First published 16 June 2020, the day after user distribution started. Expanded in October 2026 so a governance drip is not described as interest, and so a cToken is not described as COMP. COMP is an Ethereum token. Robert Leshner is the person most associated with Compound Labs, the company that shipped the protocol. The supply is 10 million. About 4.23 million were reserved for users. About 2.40 million went to shareholders of the company. About 2.23 million were allocated to founders and the team, on a four-year vest. The rest was set aside for future staff and for the community. Shareholders receiving COMP did not turn the token into a share of the company.
On 15 June 2020 the protocol started sending COMP to people who supplied assets and people who borrowed. The launch rate was about 2,880 COMP a day, half to suppliers and half to borrowers in each market. A later vote changed how that drip is split. A drip is new governance weight from a reservoir of coins that already existed. It is not interest the pool owes you. That week is written up as news: Compound’s COMP drip is an incentive design, not free yield. Borrowing to collect the drip is still a debt. If the collateral falls, the position can be closed.
A cToken is a receipt for a deposit in a Compound market. It is not COMP. This page will not walk through supplying or borrowing. ETH pays the fee. COMP does not. The wrong network is still the wrong city. Nothing here is an instruction to lend, to borrow, or to buy COMP.
