We were invited to participate in the Binance Smart Chain AMA (Ask Me Anything) Series and was pleased to introduce Tranchess Protocol to the Binance Smart Chain community in their official Telegram Group with over 35,000 active members.
We would like to thank once again the BSC community for their extremely warm support as well as the many excellent questions asked during our exclusive AMA. As such, we would like to summarize the AMA, especially for those who did not manage to participate.
AMA Recap
Participants: Tranchess: Danny Chong(@Tranchess_King) / Binance: Hans Y (@yhp92)
Binance: Let’s welcome our guest speaker! @Tranchess_King Nice to meet you, your Majesty!
Tranchess King: Hello BSC Community! This is Danny Chong, Co-Founder, representing the team @Tranchess. The team and I are excited to be with everyone here today. We will be trying our best to cover as wide a range of topics as we possibly can, including HOW Tranchess works and how holding on to Tranchess tokens can benefit users.
To introduce a bit more about myself — My roles in investment banks which spanned over the last 16+ years, includes sales, trading and management of teams across Asia Pacific. I am currently based in Singapore. Once again, I am excited and pleased to be addressing the BSC community today for this AMA session. A Big Thank You to the BSC team for hosting us today.
Team Introduction:
Our team hails from diverse experiences and backgrounds — From the top universities in the world, including Oxford, LSE, UPenn, NTU to having work experiences within Tech giants such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google, And also in investment banks such as Morgan Stanley, UBS, BNP Paribas, etc….
To also add, quite a handful of our C-Suite members were from investment banks, asset management firms and hedge funds, whilst our CTO is particularly experienced with cyber security in centralized crypto exchanges and DeFi protocols. We believe that the synergy from this diversity is what allows us today to present to you: A New Class of DeFi — The Tranchess Protocol.
Binance: Wow You are just a team of elites. And what does your team do? Could you give us more details about your project ?
Tranchess King: Sure. The concept of Tranchess was first incepted in 2020 and was developed quickly into its current state — a yield enhancing asset tracker with varied risk-return solutions. Inspired by different tranches in a traditional fund set up that caters to investors with different risk appetite, Tranchess aims to provide a different risk/return matrix out of a single main fund.
The main fund Queen can track any crypto underlying and we have purposefully chosen BTC as the first crypto asset to track. Meanwhile, it also shares some of the popular DeFi features such as: single-asset yield farming, borrowing & lending, trading, etc..
So to explain on the tokens in Tranchess a bit further — The main fund Queen currently tracks BTC and can be split into 0.5 token Bishop and 0.5 token Rook. Token Bishop purely earns more yield and does not track BTC at all, while Token Rook earns smaller yield but is essentially a 2x leverage token for BTC.
Binance: Thx. And What does the protocol hope to achieve?
Tranchess King: Tranchess hopes to be the benchmark in closing the gaps between Asset Management and DeFi space.
It provides:
- Enhanced yield returns while avoiding impermanent loss issues.
- Zero Lock-in Period for Queen holders
- Leveraged positions at low cost and no forced liquidation
- Prevention of Oracle Attacks using TWAP (Time Weighted Average Price)
Binance: So…… For Tranchess token holders, what will be the benefits in general?
Tranchess King: Whether you are holding on to Tranchess’s token Queen, Bishop or Rook, there are 2 distinct ways for you to earn extra returns by virtue of you holding onto these tokens:
— Token Queen, Bishop & Rooks comes with a single-asset yielding feature, which allows you to farm extra yields in the form of token Chess.
- Enjoy Dividend Top Up with veChess Locked: Tranchess rebates 50% of all fees (excluding gas fees) collected on the platform and re-distributes to those with token CHESS locked-in. The amount yielded from this segment is correlated to the amount of veChess held and locked.
Here is the link to our FAQ for further understanding.
https://docs.tranchess.com/
(Token Chess will be launched in X-weeks time on PancakeSwap, the launch price and also APY will be available then)
Binance: I see, that’s a very different tokenomic🤔
Binance: Given the so many reports of protocols being hacked, how is Tranchess ensuring its effectiveness in safeguarding its protocols and protecting users’ interests?
Tranchess King: Tranchess undertakes the highest standard in ensuring the security of its protocol. Top-notch global audit firms had been engaged to conduct audits on all of Tranchess’s smart contracts. These firms include Certik, Peckshield, etc. To further strengthen the protocol, we had also worked with Immunefi, DeFi’s leading bug bounty platform, to uncover any vulnerabilities before our public launch.
One of Tranchess’s unique defense mechanism lies in its 30min TWAP (Time Weighted Average Price) method of trading the live prices of tokens. Many Defi Protocols have a reliance on trusted price feeds, and most protocols take a discrete tick price from the oracle’s price feed which is updated frequently. This is easily exploitable for oracle attacks, especially under extreme market fluctuation. The 30 mins TWAP window prevents any discrete outlier price from taking place and thereby eliminating such oracle attacks.
Binance: For Primary Market — What time does the trade settled and how long does it take to settle creation or redemption of Token Queen ?
Tranchess King: At 14:00 UTC every day, Tranchess protocol automatically calculates the NAV (Net Asset Value) of the main tranche based on the oracle’s price feed, processes all creation and redemption requests for token Queen received in the past 24 hours.
The Creation/Redemption function is designed for long-term crypto asset holders, (as compared to the Tranchess Exchange that is meant for quick buy/sell). The time buffer allows for smoothening of internal processing and to allow internal governance checks to take place. Also, when Rebalance is triggered, the Creation/Redemption function will be temporarily suspended; the longer period between settlements also acts as a buffer for this situation.
Binance: For a trade order — What does it mean to set it to Discount/Premium?
Tranchess King: Tranchess’s Exchange adopts a Premium-Discount Orderbook system, which means that the premiums or discounts of a forward-starting 30-minute TWAP (Time Weighted Average Price) are traded. Tranchess defines each 30-minute trading window as one epoch, and users can place orders within each epoch at the premium or discount of the NAV calculated from the TWAP of the next epoch’s price.
For instance, at 9:45 am, Alice buys token QUEEN from Bob on the order book at +25bps premium. This transaction’s reference price will be the NAV of the next 30-min window, i.e., 10 am — 10:30 am, and Alice’s final purchasing price will be (the NAV of 10am-10:30am) * (1+25bps). One bps = 0.01%
(Tranchess Exchange will be available from 1st week of July onwards)
Binance: Thx! But I am still confused about the special tokens like Queen and others..
Binance: What is the correlation between QUEEN, BISHOP, ROOK and Tranchess?
Tranchess King: Let me try my best to explain on this part next.
Tranchess is a yield enhancing protocol designed to track any underlying crypto asset. Tranchess 1.0, which is the first fund we issue with Tranchess protocol, is a fund that tracks the price of underlying BTCB/USDC.
Token QUEEN is the token for the main fund. Each Token QUEEN represents one share of the main fund. Token QUEEN can be further split into/merge from two equal sub-tranches, Token BISHOP and Token ROOK.
QUEEN’s movement is in parallel with the price movement of BTCB. BISHOP yields a steady fixed return and is unaffected by changes in price of BTCB. ROOK is a 2x leveraged BTCB synthetics designed for aggressive traders.
Here is the link to our FAQ for further understanding.
https://docs.tranchess.com/
Binance: Thx! I will read through it after our AMA🤣
So for further clarity ….. If current BTC price is 30,000. And it drops to 20,000. How will it impact the NAV of Queen, Bishop & Rook?
Tranchess King: Assuming the investor has already created token Queen, the NAV of the newly created Queen would be around 1. If Queen is further split into 0.5 bishop and 0.5 rook, the initial NAV of each token would be around 1 as well.
In the example, when BTC drops to 20,000 from 30,000, NAV of Queen would drop to around 0.67 whilst NAV of Rook would drop to around 0.33 NAV of Bishop would still remain around 1 as the nature of Bishop is agnostic to market volatility.
Hopes this clarifies.
Binance: Yep that is clearer for me.
Binance: Tranchess Protocol has elements from a real world asset management set up, could you elaborate your plans on relevance to the real world?
Tranchess King: Tranchess’s first and immediate aim is to introduce the concept of tokenized asset management, offering a first of its kind preposition to the DeFi world. It is well documented on our white paper that Tranchess also addresses a few needs of the community such as : Enhanced Yield, Tracker for other Crypto assets, Steady returns, Reducing Impermanent losses, Leveraging positions with low margins, no forced liquidation, Prevention of oracle attacks and so on….
It is however true that the nature of Tranchess has also attracted a good level of interest from traditional finance types. There had been outreach to the core team to seek further understanding of the protocol as well as strong understanding of overall DeFi space. We remain committed to sharing our knowledge on Tranchess and DeFi space continuously, without bias, to any users keen on the protocol.
Binance: Do you agree that the level of security determines the success of a DeFi project? Can you elaborate further on the integrity and security of the Platform?
Tranchess King: We agree and strongly believe that security is a determining factor in the success of any DeFi protocol. We take security very seriously and have undertaken the highest standard in ensuring the security of our protocol. The entire protocol is governed by smart contracts which once set in motion would be unlikely to deviate in its functionality and processes. The protocol is now governed by 1-day timelock and multi-signature. We will also be launching our DAO in the next few months, which effectively hands over the management of the protocol to the Tranchess community.
Regular Audits and also checks by seed investors provides another layer to prevent any tampering with investment deposits.
Binance: DeFi space has seen its fair share of Ups and Downs. Will Tranchess and its products be in demand for the long term? How is Tranchess planning to contribute to the DeFi’s long term growth?
Tranchess King: Asset management has long been an integral part of the financial sector and an important one at that. Whereas there are interesting protocols in the DeFi space, Tranchess is the first of its kind product and we are excited about the future synergies it will generate in the DeFi space. Tranchess hopes to be a benchmark asset management solution for the DeFi space.
If investors prefer a stable return, holding token Bishop can be an option as it earns token Chess perpetually as interest regardless of BTC price fluctuation. This is an alternative token to hold as compared to other stable coins currently in the market.
Binance: So let’s move to live question segment!
Our group member must have prepared some questions to you!
Tranchess King: Excited to see the questions from the BSC community ~~
Tranchess King: Wow BSC community ! That’s a lot of questions !! Thanks for asking !! 👏🏻👍
Binance: WOW.. I close the chat for now… (Too many questions incoming)
Tranchess King: ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Binance: It seems people are so optimistic about the project!! And still want to learn more about it. Just take your time to pick some questions~
AMA Community Questions
Tranchess King: (Let me retype the question for everyone to read better!) 🙂
Binance: Thank you, it’s very thoughtful of you!
Clarence: When staking my Tranchess Tokens, what will be the Deposit & Withdrawal fees? What will be the APY/APR for the staking of Queen, Bishop and Rook respectively?
Tranchess King: Tranchess doesn’t charge any deposit or withdrawal fee for staking. The APY for staking Queen, Bishop or Rook depends on the annualized number of CHESS tokens Queen/Bishop/Rook can collect and the price of CHESS on Pancake Swap.
Tranchess distributes CHESS tokens linearly across the week. The distribution schedule for the first 20 weeks is as shown below:
CHESS token is not evenly distributed according to the number of staked Queen, Bishop and Rook held. The three tokens carry a different weight when receiving CHESS distribution. The weight for Token QUEEN, Token BISHOP and Token ROOK is set at the ratio 3:4:2, which means that during the same time period, every BISHOP receives 33% more than QUEEN, and QUEEN receives 33% more than ROOK.
Tranchess King: To clarify … let’s use this example :
Suppose that Tranchess distributed 300,000 CHESS in total during a certain week, and had an average total number of 30,000 QUEEN, 15,000 BISHOP and 15,000 ROOK staked in the protocol during that week.
The average number of CHESS that each QUEEN could get during this period would be 5, each BISHOP would get 5*(1+33%) ≈ 6.67, and each ROOK would get 5*(1–33%) ≈ 3.33.
Hope this explains a bit better on the ratio distribution~
Baby Kurama: Do you have any user manual or short videos that might guide potential users of Tranchess to effectively navigate your platform?
Tranchess King: Yes. You can find the FAQs, How to Guides, Whitepaper and
Introduction Videos on docs.tranchess.com
We will continuously update the FAQ and How to Guides to reflect the latest changes and questions we’ve received, so please be sure to come back and check out our latest updates.
Axel: I read that Tranchess has its own APR voting process which is held weekly so as to determine the following week’s APR for Bishop. Can you specify how much BISHOP tokens holders must have to partake in voting processes every week? & how’s the weight of the vote like?
Tranchess King: The weekly APR voting has three options: 0%, 2% and 4%. Anyone (including Rook and Queen Holders!) with veChess can vote for the option that they prefer, and the rate that gets the highest number of veChess votes becomes BISHOP’s next week’s interest rate top-up, that is, BISHOP’s next week’s APR will be the average borrowing rate from Venus + the winning voting rate.
Miguel Ayala: Can you briefly describe your PARTNERSHIPS so far?
Tranchess King: This is a timely question to be honest.🙂
We had just made an announcement regarding our seed-round investment yesterday. Tranchess Protocol’s seed round raised was led by Three Arrows Capital, Spartan Group. Some of other investors include Binance labs, Long Hash Ventures, etc.
Please refer to the link below for the intricate details:
https://www.coindesk.com/tranchess-defi-seed-funding-three-arrows-capital-spartan-group
Binance: Thank you!! Hans Y, Do you have some more questions you would like to answer? Or we move to next part?
Tranchess King: let’s go quiz time :) really a lot of nice questions ~~
Binance: Alright!
Tranchess King: Thanks again @BSC Community 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻❤️
Binance: In this AMA the final part is not a live quiz. Instead it is a quiz of MCQs in google form! And the first 5 people that answers all the questions correctly will win the prizes! Please be ready! Kindly send us your quiz~@Tranchess_King
Tranchess King: Sure ! Whenever you are ready BSC Community ~
3
2
1
https://forms.gle/oMMcLLPCGXVvAMt87
Binance: Good luck everyone! The king will announce the winners when he finds five winners! So much for our AMA today!
Very nice to have you here today! Hope to meet you again! @Tranchess_King
Tranchess King: It is my pleasure indeed ~@yhp92
Tranchess King: On behalf of the Team@Tranchess, We would like to thank everyone here for their participation and support on this AMA ❤️🙂
AMA Quiz
Q: How many tokens in total are there in Tranchess & what are they?
A: Token Queen, Bishop, Rook & Governance Token Chess
Q: What is the benefit of holding on to Tranchess’s Queen, Bishop & Rook and is there any lock up period to enjoy the benefits ?
A: Earn Returns in the form of Token Chess through Staking. No Lock Up Period.
Q: What is the benefit of locking Chess tokens?
A: Earn veChess tokens & share in proportion 50% of Tranchess’s fees earned on platform.
Q: Is it possible for Token Queen’s NAV to drop below 1? Why?
A: Yes it is. Token Queen tracks BTC’s price — NAV will follow in tandem.
Q: What are the various firms that Tranchess is working with to ensure the security of its protocols?
A: Certik, PeckShield, Immunefi.
Tranchess King: Thanks for everyone’s participation in the Tranchess AMA today
The 5/5 winners for today’s Quiz is :
@ayhan406 5/5
@neticon55 5/5
@Ozgur_34 5/5
@tolgaozek 5/5
@ompudsman 5/5
Binance: Pls send us your addresses and then the king will send each of you 40usdt!
