Overview
We were delighted to be hosted by Binance on their English telegram channel for an AMA of more than 100,000 members! The topic of conversation was Tranchess V2, as all of the benefits and value propositions that v2 brings to the table were discussed.
Some of the topics covered were:
- What is Tranchess and what is Tranchess’ value proposition?
- What is special about Tranchess V2?
- Why launch Tranchess V2 in current market conditions?
- What is DeFi 2.0 and why is Tranchess V2 a good representation of it?
- What are the next steps for Tranchess?
- Why is Tranchess V2 User interface so different?
Please visit the Binance English TG Channel for the full script.
Participants
Binance: Ribka, Binance Host
Tranchess: Tranchess King, Co-Founder
AMA Recap:
Ribka: Hi chat and welcome to a special AMA with the CHESS team! It is my pleasure to introduce to you Danny Chong aka King, who is the Tranchess’s Co Founder & CEO!
Tranchess King: Hi everyone !! 🎊
Ribka: Hi King, thank you for joining us today, would you please introduce yourself to the chat and share a quick overview about Tranchess?:)
Tranchess King: Sure thing ~ ~
Harlo to all once again ~~ This is Danny Chong, aka King, Co-Founder and CEO of Tranchess. Tranchess is a protocol on BNB Chain and is essentially an asset tracking management protocol providing varied risk returns for users across. Users who have BNB, BTC, ETH or even BUSD would be able to find a suitable product that best fits their needs in terms of risk profiles vs returns.
To highlight on Tranchess team background, our Csuite consists of quite a number of TradFi background personalities, including traders, portfolio managers and also structuring, whilst Our tech team hails from tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
Probably quite well known to all by now, our vision and motivation generally stems from wanting to bring out the best of TradFi products and to intertwine with the flexibility and efficiency that Decentralize Finance has to offer.
We believe in innovating products that provides sustainable long term returns and provide the correct risk tiering and diversification for users.
We do not discern users of any types and instead look to welcome and provide appropriate products and solutions to all users.
Everyone is welcomed!
Ribka: That sounds good
Tranchess King: Also to introduce CHESS, which Binance users can find on the exchange vs various USD stables etc
CHESS is the governance token of Tranchess protocol.
By locking CHESS with Tranchess, users will gain veCHESS — The quantities would vary according to the amount and tenor of CHESS locked. veCHESS allows users to vote on ad hoc and continuous governance proposals as well as enjoy protocol rebate, which is currently at 50% and distributed on a weekly basis.
Ribka: Thank you KING for that quick introduction!
Chat, if you’d like to learn more about [CHESS], do check out these links below. Follow the team on Twitter and join in on conversations about [CHESS] via their Telegram channel.
Website: www.tranchess.com
Telegram: https://t.me/tranchess
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tranchess
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tranchess/
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/tKxAq78VBr
Telegram: https://t.me/tranchess
Yall know the drill , join the CHESS telegram group:) will give you a moment. Awesome pack btw. Let’s jump right into the first segment of today’s AMA session. Danny, here’s our first question for you…
Q1: What is it about V2 that makes it special
Tranchess King: That’s a nice question to start off
To keep some background context, Tranchess V1 was launched in June 2021, whereas we were proud of its success and also happy that it gained the steady support of users and block chain alike, we had also over time: Received feedbacks from community, investors and team alike on what can be done better on Tranchess protocol; We are also users ourselves and felt that some of the issues were indeed bottlenecking user experiences as well as capping the potential of Tranchess usages.
So ~ With V2 launched finally on 16 June 2022, We introduced not only a complete new UI/UX experience but also:
- 3 New AMM pools for Bishops vs BUSD to facilitate token swap with little friction.
- Sustainable & Diverse way to earn yield for Tranchess users
- Greater independence of yield away from CHESS Emissions
- Increased Protocol revenue and rebates for CHESS lockers.
- Improved utilization & liquidity of Bishop & Rook.
Users who have been with us since launch of v1 would know that whereas we had a solid SWAP which uses innovations like 30 min TWAP and orderbook in DeFi to prevent oracle attacks and help users save on gas fees, the nature of it meant that users would have to wait for some time before getting their token swaps done.
Lack of liquidity sometimes also meant that users might have to cross spreads in order to get their transactions time. With V2 and the coming of various AMM pools, users can swap Tranchess tokens and BUSD instantly.
The coming of v2 is definitely special and important as we work towards improving the overall accessibility & profitability of Tranchess. AMM pools other than their usages in providing instant swap and liquidity, is also an important way for protocols to earn sustainable yield; With validator node launched on BNB Chain, we had already demonstrated our aim and direction to earn more independent yield earning capabilities with our BNB Fund — with lesser dependence on CHESS tokens emissions moving forward.
With the AMM and overall increase in swap capabilities across tokens — We target to increase overall TVL, Transactions, protocol income and ultimately higher income distribution for our locked Chess users via a continuously improving Revenue Model 😎
Ribka: Wooooow thatś some awesome and insightfull information , Thanks King for sharing. On to the 2nd question
Q2. Why did you choose to launch V2 in current markets? 🤔
Tranchess King: Another popular question and i can see that you are very apt at using our Tranchess s !!
Ribka:
I think they are awesome hahaha
Tranchess King: So well this Q was asked to us quite a number of times and in fact we have already been giving the answer since day 1.
The short simple reply is — “We are building for the long term and hence we are delivering regardless of market conditions.”
It would be unfair to the protocol and our users ~ if we have improved functionalities and products that we delay the launch of it simply because it’s a trough market. I understand that some protocols might time it for uptrend markets or better market conditions which is perfectly fine — but that’s not us.
V2 took a bit of time to deliver because of the scope of work involved and also because we wanted to spend more time on code review as well as audits.
During the preview of v2 at Tranchess Townhall 4 couple of weeks back , I had also showcased just how many iterations of v2 we had gone through in terms of UI, smart contract tests, functionality test, migrations, marketing, UATs, and so on before we came out with the current version of v2.
Our aim is to deliver quality products to users and to make sure that with passing time, we have sustainable products that will help strengthen protocol revenue increasingly over the long term.
Ribka: Thanks for sharing! I bet we have lots of audience members watching and supporting CHESS every step! On to another important question
Q3. What is the definition of DeFi 2.0 and is V2 a good representation of it?
Tranchess King: So it’s been widely discuss what is DeFi 2.0 ….
First of all we need to look at DeFi 2.0 and understand how it came into being.
DeFi 1.0 or the origins of DeFi took flight from DeFi summer. The innovations that came along with it was no doubt impressive within a short period of time but it was not without limitations.
In fact with fast growth and scale … the limitations became more apparent.
Some of the more well known limitations include: Usability of defi platforms in terms of UI/UX, Lack of long term, practical incentives outside of distributing LP tokens, scalability issues due to network congestions, security of individual protocols, not integrating with trusted onchain oracle sources and so on.
So DeFi 2.0 is an ongoing upgrading and development of DeFi. It’s meant to rectify current issues and improve the usability of DeFi overall.
As an example, if we look at yields and revenue model of DeFi protocols.
Most DeFi projects leverage token emissions to yield rewards as a direct and fast method of gaining users and TVL. But some project teams may not be as cautious of their token supply or long-term yield farming methods to avoid negative spiral of the native token ~ The long-term consequences of purely relying on native token to generate yield as returns for user would result in continuous selling of the native token.
There needs to be a continuous monitoring or transition to ensure that revenue of the protocol continues to grow and also the yield rewards can be sustainable even if as TVL and users continues to grow.
Tranchess V2 now consists of a few ways to gain sustainable yield, such as dedicating BNB fund to do validation work on BNB blockchain to gain validator rewards, which only the top 21 validators get.
With the new AMM pools, there will be an increase in revenue and yield earning for users at the same time via trading fees. There are more products planned ahead to earn sustainable yield for users in Tranchess, so do stay tuned.
We believe that with increasing protocol revenue in the mid — long term, users will be able to directly benefit from locking CHESS and earning increasing protocol revenue distribution week after week.
Also in V2, security continues to be an emphasis, oracles have been fully integrated with Chainlink whilst in terms of smart contract vetting, not only do we have stringent logic and bug test internally, but we have also sure that audits are done for smart contracts any times there’s an update — big or small.
Not to mention, UI.UX has been much improved to allow users to easily access and navigate across different functionality which in front as I’ve mentioned was also one of the bottlenecks for great proliferation of users to DeFi.
So Yeah — I do think Tranchess does embody a good representation of what DeFi 2.0 seeks to achieve.
Ribka: That’s awesome! lots of information !!! Moving on to question 4.
Q4. What are the next steps of Tranchess ?
Tranchess King: Well….. v2 was an important step for us because it allows us to rectify what we thought were bottlenecks to usability and also for the growth of the protocol. With this step completed we are ready for the next steps marching towards multi chain, with our first stop being Ethereum chain.
Given the relative success we had with running both BNB funds as well as managing our own validator node on the BNB chain, we believe that we would be able to have relative success with the coming of Ethereum merge 2.0.
As most blockchain users would know ~ Running the validator node on the BNB chain was never easy and we chose to do our own node rather than staking it into 3rd party validator nodes because we were concerned with both security as well as performance.
Working with 3rd party nodes increases our risk and exposure given that BNBs are delegated outside of Tranchess jurisdiction, BNB has stringent requirements for node operators, requiring them to always be online and producing blocks with little downtime.
There will be costly penalties in the event that the validator node ceases to produce blocks properly which increases in terms of severities with time. With all these considerations in mind — We had decided to run our own node on bnb chain, but this also gave us the necessary experience to be able to replicate the current success onto other POS block chain networks.
Ribka: This fits the reply BNB chain validator. That I do agree!
Tranchess King: It shows our friendship with BNB ecosystem 🙂
Ribka: Thank you KING
Tranchess King: Friendship and partnership
Ribka: Indeed it is:) On to the last question for this segment!
Q5. Tranchess V2 has a different UI compared to V1. What did Tranchess do to make UI V2 able to improve the overall user experience? Why is improving UX so important for the development of Tranchess?
Tranchess King: The primary goal of Tranchess V2 was to improve the overall user experience for all types of users, whether you’re a financial professional or new to the crypto/DeFi market. This had involved improving workflows for across the user interface as well as liquidity amplification across Tranchess funds to facilitate a seamless swapping experience.
Thematically, the V2 UI introduces a lot more information for those that are less familiar with Tranchess — On the home page itself.
This includes simplified explanations for each fund and its purposes, as well as easy navigation panes to bring you to their respective pages.
Furthermore, each funds’ page has been enhanced to clearly portray key details in a simplified manner, whether it is through charts or enhanced interactive panels.
Finally, alongside the new introduction of Tranchess V2 AMM pools, the swapping interface has been completely revamped to provide users with options to instantly swap, stake, split and merge their tokens in one place.
=> Instant swaps between the funds have never been easier.
Regarding your question on why the user experience (UX) is important for Tranchess’ development…Well… we have many users utilizing our Tranchess funds on a daily basis.
We envision Tranchess to be one of the leading pioneers in space and aspire to set up Tranchess as one of the pillars in DeFi, providing asset management products to all DeFi users.
To do so, you must guarantee a smooth user experience for all users. Whilst we received plentiful praise on the V1 user interface, we acknowledged that there were many improvements such as liquidity, slowness and complexity of swaps.
These were directly addressed by the Tranchess V2 upgrade. ~~~
Ribka: Haha Relax+Coffee+Chess
Tranchess King: That’s called ‘living a life”
Ribka: Thank you KING for sharing your thoughts and answers with all of us. Once again chat, here below links to all things CHESS!
- Website: www.tranchess.com
- Telegram: https://t.me/tranchess
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tranchess
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tranchess/
- Discord: https://discord.com/invite/tKxAq78VBr
- Telegram: https://t.me/tranchess
Tranchess King: Please do visit us when you can 🙂 On the homepage of Tranchess. You can also find links to our video introductions. I find that particularly useful for new users who want to quickly know a bit more about us
Ribka: It’s mandatory to join their telegram group, more info is always announced on their socials:) we will give you a moment to join
Tranchess King: All are welcomed
Ribka: Thanks i joined as well:)
BNB ANGEL: We will give you a moment to get ready for the quiz of segment 2 🥳🥳🥳🥳Make sure you join and follow the team on twitter as well
Great, chat, here is the form with all the questions, you have 5 minutes to answer, users that get all 5 answers right will share a bag of $5,000 in $CHESS tokens
https://forms.gle/BbqG9gC9upVLWsQE8
Tranchess King: ⚡️ Goooooooooo ~
BNB ANGEL: So Danny Chong, while our users are answering the form, let me know what the first quiz question is!
Tranchess King: ok sure ~ You can just call me Danny btw … or King (if you prefer….
BNB ANGEL: No problem 😎😎
Q1: How many Bishop-BUSD pools are there in v2?
Q2. How many AMM pools are there in total within v2?
Q3: In Tranchess V2, which of the tokens would users be able to obtain instantly?
Q4: How many pools do users have to vote for with regards to Chess emissions under Governance?
Q5: How many % of protocol revenue distribution will users enjoy once they lock CHESS?
BNB ANGEL: And, time’s up!! Danny Chong please share with us the answers to the questions! Great 😁
Tranchess King: To all those who answered correctly ~~~ I hope all of you got these questions correct! And now, for the next segment!
You are now dubbed as Chess Champion 🙂
BNB ANGEL: In order to be eligible for any prizes for Segment 2, you need to have joined [CHESS] Telegram Group!
Tranchess King: Tranchess Champion that is 🙂
BNB ANGEL: https://t.me/tranchess
As we move on to Segment 3, here’s a quick reminder.
Ribka:
Segment #No3: Chat asks Tranchess Team questions. Please take the time to think of some good questions, which will underline quality and uniqueness.
Q: Partnership is always an important factor for every project. So who is your partner? What are the benefits you get from those relatiionships??
A: That’s a good question. So first and foremost, definitely the BNB Ecosystem. Tranchess always had good relationship support the chain and exchange in running programs such as hackathons, mentor programs, future directions etc. We’ve also benefited from the support in terms of incentives, guidance and also definitely enjoyed the friendship from labs, Cex and chain alike.
In terms of protocol partnerships, we had partner InsurAce and also did our first liq pool on Pancakeswap. Our oracles are based fully now with Chainlink…etc etc… the partnership is endless and still in progress.search for more.
We are stringent though and definitely look out for both market conditions and security of our partners to ensure the longevity of the partnership and also safety of funds..always~
Ribka: Yesss😁😁😁
Tranchess King: You asked the same question many times here!!!
Q: How do rook holders take a leverage position? I know about borrowing assets from bishop holders to take a leverage position, but I’m curious about the specifics.
A: I can see that you are someone who understands Tranchess relatively in depth. Thanks for that…..
It’s actually 0 dependence on external protocol and Rook/Bishop has symbiotic relationship in that the risk delta of Bishop is pass to Rook — which results in Rook having the leverage factor.
In return, Rook pays Bishop interest (which can be voted on Governance Tab on Tranchess.com). I do like the way you think though — it’s logical 🙂 Our way is more efficient, cost saving and also keep it safe within protocol premise.
Q: Is your platform suitable for Crypto beginners? Or is it only appealing to professional users?
A: As mentioned from the beginning, our protocol caters to users of different risk appetite and also different levels of knowledge.
To look at it simply, even if you are new to crypto and would like to just old on to high market cap tokens such as BTC ETH BNB, definitely you can look at putting it with us in the form of Queen — because then you would be able to earn yield in the form of CHESS and at the same time — lock CHESS with us to earn the protocol revenue (50% of weekly earnings!)
If you prefer to be market neutral or just want to hold on to stable coins ~ You can just convert into the various Bishop token with BUSD. It gives you a market neutral profile, similar to holding on to USD stablecoin. This gives you a high enough return on yield and gives new users experience in dealing with crypto but with removal of market risk. Once you gain more experience points ~ one can also try to do provide liquidity in the various Bishop/BUSD LP to gain extra yield.
I will not recommend Rook to new users for sure because there’s leverage. But once users become more familiar in the future… within Tranchess, the leverage token Rook would definitely be very useful to take advantage of in the correct market environment.
I recommend new users to read our whitepaper or at least look at our youtube channel for more information before embarking on putting on your positions.
Remember…start small… start safe … get comfortable and familiar before embarking on bigger positions.
Q: What happens if big capitals decide to take all their native tokens at the same time??
A: Quite often asked question. Usually, we undertake sensitive questions like this very carefully. But we understand some of our users may have similar concerns of bank runs given some cases had echoed through the market. Given that security has always been something Tranchess emphasizes, we would like to take the opportunity to address the issue.
Users hold Tranchess’ native tokens to take advantage of the additional yield Tranchess is ableto provide via product design. All BISHOPs and ROOKs are ultimately generated by splitting
QUEEN, and all QUEENs are created from BTC, ETH and BBs. The underlying crypto assets,or BTC, ETH and BBs, are held securely in the smart contracts, and can be redeemed at any time.
In fact, over the past year, we were regularly pushed to further stake the deposited assets into other protocols for collaborations and higher yield-enhancing. We did explore multiple collaborations but unfortunately couldn’t find one that suits our needs. Because the underlying cryptos are NOT further staked in other protocols or platforms, they can always be redeemed back.
So to directly answer the question, if everyone redeems at the same time, which we certainly hope would not happen, the only thing you will see is a drastic drop in Tranchess’ TVL, but the
crypto assets can always be redeemed whenever our users desire.
Of course, if everyone’s withdrawing at the same time, the waiting time for BNB will be slightly longer, because we would need to undelegate the BBs from the validator node first. But definitely there’s no “bank run” situation in any scenario~~~
Q: Do you allow suggestions and feedback from the community? Are we allowed to make decisions, do you consider the community?
A: The commmunity is very important to us. In a way, V2 came about because of the community feedback and constant engagement. Our team and moderators take into account all the feedback and we discuss on them on a weekly basis. When users run into issues or has any queries, our moderators both on English and Chinese TG tries their best to answer asap…. .if it’s technical issues, sometimes discussions are done with the tech department before reverting.
A lot of our quick fixes before v2 launch was also to cater to the needs and benefits of users.
Users are given lots of opportunities to voice their opinions and perspectives over on Twitter / TG / Discord / Discourse — we welcome the community to be active and let us know their thoughts anytime.
For those of you already familiar with Tranchess, you know definitely know of Tranchess Trooper of the Month program (Totm) where we reward and confer the title to active contributers of Tranchess. So far we have already a grand total of 18 Totm and we plan on discovering more commited users, which in time they will be given more governance and responsibilities, eg to start proposals, to launch fireside chats, to discuss with team their thoughts and plans for Tranchess…. the possibilities are endless.
Tranchess is empowered by the community and it’s a protocol that’s meant to benefit 100% back into the community.
BNB ANGEL: It has been great to have you, KING , with us today to talk more about Tranchess’ business.
Ribka: 1 last question 😁
Tranchess King: I would really like to have a long conversation with you on this topic …. but maybe another time and space 🙂Thanks everyone for staying live here with my slowness in selecting quesitons and replying
BNB ANGEL: Here are some important links for our community to follow the CHESS.
- Website: www.tranchess.com
- Telegram: https://t.me/tranchess
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tranchess
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tranchess/
- Discord: https://discord.com/invite/tKxAq78VBr
Tranchess King: Honestly i’ve been typing so much that my fingers are about to cramp…
BNB ANGEL: Thank you chat for your time! For those of you who got 5/5 questions right in Segment 2, please make sure you have joined Tranchess’ Telegram group.
Tranchess King: Thanks everyone!
