On Thursday, 10 March 2022, we held our 3rd Tranchess Townhall on our Telegram Chat! We had a close look at the amazing milestones achieved since inception with co-Founder Danny Chong, KING Tranchess. We also shared more on our community growth plans as well as future developments in 2022.
Overview
Throughout this AMA, King covered a wide variety of updates ranging from milestones and pipelines. More specifically on the recent business developments to be expected; The following topics were discussed:
- Successful ETH fund release
2) Binance Listing
3) BNB Chain MVB Hall of Fame
4) TranchessDAO
5) BNB Chain Validator Node
6) ChainLink Integration/Collaboration
7) Launched: Tranchess Trooper of the Month
8) Successful BNB fund launch
9) BNB Chain DeFi League
10) Emission Voting Engaged
11) #DidYouKnow
12) V2 & AMM like stable pool
13) Community DAO and development
14) Increasing TradFi crypto engagement
15) Multi Chain
Should you be interested in reading the full original script, please find it in the pinned posts within our Telegram chat!
Transcript
King: Hi Tranchess Community, it’s been a couple of months since we last spoke at town hall. I am happy and excited to be speaking with everyone here again today after the brief hiatus.
Many deliveries and milestones had been achieved in the last couple of months! And I am happy to share the updates with everyone here, as well as go through a bit of what’s up and coming next couple of months for Tranchess.
For the troopers that have been following us closely — You would have noticed that the number of deliveries had been increasing and the team had been working in multiple directions — Delivery of new funds, additional functionalities, collaborations, working on a V2 revamp and much more in terms of community development. The Tranchess team had been working hard to produce “more and better” deliveries and we hope you would enjoy the output as much as we did to ensure the quality production.
Nine months. That’s how long it has been since Day 1 inception of Tranchess. We are definitely further away from our starting line than before but still many miles away from our eventual goals. We remain steadfast in the direction of delivering sustainable and diverse returns for Tranchess users. Ultimately we hope to bring about the best of what TradFi & DeFi has to offer and to deliver it in an easy access package for everyone. Whether you are a conservative/aggressive or basic/professional type of user, there will be a Tranchess product that suits your needs.
It may seem as if we are not responding as fast as we can on your queries over TG / Tweeter sometimes, but it is non-intentional and only because we are focused on getting the next delivery out. Our fundamental belief is still to continue building out Tranchess to its max potential — And in future, the time and efforts spent in achieving this would be recognized through the value of the token itself.
- * On behalf of the Tranchess Team — I would like to thank all our users for the unwavering support thus far. **
Growth Development~
Let’s have a quick review of some of the notable events that have gone through in the last couple months since our previous Townhall.
1) Successful ETH fund release
Our new fund based on underlying ETH: eQUEEN, eROOK and eBISHOP launched with great success, rapidly gaining up to $200 mln of ETH within the first few months of launch
2) Binance listing
Binance lists Tranchess’ CHESS token! It was a great privilege to be listed on Binance early into the start of our protocol. Provides users with greater liquidity access to transact CHESS token other than our first DEX @Pancakeswap. CHESS staking was also enabled shortly via Binance itself.
3) Binance MVB Hall of Fame
Tranchess gets inducted into the Binance MVB Hall of Fame along with 7 other top BNB Chain Protocols! This symbolises the essential role Tranchess plays within the BNB Chain DeFi ecosystem and a recognition of the innovative developments.
4) TranchessDAO (Proposal 1–4)
Tranchess takes its first steps towards DAO governance via the launch of TranchessDAO! Users can discuss ideas and proposals at Tranchess Forum before casting their eventual votes on Snapshot. Here’s a quick glimpse at proposals successfully launched.
Proposal 1: https://forum.tranchess.com/t/tranchessdao-001-next-tranchess-fund-approval-for-bnb-voting-ended/28
5) BNB Chain Validator Node
As Tranchess prepares the launch of its v2 fund upgrade, Tranchess has become a validator on Binance Smart Chain with the launch of its new BNB fund! This introduces additional non-emission alpha-generating properties to the yield provided by the BNB fund.
6) ChainLink integration/collaboration
Integration of ChainLink’s Oracles into the Tranchess ecosystem improves the efficiency and stability of price feeds for the new v2 BNB fund. The collaboration and co-marketing continues as we continue our testing on Chainlink’s new features, which will further improve the user experience of Tranchess. Further integrations are in progress.
7) Launched : Tranchess Trooper of the Month Initiative
In light of the increasing number of troopers and gradual introduction of TranchessDAO, it is of utmost importance to upscale the knowledge of both new and existing troopers. As such, the launch of the Tranchess Trooper of the Month program is set to incentivize proactive and high-quality contributions towards the community.
8) Successful BNB Fund Launch
Tranchess welcomes the addition of its newest v2 fund: BNB! The key upgrade to the BNB fund vs the earlier BTC and ETH fund, is that it is alpha-enhanced via the Tranchess BSC validator node — Bringing users extra rewards of the validator node on top of CHESS emission.
9) BNB Chain DeFi League
Tranchess along with 12 other protocols join together to form the BNB DeFi League geared towards improving the security, product offerings and innovation within the overarching BNB DeFi landscape.
10) Emission voting engaged
TranchessDAO Proposal #3 passes to introduce a new feature: CHESS Emission Voting. This allows users, on a weekly basis, to influence the CHESS emissions across the different funds. One would wonder what would next be built on top of this… !
11) #DidYouKnow
As the efforts to continue growth in community knowledge, Tranchess launches the #DidYouKnow series where information is periodically sent out on social media platforms to both inform existing and new users of features & facts. Now…Did you know that?
********
And Yes ~ All these happened in the last 4months.
Gambit:
King: I need a cup of tea
To the Tranchess Community ~
Give yourselves a pat on the back!!! Because we’ve achieved this together!
Future plans and pipelines:
Incoming revamp of Tranchess V2, we have had a quick glimpse of what things can be like with the coming of BNB Fund in terms of UI/UX but that’s only the beginning of what V2 would entail in the upcoming future. We are poised to reveal more revamps that would include evolution of the Primary ecosystem, SWAP and even also the way settlement is currently carried out.
In tandem with our plans for V2, would also be the addition of an AMM like pool for stables within Tranchess. The exact details are still in discussion / prototype phase with our tech team currently. What Tranchess would be able to achieve or entails with the launch of the pool includes :
- New innovation pool product that enriches the entire Tranchess ecosystem
- Sustainable & Diverse way to earn yield for users
- Greater independence of yield away from CHESS Emissions
- Higher TVL
- Increased Protocol revenue and rebates for CHESS lockers.
- Improved utilization & liquidity of Bishop & Rook.
The rationale behind doing the stable pool stems also from feedback and discussions with some of our active community members. Everyone is aligned with the need to have a stable coin pool to provide extra incentives both to new and existing users preferring to hold stables while crypto levels remain at a relative trough or even for a focus on more market neutral returns overall.
It is also coming into space — The greater interest of institutions looking at DeFi protocols with offerings on stable coins — This was also one of the direct feedback that came from a few of the institutions, that the first foray into DeFi could probably be more USD based/correlated kind of investments before moving on to tokens tied to DeFi growth space and beyond.
In terms of community development space, we have started our path of DAO — The development of the proposal/voting system, the Tranchess Trooper of the Month initiative, TranchessWiki and more are only some of the ways we are trying to encourage the active participation from Tranchess Community. We are at this juncture, figuring out the possible future leaders for Tranchess, a team that will provide good directions, well knowledged, diverse in their thinkings and of course more importantly, a heart to serve for the good of the Tranchess community. Tranchess Trooper of the month would be one of the channels to be identifying worthy contributors and we will be engaging more with this group and others to get even more of the community voice heard.
Definitely in the pipeline is for our future leaders to get upgraded across social media acceses and for them to put out more contributions, eg future proposals, developmental feedback, etc
We also realized the need and call for education, as well as simplification to Tranchess’s overall workings. With that in mind, we have launched #DidYouKnow & starting from next week as well Tranchess Wiki space where we will be putting in the A-Zs one needs to know related to Tranchess — A dynamic information storage where users can get up to speed quickly on Tranchess in essence. There will also be educational primer videos produced to help any new users get up to speed with Tranchess functionalities and usages.
Tranchess has also been working on education and outreach with schools and universities, with the first session recently concluded in Singapore with Nanyang Technological University. The aim of the outreach is part of our giveback to help tertiary education get up to date with crypto landscape as well as to allow students to get a glimpse of what Crypto/DeFi industry has to offer
I am sure everyone has been following the recent news. Such as the likes of NYSE to apply for its very own crypto/NFT exchange/own token launch, world’s biggest asset manager at 10 trillion USD — Blackrock is offering crypto services to clients globally, KPMG is putting 1% of its balance to crypto assets. Tranchess has also started its real world outreach and having active conversations with institutions on possibilities of collaborations. It’s definitely not a fast conclusion but we believe in active dialogues to allow better understanding of Tranchess and its relevance in the TradFi x DeFi …
Last but not least — we are going multichain in 2022!!
As mentioned before, we are looking at the development of blockchain networks across.
Of course layer 2 remains on close watch. After completion of our next pool release, we will release more details on the follow up into multi chains.
I know that I’ve mentioned a lot
and as the saying goes….
Here’s a graphical view above of the past, current and future milestones ~
Gambit: 📣📣📣
ATTENTION: It’s come to our attention that while we are hosting this townhall, some fake Tranchess groups are dragging people in and lure them with “airdrops”.
BE CAREFUL OF SCAMS AND WATCH OUT! Report these groups to myself, the pawn team or King, and help us report them please! People want to leech off our community! 📣📣📣
King: That’s a new low. Regardless of how markets moved — scams are consistent. Sigh.
Gambit: Yes, please stay vigilant troopers! However, let’s not let them disturb the Townhall! Thanks for the amazing update @Tranchess_King
We hope you’re all as excited as we are about the upcoming releases. Regardless of whether the market goes up or down, we build!
Bullish market? Tranchess builds.
Sideways market? Tranchess builds.
Bear market? Tranchess builds.
With that, let’s move onto the Twitter AMA segment where we answer 6 questions collected from Twitter! The winners will be getting $100 CHESS each!
Q1: What are you going to do to solve the low liquidity issues of Bishop. It’s not a true “bear market” hedge due to premiums and rebalances. (33JIAN)
King: Thank you for the question.
It shows clearly that you had been following and studying the project closely! We always need community members like you to help us do better continuously.
We had also picked up this issue. It is unfortunate that the current combination of BISHOP and Swap hadn’t been able to perform up to our initial expectation, which is why we are currently developing a new version of Swap and Bishop. This had been one of the center of our weekly team discussion since December last year, and finally, as indicated on our roadmap, we are targeting to reveal a thorough revamp around the middle of this year.
We believe that this major update will largely alleviate the problems that our current model is encountering. Our view on BISHOP remains unchanged: it is a “stablecoin”-like asset that delivers consistent value through the bull and bear market. Needs a bit more developmental adjustments and a better backend model to prove itself. We are confident that it will be BISHOP’s time to shine finally — post revamp.
Gambit: Great question, and emphasize why the revamp will be a HUGE milestone!
Now onto the next Q…Q2: Does the global situation (russian war) will affect how Chess team operate? (In terms of building programs and roadmaps). How many people now work for Chess full time? (capcosmos)
King: On this topic — Our hearts goes out to all suffering under the current predicament. Hopefully a proper resolution would be ironed out and this can be over soon.
And to answer the question proper : For the sake of responsibility to our users, investors, and the Tranchess protocol itself, each time we update our roadmap, we consider the overall developmental capability of the team as well as the quality and security of the final release. Even if it means that we might face temporary complaints on the “slow” progress — it’s for good measures.
As a team working on a risk-diversification protocol, we also diversify our “risk exposure” to maintain a consistent development workflow. We currently have over 15 full-time team members, working in different time zones. So far, the Tranchess team operates normally, and we are still on track for timelines — For our planned deliverables.
Gambit: Q3: One of the most prominent issues with DeFi is translating the complex underlying technology and initiatives a platform is launching for investors to understand accurately. Does Tranchess have any plans to provide more education/resources to onboard newcomers to DeFi? (CheongCJ1)
King: We do! We definitely don’t want people to miss out on the great features and benefits we have to offer in Tranchess because they are potentially intimidated by the seemingly complex designs. As a team that has experiences from traditional finance space, we do find that not only are people in the DeFi world unfamiliar with some of the traditional finance terms, but more and more people in the traditional finance industry who want to participate in DeFi projects are also struggling with the specific terms and products used in the crypto world. We are also trying out different means of releasing educational content to see which one works the best. Soon, we will put out another intro video on Tranchess. Also, as mentioned, we are working on our own TranchessWiki. We hope TranchessWiki can serve as a supporting resource for both DeFi users and TradFi users. Needless to say, market education would not be achieved overnight, but we will continue to develop on this part.
Gambit: Lots of things to come for the community! And on we go!
Q4: You recently announced the integration of Chainlink! What benefit are your companies getting from this integration and what joint projects are you going to work on? Will this partnership give rise to growth and success? (pandalucu66)
King: The oracle we used prior for primary data feed and back-up are also great products. There’s no doubt about that. They have their own security precautions which, unfortunately, combined with ours, can occasionally produce an “overly protected” result which hinders the efficiency of our settlement in both the Primary market and Swap. Chainlink’s recent updates coincidentally resolved this pain-point, which is why we reached out to them in the first place. With the integration, which is now limited to the BNB fund, we are able to greatly enhance the stability and consistency of the everyday operations of our protocol, and most importantly, without sacrificing any form of security. Currently, for our BNB fund, there’s no extra 15-minute waiting time on daily settlement, and the NAV updates are more stable now during market turmoil. The integration is not completely over yet. We are testing some final features for our BTC and ETH funds, and we hope to complete the whole integration within the month.
We are in talks with various projects on collaboration. I think for any collaboration, the main purpose is always to create more value and convenience for our users, and to achieve a win-win situation for the protocols. As for the growth and success of Tranchess, it relies more on the continuous building, development and hard work of the team, the overall improvement of the blockchain industry, and of course, last but not least, the support and contribution from our beloved community!!
Gambit: We are constantly working on new partnerships and improvements — we ship non-stop for the troopers and are unstoppable with all of your support ❤️
Onto the next Q: Q5: On your leveraged product $ROOK, there is no forced liquidation risk involved? So can you explain a bit about how can you do that? (MappLe_212)
King: If you are familiar with how margin and leverage works in centralized exchanges, you would know that (and it’s OK if you don’t), users could put on a leveraged long position in BTC using margin. This offers a bigger profit if the BTC price goes up. However, in the event of a flash crash in BTC price, users could lose all their money before their equity drops to zero as a result of forced liquidation. In a flash crash where the market is empty of bids momentarily, they may also get liquidated at an extremely low price, which isn’t a clear reflection of the correct market price. Conversely, in a bull market, if BTC price went up significantly, users with leveraged positions would likely have paid a hefty “funding cost” for this position, which can range from 50–100% on an annualized basis.
ROOK token was designed to solve this problem for aggressive profit-seeking investors. It provides BNB, BTC, ETH leveraged exposures to investors, and uses the mechanism of Rebalance to actively adjust the leverage ratio Rook token holders are exposed to. Tranchess also filters out price anomalies by employing TWAP pricing as well as trusted decentralized oracles such as Chainlink. This means that, unlike centralized brokers and exchanges, we won’t step in and force to close your positions due to “potential price risks”, and Rook holders won’t be compelled to sell their assets at inaccurately placed prices. What’s more, the effective funding cost is always anchored by the USDC lending rate on Venus protocol, which is relatively stable even in a bull run.
Gambit: Definitely a bonus to protect people from being forcefully liquidated! Now for the last but certainly not least question of the twitter AMA segment…
Q6: I know that if those BNB aren’t added to our staked +nq/r they aren’t increased in number but are reflected in value on the nav. so that means the only way to get this value should be selling in the swap? (CloseClose90)
King: To answer this question, let me first explain what the additional BNBs are.
So the additional BNBs, or what we call “Alpha”, is an additional layer of rewards besides CHESS. The additional reward comes from Tranchess’s validator node on the BNB Chain.
Based on our fact sheet of the BNB fund, we’ve collected an additional 1548 BNBs from the BNB Chain as validator rewards till date. This ‘reward’ is added proportionally to the NAVs of you nQUEEN+ and nROOK+.
When users redeem their BNBs, they would also claim the additional rewards. So to answer the question: the additional reward is in the form of BNB and you will be able to get it when redeeming your nQUEEN+ or nROOK+. Of course, selling in Swap is also possible!
So for our BNB fund, the final APY is a combination of two parts: the CHESS reward just as the other two funds, and the additional BNB rewards.
Gambit: And with that, we conclude the twitter AMA segment!
Next, we have the live AMA. How this will work is that I will unmute the chat for ~1 min for people to ask their questions.
Remember: the BEST questions will get answered. It’s not about speed!
We will be collecting 4 different questions
**** Many many questions from the community! *****
Gambit: Wow! What a surge of questions! Give us a moment to scan through the questions to see which ones catch our eye!
King: i’m blinded by all the questions
@Tranchess_Gambit Could you please pick 4 of the best questions ~~~
Gambit: Working on it!
Q1: Do I harvest a fixed number of BTC/ETH/BNB after I locked CHESS and enrolled for the rebate? (@crypto_shang)
King: Nice pick because we noticed similar questions repeatedly asked in our TG chats, both in the English one and the Chinese one.
First of all, I wouldn’t call it “harvesting” BTC/ETH/BNB. I understand how people might consider locking CHESS the same thing as staking and single-asset mining, but it is not, which is why you WON’T get a fixed number of rebates every week.
Unlike CHESS emission and mining, which is distributed on a pre-determined schedule, the weekly rebate is calculated based on weekly accrued fees. This means, the rebate pool will be larger when there is increase in TVL/redemption/swap activities during the week, and smaller when the market is quieter.
Furthermore, the weekly rebate is allocated to all veChess holders, so your share of veChess also makes a difference. I would advise checking the “This week’s rebate pool” section under Staking for the detailed numbers from time to time on Tranchess.
Gambit: Wow fast typing @Tranchess_King
This is a great question…Q2: Why is the withdrawal process of BNB different from that of BTC and ETH? (shakespeed_123456)
King: Tranchess stakes its received BNBs into our own validator node for the additional layer of return. To “withdraw” from the validator node, the usual waiting time is 7 days. This is hard-coded in the BNB Chain. To expedite the withdrawal process, we keep a small cushion in the BNB fund, and nets the daily amount of creation and redemptions to make possible for most of the redemption requests to be claimed faster than 7 days.
We recently added a new line in the Redemption section to accommodate the concern. Now users would be able to see the current waiting time for BNB redemption, updated real-time for our users’ information.
Gambit: Q3: Where can I find more details about CHESS, like the circulating supply and the distribution schedule? (march206）
King: CHESS is on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. Both tracks and updates the supply and circulating details on CHESS constantly. As for the distribution schedule, you can go to the docs page on our website. In the CHESS section under FAQ, we keep a detailed schedule of CHESS emissions and update it constantly.
I would like to take this opportunity to repeat that we have recently added a governance feature. You can now use your veChess to vote and decide the CHESS emission split among all three funds on a weekly basis. For more details on this feature, please check out our recent post on Medium.
Gambit: Great! Next question….
Q4 : What is Tranchess’s plan and view for the bear market? （alicecheungyikwai）
King: Let’s wrap up today’s Townhall with this question.
Tranchess King (Will not DM you first), [10 Mar 2022 at 9:58:01 PM]:
I’m not going to touch too much on the current market condition, rather I want to elaborate a bit on our team’s view on the industry. Many members of our team have been involved in the blockchain industry since 2017 or even earlier. So, indeed, the ride of DeFi since 2020 has been very exciting, and is also monumental because it brought the general blockchain industry into the notice of mainstream & traditional finance world.
However, before the hype, the crypto industry was extremely quiet somewhat between 2018 and 2019. Many friends came with hope but left with despair, and whenever there was a gathering, people sat down and debated whether the continuous building, reflecting, and innovation still made sense.
I think the phenomenal growth in the past two years itself have answered directly to this question. As I have been saying on many occasions — Tranchess team is here for the long run. Any market (including bear time!) is a great time for us to absorb new knowledge, build, and improve …… And when the upswing comes — Both the Tranchess protocol and our team would be better prepared to create a new high for our ever supporting community!
And that concludes our AMA! Thanks everyone for being with us today.
We hope that with Townhall III — Sights and Perspectives are clearer and that everyone remains excited of what Tranchess has and will continue to offer in the future.
Thanks everyone for your patience and time spent with us for the last 2 hours.
Gambit: We will be reaching out to the community in a few days time over Twitter — To get your feedback and understanding of what you might want to see moving forward. This is to give everyone some time to digest the information after Townhall before sharing your thoughts. We will also contact all winners of the AMA questions directly!
Thanks everyone!
