Missed the CoinList Launch? Don't Panic! A Detailed Guide on Participating in Rainbow's On-Chain Auction on Uniswap

1. Project Overview

Rainbow is a decentralized wallet built on the Ethereum ecosystem, supporting features like cross-chain asset management, DEX trade aggregation, and NFT browsing and interaction. It emphasizes user self-custody of private keys and a high-quality on-chain experience. Rainbow conducted a public sale of RNBW tokens on CoinList from December 11 to 18, 2025, with a price of $0.10 per RNBW. A total of 30 million tokens were allocated, raising approximately $3 million. Concurrently, Rainbow will launch a CCA (Continuous Clearing Auction) mechanism on Uniswap for an on-chain RNBW auction on February 2, 2026, with the Token Generation Event (TGE) scheduled for February 5, 2026.

2. Team Background

Rainbow was co-founded in 2019 by Christian Baroni, Jin Chung, and Mike Demarais. The team's core mission is to build a Web3 wallet centered on user experience and design aesthetics. CEO Christian Baroni entered the Silicon Valley design system early in his career and was part of the Stripe design team. This foundation led Rainbow to prioritize product visual presentation, interaction fluidity, and ease of use from its inception, emphasizing consumer-grade application characteristics compared to more tool-oriented wallets like MetaMask.

Rainbow completed a $1.5 million seed funding round in 2021 and an $18 million Series A round in early 2022, led by Seven Seven Six with participation from Y Combinator, Thirty Five Ventures, and others. To date, Rainbow has raised approximately $19.5 million in total funding. Its long-term vision is to establish Rainbow as the preferred entry-point wallet for mainstream users entering Web3.

3. Token Information

The total supply of RNBW is 1 billion tokens. The tokenomics model shows a clear bias towards the community and long-term ecosystem development. The token allocation is as follows: 47% allocated to the treasury for ecosystem growth and long-term incentives; 15% for community airdrops, with an additional 15% reserved for future community incentives; 3% for presale; and 12.2% and 7.8% for the team and early investors, respectively. The RNBW token is primarily used for governance, incentives, and user benefits within the Rainbow ecosystem.

4. What is the CCA Auction Mechanism

CCA is an on-chain native token issuance mechanism launched by Uniswap Labs in late 2025. Its core goal is to achieve fairer price discovery in a decentralized environment while simultaneously building initial liquidity. Unlike traditional one-time auctions or fixed-price sales, CCA adopts a continuous auction format driven by on-chain smart contracts, with the entire process of bidding, matching, and clearing completed on-chain. More importantly, CCA is deeply integrated with the AMM core of Uniswap v4. After the auction concludes, the raised funds can be directly injected into a Uniswap liquidity pool at the final price determined by the auction, seamlessly connecting token issuance with secondary market trading at a mechanism level.

In terms of operation, CCA breaks down a one-time auction concentrated at a single point in time into a continuous clearing process spanning multiple rounds. The project first configures auction parameters on-chain, including the time frame, number of rounds, token release schedule, and minimum price. During the auction, participants can continuously submit bids with their maximum acceptable price per token. The system automatically allocates each bid across the remaining rounds of the auction for continuous participation. At the end of each round, the contract calculates a uniform clearing price based on all valid bids for that round and executes token sales at that price, inherently mitigating issues like front-running and queue-jumping. Bids above the clearing price are prioritized for execution, bids at the clearing price are filled proportionally if demand exceeds supply, and bids below the clearing price are automatically carried over to subsequent rounds. Since the token supply for each round is fixed in advance, and participating capital typically increases over time, the clearing price tends to trend upward. Therefore, bids submitted earlier are more likely to be filled in earlier rounds at lower prices, resulting in a lower average acquisition cost. After the entire auction concludes, participants claim their purchased tokens, and any unspent funds are returned. Simultaneously, the protocol injects the raised assets along with the project's reserved tokens into a Uniswap v4 liquidity pool, directly enabling secondary market trading.

By extending the price discovery process and dispersing the points of competition over time, CCA addresses common issues in traditional token launches, such as information asymmetry, excessive first-mover advantage, frenzied buying, and insufficient initial liquidity. This design allows the token price to better reflect genuine market acceptance and reduces the risk of extreme volatility upon initial listing. This mechanism was first applied in the token launch of Aztec Network, an Ethereum Layer 2 project focused on privacy, raising approximately $60 million. As Uniswap continues to refine and explore deploying CCA on chains like Base, it is gradually evolving into a more standardized on-chain issuance solution.

5. How to Participate in Rainbow's CCA Auction

Step 1: Prepare Wallet and Funds

Prepare an Ethereum-compatible wallet and bidding assets (commonly ETH), and reserve some ETH for Gas fees.

Step 2: Access the Official Auction Page and Connect Wallet

After the auction begins, access the CCA auction portal through official channels (Rainbow has not yet announced the specific portal).

Step 3: Submit a Bid

Enter the amount you wish to commit and your maximum acceptable price per token, then submit the transaction. Your funds will be temporarily locked and automatically allocated across subsequent rounds for participation in the clearing process. Generally, earlier bids cover more rounds.

Step 4: Track the Clearing Price and Increase Your Bid if Needed

Monitor the displayed clearing price and your own fill status on the interface. If the market price continues to rise and your bid remains unfilled for an extended period, you can submit a new bid with a higher maximum price to increase your participation in later rounds.

Step 5: Claim Tokens After the Auction

After the auction concludes and enters the settlement phase, claim your purchased RNBW tokens on the page. Any unspent funds will be returned to your wallet.

6. Competitive Landscape

Overall, Rainbow's core advantage in the wallet space remains its differentiated product positioning. Its long-term focus on consumer-grade experience and visual design has built a degree of brand recognition and user stickiness in a highly homogenized market. Regarding its token launch strategy, Rainbow first conducted an initial public sale on CoinList for broad coverage and price anchoring, then introduced the Uniswap CCA auction for on-chain price discovery and liquidity building. This also reflects the team's relatively cautious approach to the launch schedule.

However, it's important to note that while CCA mitigates issues like front-running, queue-jumping, and short-term speculative games at a mechanism level by breaking a one-time auction into multiple clearing rounds, it also increases participation complexity and reduces capital efficiency. Especially in the current market environment characterized by weak sentiment and limited incremental capital, the appeal of such complex mechanisms for new projects remains uncertain. More importantly, while CCA relies on the Uniswap v4 ecosystem, its current adoption scale still lags significantly behind its early potential, making it difficult to achieve a breakout success similar to the early days of AMM in the short term. In the long run, whether Rainbow can stand out in the competition depends not on the launch mechanism itself, but on its ability to consistently translate product strength into genuine user demand and effectively realize community engagement following the token's introduction.