scalable, confidential compute infrastructure. Compute Providers can install the Acurast Processor app on Android or iOS, turning their phone into a compute node that processes workloads and earns rewards. Developers can use this cloud to deploy code on Acurast processors.

Security comes from Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) built into mobile hardware, ensuring workloads are verifiable and private. Developers can deploy JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, and WASM workloads via a simple CLI.

As of today, the network has onboarded more than 240'000 smartphones from more than 141 different countries. The native token is ACU, used for compute payments, staking, governance, and settlement with an initial supply of 1 billion .

The project has raised $11M in funding. It's based in Switzerland and governed by the Acurast Association.

Why open an XCM channel

The aim of this proposal is to open an XCM channel between Hydration and Acurast, with the goal to list ACU in a Hydration pool as a way for users to buy ACU from within the Polkadot ecosystem. The Acurast chain will be configured to be able to do XCM transfers.

More about Acurast

Acurast's own blockchain (see https://github.com/Acurast/acurast-substrate) is a Cumulus-based parachain. It comes with a set of custom pallets. The Acurast chain acts as an orchestration layer where devices and deployments are registered, device heartbeats are tracked and execution reports are being published. On top of that, the Acurast chain is the backbone of the whole economic system of Acurast, including a novel staking system (Staked Compute) and onchain governance.

The native token ACU is used to distribute rewards to compute providers, stakers / delegators and collators. Developers who want to use the compute need to pay in ACU tokens. The price for deployments scales with the scale of the deployments (workers needed, duration etc.). Tokens from deployments are burned, creating deflationary pressure, while rewards are coming from linear inflation.

Access to ACU tokens on the open market is relevant for the Acurast ecosystem. Currently ACU tokens can be bought on CEXes and DEXes, but with one exception, these are all EVM representations of the native tokens and they need to be bridged to Acurast Mainnet, in order to be spent for deployments or to be used for staking.

More information about Acurast can be found on:

Website: https://www.acurast.com
Docs: https://docs.acurast.com
GitHub: https://github.com/Acurast
X: https://x.com/Acurast
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/acurast
Telegram: https://t.me/acurastnetwork

Where Hydration comes in

As the leading Polkadot native marketplace, Hydration is the best suited marketplace for the native ACU token. We intend to open a pool on Hydration, so users can buy (or sell) ACU directly from within the Polkadot ecosystem. We do not yet qualify for the Omnipool as by the documentation (https://docs.hydration.net/daos/omnipool_listing/), so we would probably aim for an isolated pool.

As ACU is also traded on various CEXes and DEXes on other chains (Ethereum, Peaq, Base, BSC), there is also active arbitrage going on, across the already established cross chain bridges. These arbitrage trades would also impact Hydration and would add additional activity to Hydration. A XCM bridging interface will be added to the Acurast Hub (https://hub.acurast.com)

The ACU token

Initial Supply: 1,000,000,000 ACU (on TGE, January 20, 2026)
Fixed inflation: 5% fixed annual inflation distributed to Staked Compute Pool (70%), Compute Pool (10%), On-chain Treasury (15%), Collators (5%)
Early Backers: Only 6.5% allocated to early backers - while important for funding and supporting development all the way to mainnet, this allocation was kept very low in order to facilitate a fair launch of the token.
Community: Nearly 70% of tokens are allocated to the community or community-supporting purposes (Community Treasury, Community Activation, Operational Funds, Liquidity Provision).
Team and Advisors: Have a 6 month lock-up and 36 months linear vesting, aligning them with the long-term mission of the project.

Tokenomics: https://docs.acurast.com/tokenomics
More information (also about bridged ACU on Ethereum): https://docs.acurast.com/token

A question we have

• We'd like to pair ACU with a stabletoken, which one is preferable from a Hydration perspective or where is the liquidity the deepest?

Thank you for feedback!
We'd love to get some community feedback on this, thank you if you take your time!

Best regards,
@djangobits / Acurast