Tranchess Inaugural Townhall
It was exciting to have Danny aka Tranchess King address our ever growing community over the inaugural Tranchess Townhall. We were delighted to share current growth milestones as well as elaborate on certain functionalities and developmental pipelines.
Our heartfelt thanks to the Tranchess Community for everyone’s warm support as well as the questions fielded before & during the townhall. Here is the summary of the townhall, especially for our loyal supporters who did not manage to participate.
Townhall I Recap
Participants: Tranchess: Danny Chong aka Tranchess_King & Tranchess_Rook
Tranchess Rook The chat will be closed and I will moderate the Tranchess Town Hall today
📣📣📣 Do not panic! You are not banned, you will just be muted for the duration of the Inaugural Tranchess Town Hall on Tranchess’s official TG group. 📣📣📣
…… King will introduce himself…..
Tranchess King Hello Everyone !! This is Danny Chong, Co-Founder, aka Tranchess King representing the team @Tranchess. We are excited to be with the community here today, within our own TG group, to have our inaugural Town Hall!!
First of all to introduce our moderator for the day — Rook!!! I am sure for those who have consistently been tuning in here and asking questions you would be extremely familiar with our dear Rook.
He’s the coolest piece on the chessboard so far.
A round of applause for Rook and Pawn Team for their valiant efforts to always answer the community’s queries with speed and precision, not to mention also, sometimes with a dash of delicate humor :)
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
To also introduce the rest of the chess pieces @ Tranchess. The team resides across different continents: North America, Europe & Asia and comes from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences.
From Finance: Investment Banks, Asset Managers and Hedge Funds.
From Tech: Tech Giants such as Google, Facebook & Microsoft.
We have been asked by outsiders why our team are anonymous except for Tranchess King…aka me.
Now …. As you can see our protocol has a lot of interesting functionalities and also exciting features, such as the 30 Min TWAP, the innovative secondary market — SWAP order book, not to mention some of the very exciting yield promotions that are currently been enjoyed by the community now…
It’s just the tip of the iceberg as we are giving our best to bring to you more exciting developments and progress in the shortest possible time, while ensuring our moves are all pragmatic, safe and beneficial to the community.
All these steps take time to develop, and we rather have the team focus on these development plans than to have to deal with external questions and spotlight.
“We believe a good product speaks for itself.”
We will introduce more of Tranchess members to our community in due time. Trust us on this one :) whilst we finish the items on the checklist to bring Tranchess to…the… Moooooon :) (One step at a time!!)
Now here’s where we need your help Tranchess Community !!
Help Tranchess grow by sharing your feedback:
https://forms.gle/zUYuGzpALgwEgAN36
The 10 most helpful responses will each be rewarded with 100 CHESS tokens. Please note that the selection will be discretionary.
Pro tip: more details make your response more helpful!😀👏🏻
Survey closes on Aug 10, 14:00 UTC. 10 winners will be announced on Aug 13. < — — don’t miss out !! 👍👍
ok ok… This is starting to sound like a monologue…. but I can faintly hear Rook grunting at the back in support… that’s his normal style. Supporting from the background in …. grunts 🙃
Alright, now that we are done with the formalities of an opening introduction. We will move on now to sharing a bit of our progress @Tranchess Protocol.
But before we start… Tranchess Community !!
Take a bow pls… Clap clap clap clap…👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This is for all of you fans, supporters and believers!
The growth and development today would not have been possible without you guys out there… 😌💪👍🙇🏻♂️🤩
Heartfelt thanks from all of us @ Tranchess.
Thank You.
We will continue to depend on each and every one to give support in terms of sharing & explaining our project, in terms of continuing to give suggestions on ways to improve and most of all, just by simply being here and understanding our project more… We believe the growing TVL is the effort of the community as much as it is the Tranchess Team.
🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Ok Moving on. We are going to show a few charts to illustrate our growth till date.
<BTCB Deposit Growth>
And live from … Tranchess.com
The growth in BTC and TVL is all thanks to everyone’s support once again. 💪💪💪😊😊😊
The uptick as can see from mid july onwards was after a month of guarded launch… and going into full launch then onwards.
Next is the graph of NAV Queen, Bishop & Rook.
Congrats to our users owning Queen ….. and especially Rook !!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Totally Nailed It ~~ Just looking at the NAV
We are also seeing very steady growth on the SWAP…. both in Bishop and Rook.
I would encourage the community to have a look @them if you have not tried it yet :)
And also having a look at the Chess Token Price
The trend in Chess token is upwards inline with also TVL incoming.
& that’s about what I wanted to share with everyone today. 🙂
It’s time to move on to our Community Questions from Twitter !!
Tranchess Rook Ok
We have our first question from Nkosi@Purple_milked
Q: Since the project appears to be bringing bitcoin to defi or vice-versa, are there any plans to launch it on other chains where native $BTC and other non eth/bnb assets are unlocked for use in their native state?
Tranchess King A: Our protocol has been launching in succession new functionalities, with the most recent one being lock chess capability, allowing users to own veChess to vote for interest rate top up and also to enjoy Tranchess Income protocol sharing. Currently we share 75% of the income protocol as our way of saying thanks to all our community supporters.
There are definitely other interesting functionalities coming out on top. We are consolidating our efforts first to complete these deliveries. For concurrent & next steps, we are moving into different underlyings and also multichain. Our moves are guided by user accessibility, value and other pragmatic considerations, rather than focusing on whether coins are native to particular chains or not.
2nd question by Δαβίδ@David10Nat
Q: The majority of TVL is in queen. What can be done to increase TVL in bishop and rook? Bishop is basically giving >100% apy on USDC and should get more TVL. The large bid ask spread and multiple steps could be preventing larger adoption of these tokens.
Tranchess King A: There is perhaps a small misconception to this :)
Queen is the main fund of Tranchess while Bishop and Rook are the sub tranches. Hence there is only one TVL — which is the amount of BTC deposited with Tranchess. The Bishop and Rook tokens trading in SWAP are splits from Queen tokens generated.
The SWAP market liquidity depends on a few factors including, market sentiments, time of the day, direction of market in general, etc. We have been observing that with increasing TVL as of late, the Tranchess Swap liquidity has been improving, ie, The SWAP order book levels for Bishop & Rook are getting tighter. We believe the liquidity depth will continue improving giving the continuous growth of the protocol.
3rd question by Lucius Fang@LuciusFang10
Q: Other than liquidity mining rewards, why should people own queen?
Tranchess King A: Queen is a tracker of BTC and by creating Queen instead of just holding BTC, users are able to get attractive yield in the form of Chess tokens. Once chess tokens are harvested, users are able to lock chess tokens to get veChess. veChess gives users voting rights for interest rate top up between Bishop and Rook, and also allows holders to enjoy sharing of Tranchess Protocol Income.
Queen is also the integral step before users get to split into token Bishop and Rook. Tranchess allows ease of split and can see a tracker token (Queen), leverage token (Rook) and Yield earning token (Bishop) within the same ecosystem. If users believe in the upward trend of BTC, they can sell their Bishop in Swap market after the split and buy back more Rook. Or they can sell Rook, if they think the market is toppish and to would like to hold USDC like token in Bishop. Both token Bishop and Rook earns Chess tokens akin to token Queen.
Owning Queen definitely gives you the flexibility to do the above any time as compared to just holding on to BTC. Higher Flexibility & High returns in general.
4th question by wei@wei86506046
Q: What’s our plan to beat other platforms that offer leveraged products as well? can we offer the lowest lending rates (to Rook)? Or the best liquidity to get in and out of levered positions? or the plan is just to rely on Chess tokens? impt to figure out, if not why choose us?
Tranchess King A: We are not here to compete but to focus on developing a platform that fits the needs of DeFi users. As mentioned on several podcasts and AMAs, our initial aim started simply enough with trying to solve issues faced by DeFi users.
One of the issues to solve was low yield for long term holders of BTC and USDC and you can see that current APR for Queen & Bishop, it’s still at attractive double digit levels @tranchess.com.
Users who are yield seeking for BTC & USDC alike would definitely appreciate the current offerings at Tranchess.
Tranches protocol offers seamless switching between BTC tracking (Queen), BTC leverage (Rook), Pure Yield Earning (Bishop) in an elegant fashion of 1 main fund & 2 sub tranches.
Simplicity of use under one ecosystem in which we are looking to enrich further in coming months. In short, more products, underlyings and multichain — Stay tuned :)
5th question by Noah@ketuart02
Q: As of now, Tranches Swap is only compatible for $BTC so, in the near future, would you consider supporting other tokens in the future like $ETH and $BNB so we could see tokens like QUEEN-ETH, BISHOP-ETH, ROOK-BNB?
Tranchess King A: Tranchess Swap allows buying/selling of Queen, Bishop & Rook, effectively catering to both users of BTC & USDC. We have been getting multiple queries on similar topics.
The consideration to look at other coins to expand our offerings is a matter of when rather than whether we are going to do it; The community has also seen the speed at which we bring up the protocol and also additions of new functionalities, so we promise more exciting outputs to come… 😊👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 👍
6th question by Thompson DeFi@ThompsonDeFi
Q: What will happen to CHESS demand when USDC-CHESS pool on PCS ends? How will you encourage people to lock BTCB and other later assets once the demand of CHESS less appealing? Do you have any plans on utilising the locked BTCB? Lending/Borrowing?
Tranchess King A: Thanks Thompson DeFi ~ He asks a lot of nice questions in our TG chat as well. One of the steadfast fan for sure~
The demand of Chess tokens is determined by market forces and there are a few points to take note on your question:
-The distribution of Chess tokens is done over a 4 year period. Ie, the amount of circulating tokens is slowly increasing, while we can observe there is increasing demand for chess tokens with increasing TVL.
- BTCB are not locked — they are merely used to create Queen. By staking Queen, users will be allowed to enjoy yield in the form of chess tokens. This staking can be unstaked anytime and users can also redeem back their BTCB on a daily basis.
- By locking Chess tokens, users will gain veChess. Which allows users to get a share of protocol income — currently at the rate of 75%.
We don’t have concrete plans for utilising locked BTCB at this point but we will get community/investor suggestions when we have such a need. 🤝🤝🤝
7th question by Lee Di@pandalucu66
Q: If a user wishes to participate and swap their Bitcoins for the Token Queen by its ‘creation process’, will there be a transaction fee/payment in doing so and what is the minimum and maximum amount of $BTC that can be swapped for the Token Queen?
Tranchess King A: There is no fee to create QUEEN from BTCB besides the transaction fee paid on Chain to conclude the request, since the protocol is running entirely on chain. The number of QUEEN one can receive is calculated based on the following formula:
Number of QUEEN Received = Number of BTCB requested * Total Number of (QUEEN+BISHOP+ROOK) on Tranchess/Total Number of BTCB on Tranchess
Now if you go to tranchess.com for creation and type in the amount of BTCB you’d like to swap for QUEEN, the number you are given on the page will be the number of QUEEN you would receive, unless there’s a Rebalance.
https://docs.tranchess.com/ for more details !!!
Last question by Nicole Calt@Nic1Cool
Q: I read that Tranchess has a mechanism called “Rebalance”, could you please give us more details about it? How does this mechanism work? What is it’s main function on your platform and on the development of it? What kind of benefits do investors get from that mechanism?
Tranchess King A: That could be a timely question indeed :)
Given how the BTC has been trending especially — moving up the NAV of Queen & Rook pretty fast.
ok so here goes : First of all, Rebalance is a feature built into our protocol
(that’s already fully functionable!!)
It is a function triggered only under particular circumstances, specifically, when NAV(rook)/NAV(bishop) is less than 0.5 or over 2.
Two things happen after Rebalance:
1) The NAVs of Token QUEEN, BISHOP and ROOK will restart back to 1.
2) The amount of tokens under the user’s account might change to reflect the Rebalance. Specific calculation is explained in our Whitepaper.
Details : https://docs.tranchess.com/whitepaper
On why Rebalance was designed:
1) Protection of BISHOP holders.
Rebalance protects their earned interests from drastic drops in BTC price.
2) Stable Leverage for ROOK holders,
When the market price of the underlying asset is rising rapidly, — -> aka BTC now~~!
Rebalance helps maintain a stable leverage ratio for ROOK, which can better benefit from the rise.
When the market drops drastically, Rebalance also helps stop ROOK from the expedited drop — no forced liquidation as well.
Tranchess Rook Thanks for the questions, and the answers from King, the community can now ask some questions to King.
Live AMA Section
Q: As we all know security is what everyone is always concerned about at first, so while reading about Tranchess this doubt poped on my head, could you clarify it to me please? How secure is Tranchess? Do you have any security methods to protect investors against flash loan attacks?
A: Security is a main theme built in our protocol since we first started to brainstorm the model. The protocol is designed to avoid flash loan attacks, one of the reasons why you see “TWAP” everywhere.
Tranchess Swap uses a 30-minute Time Weighted Average Price as its reference NAV, which means that Tranchess averages out the prices across a 30-minute window to get its own reference price. For any flash loan to take effect, the attacker needs to manipulate the price from Coinbase for 30 minutes, which is essentially unfeasible (or it won’t be called “FLASH” attacks).
Similar idea applies to the base interest rate of BISHOP that Tranchess draws from VENUS — it uses a 7-day average interest rate. The assets on Tranchess will not be reinvested into other protocols, thus immune from being affected by the potential attacks on other platforms.
On security, besides the protocol design, we’ve also invited top-notch auditing companies like Peckshield and Certik to conduct a full audit on our protocol before launching, and we will continue to have reputable audit companies auditing our protocol everytime we launch a major update to the protocol (next time, DAO, for example).
We are also working with Immunefi on a Bug Bounty program which rewards talents who have identified vulnerability within our protocol.
Q: do you have any project plans for combining NFT with DeFi? If so, Could you please describe how your project plan to support NFT development?
A: On NFT, I personally think it’s an innovative way to mobilize our community interest.
However, we do not have any imminent plan about releasing our own NFT (Things can change fast though) 🙂. It’s something we might consider in the future, but at this moment we want to focus all our resources on delivering current products and the planned development based on our roadmap for the next few months.
Our priority now is definitely to make sure Tranchess is running smoothly and meeting the expectations of our users and our supporters. 🤗🤗🤗
Q: TVL has increased exponentially over the past month, well done team! Other than an attractive APY, what other features of #Tranchess protocol has contributed to current success ? There is still so much potential ahead, what would be a possible next step for the protocol? ♟
A: We definitely pride ourselves in the unique design and the flexible conversion between the three tokens (QUEEN, BISHOP, ROOK).
We have received feedbacks from people impressed by QUEEN & BISHOP’s yield, and we are sure our ROOK holders have had quite a cheerful week thus far.
As mentioned, Tranches protocol offers seamless switching between BTC tracking (Queen), BTC leverage (Rook), Pure Yield Earning (Bishop) in an elegant fashion of 1 main fund & 2 sub tranches. Simplicity of use under one ecosystem in which we are looking to enrich further in coming months
There are many innovative mechanism in place as well:
Rebalance / 30 min TWAP / Swap Order Book
This is also on top — Our strive in ensuring proper audit for the protocol (Certik & Peckshield). And Bug Bounty with Immunify.
A lot to grow from here honestly…
Underlyings, Multichain, Collaboration with other protocols, offering a variety of fund structures, creating innovative synthetic derivatives. And as mentioned time and before, complete and hand over the DAO governance.
I’m excited as do the Tranchess Team … & I am sure everyone here in the community is as well. 😘🤗
@LawNdelorean So you are right, there are so much potential ahead, and we are evaluating all possibilities. Stay tuned!
Ok let me answer this instead for the last question….
Q: The project is very high quality, but cold-weak community, we need warm contents for people feel like community here (memes, gifs, stickers, events), when?
A: In fact this was something that we have been discussing within the team just today. First to all the other questions… very nice questions and we will find a way to reply the rest!!
Just to assure everyone, the team at Tranchess… is extremely warm hearted & we hope that can warm the cockles of the community as well ! (On top of other things~)
I work with the guys everyday here and they are always thinking of how to make sure things work properly for everyone. U can see how little down time the protocol has had so far… and that’s because the team is working round the clock to ensure everything is in running order.
The new functionalities and exciting features … that everyone has seen week after week. They have been designed/ tested and back tested before it’s launched to everyone. UI and UX are also tested many times before it’s being delivered to you.
U also know in this chat, Rook and Pawn team answers all your questions like clockwork with precision and accuracy. Town hall is first of our community outreach, we plan to do more and better each time.
There’s actually a lot going A-Z that i can’t even finish listing here. But just know that team is working very hard to delivering the best for you.
Some of you out there — who have difficulty in understanding English as well. Asking questions sometimes in the chatgroup. We have seen you and we are also working on solution for that. We are at this juncture hiring tech and marketing, and also capable hands to look at handling all these as well — Just to assure everyone.
Let us continue to surprise with what we have to offer Tranchess Community.
And with that, we have come to the end of our live AMA segment.
Over to you Rooooooook ~
Tranchess Rook Thanks all.
