AdEx

About AdEx (ADX)

What Is AdEx (ADX)?

AdEx launched in 2017 as a decentralized advertising protocol on Ethereum, using payment channels so advertisers and publishers could settle campaign payments on chain without an ad network in the middle. It no longer describes itself that way. The project has repositioned around an AI assistant that plugs into a crypto wallet, and in 2026 it rebranded to heyAura. ADX is the token that carried through every version, used for staking and for access to the paid tier of the new product.

The rebrand is visible at the DNS level. A check on 2026-09-11 showed adex.network returning a permanent redirect to www.heyaura.com, and the GitHub organization has been renamed from AdExNetwork to heyAuraDev.

Official sources:

• heyAura, formerly AdEx
• heyAura blog
• heyAuraDev on GitHub

Who Founded AdEx? (History)

AdEx was founded in 2017 by Ivo Georgiev and Dimo Stoyanov, who ran a token sale that year and then shipped an Ethereum implementation of payment channels for advertising settlement. The same founders later built Ambire Wallet, a smart-account wallet, through Ambire Tech. That relationship matters, because the current product is designed to live inside a wallet and Ambire is the named integration target.

The repositioning happened in stages. AURA first appeared as an on-chain activity analyzer. A post dated January 25, 2026 announced that the framework had become a full autonomous assistant. A further announcement dated April 2, 2026 declared the rebrand to heyAura, on the stated grounds that the name AdEx no longer described what the team was building.

Is AdEx Still Being Developed?

Yes. The core Ethereum repository, adex-protocol-eth, was pushed on September 4, 2026 under the renamed heyAuraDev organization, and the Ambire Tech repositories the new product depends on, including ambire-common and the browser extension, were pushed on September 11, 2026. The website, blog and documentation are live and current.

The caveat is what is being developed. Work goes into the wallet assistant and its supporting infrastructure. The advertising network that gave the token its name is no longer the product, and the official site carries a "What happened to AdEx Network?" question in its own FAQ. Anyone evaluating ADX today is evaluating an AI wallet assistant, not an advertising protocol.

How AdEx Works Today

1. Read the wallet The assistant ingests on-chain positions and activity across supported networks and turns them into a plain-language picture of the portfolio, including risk signals and stale token approvals.

2. Act on it The stated goal for 2026 is execution: sending, swapping, rebalancing, revoking approvals and running conditional actions, described in natural language and bundled where possible into a single signature.

3. Stay in the wallet The product runs inside a Web3 wallet rather than as a separate site, with the team citing locally-run models and privacy-preserving techniques as part of the design.

4. Gate the paid tier with ADX ADX unlocks premium features, and staking it earns rewards through a single consolidated pool that issues stkADX at a stated one-to-one ratio.

Key Ecosystem Components

• The heyAura assistant, delivered as a wallet-native agent
• AURA, the framework for analyzing and acting on on-chain activity
• Ambire Wallet, built by the same founders and the primary integration surface
• The ADX single staking pool and its stkADX receipt token
• adex-protocol-eth, the original payment channel implementation, still maintained

ADX Token Utility

ADX is an ERC-20 on Ethereum at 0xADE00C28244d5CE17D72E40330B1c318cD12B7c3, with the on-chain name "AdEx Network" and 18 decimals. It is used to unlock premium product features and to stake for rewards.

The supply picture deserves care, because the widely repeated figures do not match the contract.

A direct read on 2026-09-11 returned a totalSupply of roughly 203.6 million ADX, well above the 150,000,000 figure older summaries still carry. The contract exposes a supplyController function, returning 0x9B370599b2Bf61806DDca1379257F26377472Bee, plus changeSupplyController and mint entry points. Neither the token nor the supply controller exposes a public MAX_SUPPLY constant, so no maximum is readable on chain. The higher figure is consistent with staking incentives minted over the years by that controller. The contract also carries PREV_TOKEN and swap entry points, matching the migration path from the earlier ADX token at 0x4470BB87d77b963A013DB939BE332f927f2b992e.

On burning, the official site advertises a built-in deflationary mechanism, yet the token contract contains no burn or burnFrom function. A read of key addresses on the same date showed roughly 3.42 million ADX resting at the zero address and a small amount at 0x000...dEaD. Transfers to those addresses remove tokens from practical circulation but do not reduce totalSupply, which is why the contract still reports the larger figure. The project states that the maximum supply is already minted, which is plausible but is a statement of intent, since the mint path and its controller both still exist on chain. Treat ADX as a token with no protocol-enforced cap and an active supply controller.

What Makes AdEx Unique?

The distinguishing feature is not the assistant concept, which is crowded, but the pairing. The same team owns both the agent and a production smart-account wallet, so the agent can be given execution rights through account abstraction rather than by asking a user to sign each step in a separate interface. Few AI-agent tokens sit next to a wallet their own team ships and maintains. The other unusual attribute is longevity: AdEx has operated since 2017, with the token migrated once and the product direction changed twice.

How AdEx Differs from Similar Projects

Against the advertising tokens it was once grouped with, such as Basic Attention Token, AdEx has left the category entirely. Against AI agent tokens, it ships into an existing wallet with real users rather than into a standalone agent marketplace. Against infrastructure tokens, ADX is closer to a product access and staking token than to a fee or gas asset. The corresponding weakness is that it now depends on adoption of a consumer product in a category where free alternatives are common.

Use Cases of AdEx

• Unlocking premium features of the heyAura assistant
• Staking ADX in the single pool to receive stkADX and earn rewards
• Participating in the loyalty and rewards programs the project runs
• Holding exposure to the team wallet and agent stack

How AdEx Is Secured

ADX is an ERC-20 token, so at the token layer it inherits Ethereum security. The specific risks are contract-level: the supply controller can mint, the controller can itself be changed through changeSupplyController, and staking means depositing into a pool contract. The assistant adds a separate surface, since an agent with execution permission over a wallet is only as safe as the permission scoping around it. The project cites locally-run models and limited delegation as mitigations. Review those claims before delegating anything.

Risks and Considerations

• Supply. There is no on-chain maximum, an active supply controller can mint, and the token has no burn function despite a deflationary claim on the marketing site.
• Pivot risk. The original business is gone and the new product is early, so many older third-party descriptions of ADX are stale.
• Agent permission risk. Granting an AI assistant the ability to transact is a meaningful new attack surface.
• Concentration. The project, the wallet and the agent all come from the same small team.
• Competition from wallet vendors and model providers who can bundle similar assistants at no cost.
• Brand discontinuity. Sources, domains and repository names now split between AdEx and heyAura, which makes verification harder than usual.

Why AdEx Matters

AdEx is a useful case study in what happens to a 2017 protocol token after its founding thesis stops working. Rather than winding down, the team migrated the token, kept shipping, built an unrelated product with real users, and eventually renamed itself around the new direction. The result is a token with an intact contract history, an active codebase, and a business almost unrelated to what it originally raised for. Both halves of that sentence matter.

Where Can You Buy AdEx (ADX)?

ADX trades on centralized exchanges and on decentralized venues on Ethereum and BNB Chain. Availability varies by jurisdiction.

Major Centralized Exchanges (CEX)

ADX is commonly available on:

• Binance
• KuCoin
• Gate
• Bitvavo

Storage Options After Purchase

• On an exchange account, which is custodial
• In Ambire Wallet or any other Ethereum wallet, using the official contract address
• Behind a hardware wallet paired with an Ethereum wallet interface

ADX exists on more than one network. Confirm which chain an exchange withdraws on, and check the contract address against the official site rather than a search result.

Related Coins

• Ambire Wallet (WALLET)
• Basic Attention Token (BAT)
• The Graph (GRT)
• Bittensor (TAO)
• Ethereum (ETH)