Atomika: The First Marketplace for Industrial Chemicals

Challenge

Trading Billions in Chemicals With No Market to Trade On

The industrial chemical commodity market operates entirely through private, bilateral contracts. Producers and buyers negotiate directly, prices are confidential, and no reference pricing exists anywhere. Billions of dollars move through this market every year with zero platform infrastructure.

Sodium cyanide (essential for gold mining) is one of the most important commodities in this space. With 38 industrial producers and 850+ primary gold mining companies globally, it's a concentrated but high-value market. And it's completely opaque.

The challenge was to build a regulated marketplace that serves three different types of participants (producers, industrial buyers, and financial investors) while handling strict safety regulations that make cyanide unlike any other tokenizable asset.

Our Solution

Unified Commodity Marketplace

Producers list forward capacity, mining companies reserve it, and a reference price exists for a market that never had one.

Compliance-First Tokenization Architecture

Phase 1 is live: forward capacity auctions. Phase two adds a spot market with on-platform redemption. Economic exposure is tradable. Physical delivery stays gated behind license verification.

Strategy, Legal, and Business Architecture

We researched incorporation jurisdictions globally, outreached law firms to find the right structure for a regulated commodity, and designed the producer incentive model from scratch. Product strategy, legal structure, business model. We built all of it.

AI-Accelerated Delivery

Atomika is the first CleevioX project with agents integrated throughout the workflow. Frontend: ~80% AI-generated. Backend: ~90%. Complex project, timeline that wouldn't have been possible 18 months ago.

Phase 1

Live. First auction completed, first tonnes sold.

38

Industrial NaCN producers globally

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850+

Primary gold mining companies globally

When the Asset Is Dangerous by Design

Cyanide Requires a Different Kind of Architecture

Sodium cyanide is one of the most tightly regulated substances in industrial trade. Physical delivery requires government licenses, verified ownership structures, and sanctions screening. That creates a hard problem for a platform that also wants to serve financial investors who have none of that.

They came in wanting full on-chain tokenization. Three workshops later the plan changed. Phase 1 went live with forward capacity auctions instead: lower regulatory exposure, and it gets the market moving. The token does not list on a DEX. Liquidity does not need seeding. MiFID exposure stays off the table. Positions trade on-platform, redemption is only for licensed holders. The contracts are already written so a later move to a public chain is a migration, not a rewrite.

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SERVING THREE STAKEHOLDERS WITH CONFLICTING NEEDS

Balancing Producers, Buyers, and Investors

Producers want better price realization. Mining companies want forward capacity at predictable prices. Investors want exposure to a high-value commodity without handling licenses. Each group has different requirements, and a platform that works for one can easily break for another.

We helped design the incentive model so all three groups benefit: producers get profit participation, buyers get price transparency, and investors get a compliant vehicle to trade commodity positions. The business logic and product architecture had to serve all three at once.

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SHIPPING COMPLEX INFRASTRUCTURE AT SPEED

AI-Driven Enterprise Delivery

Atomika is the first CleevioX project with AI agents throughout the development workflow. Frontend code is approximately 80% AI-generated and senior-reviewed. Backend is approximately 90%. QA now writes automated tests rather than executing them manually.

A platform of this regulatory and technical complexity shipped on a timeline that would have required a much larger team a year ago.

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What shipped

The First Tonnes Already Moved

Phase 1 is in real-world operation. First users onboarded. The first real auction ran. The platform sold its first tonnes of cyanide.

What is true now

Forward capacity auctions live. Economic exposure tradable on-platform. Physical delivery gated by licence. Spot market and investor phase next.

What came first

They asked for full public-chain cyanide. Three workshops killed it. A licence-gated marketplace shipped instead, contracts written so a later public-chain move can be an migration.

What was hard

Three participants, three different needs. And a substance you need a licence to take delivery of.

Why they chose us

Product strategy, legal structure, business model, build. One team for all four.