Fluid (FLUID) is the governance token of Fluid, a decentralized finance lending and trading protocol built by Instadapp, natively issued on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token. The same token is also deployed on Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, Plasma, and Solana under the same brand and governance.
The protocol offers lending, a decentralized exchange, and a lite product, letting the same collateral serve lending and liquidity-provision roles. It originated as Instadapp's INST token before a December 2024 rebrand renamed both protocol and token to Fluid. As of 2026-08-31, protocol value locked across supported chains is approximately $924.5 million.
Fluid differentiates itself through a lending architecture that reuses the same collateral across lending and liquidity-provision roles instead of locking it into a single function. This design was shaped by lessons from the 2022 LUNA and stETH market stress, aiming to improve capital efficiency.
Within three weeks of its decentralized exchange launch, Fluid processed over $1 billion in trading volume, reportedly making it Ethereum's third-largest DEX. Protocol fees run near $197,199 per 24 hours (annualized ~$66.06 million), and a governance proposal (IGP-108) directed accrued protocol revenue toward the first FLUID token buyback.
FLUID is Instadapp's native governance and utility token for the Fluid protocol, issued as an ERC-20 asset on Ethereum and mirrored across its supported chains. Holding or being delegated FLUID grants a voice in protocol governance decisions made through the Fluid/Instadapp DAO.
FLUID has a capped maximum supply of 100 million tokens, with circulating supply at approximately 83.7 million (83,696,996.82) as of 2026-08-31 and a fully diluted valuation near $127.9 million.
Token supply inflation is rated medium, partly offset by a DAO-directed token buyback funded from protocol revenue.
The FLUID token traces to Instadapp's original INST governance token, deployed on Ethereum on 2021-04-06, before the Fluid brand existed. On approximately December 3, 2024, an Instadapp governance proposal rebranded the protocol to Fluid and migrated INST to FLUID 1:1 on the same contract address.
Instadapp, the parent company, previously raised $2.4 million in a 2019 seed round and a further $12.4 million from investors including Pantera Capital, Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan, and Standard Crypto, with Andre Cronje participating. AppWorks made a separate strategic FLUID investment in 2026.
Fluid (FLUID) is natively an Ethereum ERC-20 token. The same governance token and brand are also deployed on Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, Plasma, and Solana as multi-chain, OFT-style deployments under unified governance, rather than as separate independent assets.
Fluid was built by Instadapp, the DeFi platform co-founded by brothers Samyak Jain and Sowmay Jain, from Kota, India.
The Fluid lending architecture is credited specifically to Samyak Jain, who paused earlier Instadapp iteration after the 2022 LUNA and stETH market stress to redesign the lending stack from first principles.
Instadapp (instadapp.io), operating since 2019, develops and maintains the Fluid protocol as its DeFi smart-account and lending-infrastructure platform.
Instadapp describes itself as a unified platform for managing multiple DeFi protocols and positions through its DeFi Smart Account or Avocado Smart Wallet. The organization publishes a MiCA whitepaper, indicating registered documentation for EU Markets in Crypto-Assets compliance, and maintains public code repositories and community channels under the Instadapp and Fluid brands.
Fluid is governed on-chain by the Fluid/Instadapp DAO, where FLUID holders vote directly or through delegates on fee structures, integration priorities, and risk parameters.
The DAO has passed proposal IGP-108, authorizing transfer of accrued protocol revenue to a Team Multisig to fund the first FLUID token buyback, an active treasury-to-token-value mechanism.
Fluid has undergone multiple named third-party smart-contract audits, including PeckShield, StateMind, MixBytes, and Cantina, all publicly posted on Fluid's documentation site. Audits cover the Vault Protocol (June 2024), DEX Protocol (December 2024), and Liquidity Layer, with StateMind conducting an initial review in December 2023 and a later Liquidity Layer update review.
Instadapp maintains an ongoing Immunefi bug-bounty program and previously ran an invite-only Immunefi audit competition. No hack or exploit specific to Fluid has been identified. On the Ethereum contract, the top 10 holders control 56% of supply, and on-chain liquidity is relatively thin at roughly $831,100.