An overview of TRUNK token
The new TRUNK
This article updated December 12, 2023
What you should know:
- TRUNK has no price limits; it trades like any other token now at market price.
- TRUNK is no longer being minted.
- TRUNK is becoming deflationary; the ELEPHANT treasury (BERTHA) will buy and burn TRUNK tokens as well as TRUMPET tokens.
- STAMPEDE and FARMS have been discontinued. You may migrate your STAMPEDE balance to TRUMPET and withdraw from FARMS.
- TRUMPET is the only way to earn yield with TRUNK now. TRUMPET is the use case for TRUNK.
- If you have TRUNK in your wallet, there is nothing that you need to do. You might use it to buy some TRUMPET, or buy or sell it like any other token.
- Since the TRUNK token is no longer inflationary, it will seek listings on many Centralized Exchanges (CEX) where it will be exposed to a much larger market and much greater capital. ELEPHANT token cannot be listed on a CEX because it needs to capture trading fees on the Binance Smart Chain, so TRUNK will serve as an advertisement for the entire ELEPHANT.Money ecosystem.
- Now is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with TRUNK, before it becomes available on any CEX. The TRUNK token has excellent holder distribution and liquidity.
- These changes were brought about for a number of reasons. Firstly, the project is USA based and US regulatory agencies have targeted dollar-pegged coins for scrutiny. Removing the peg mechanisms should deter unproductive regulatory risk. Secondly, although great progress was being made toward moving through the redemption queue, it was simply taking too long and would be a burden on the system until it was back to peg, which was likely to be a long way off. Third, by placing TRUNK on CEX’s, we get access to a much larger market. Fourth, by removing the $1 cap, limiting/burning supply, and increasing demand via CEX listings, the TRUNK token now has the potential to EXCEED the $1 price limit.
If you have more questions regarding the TRUNK updates or TRUMPET you may find these articles informative:
Feel free to ignore the information below. It is retained only for archival purposes and most of it is no longer relevant.
The old TRUNK
Note: TRUNK has been updated recently and much of the information below is now irrelevant.
Please note: While the TRUNK token is under peg on the PCS exchange, most buyers should consider investing their funds into other parts of the system such as ELEPHANT token, FUTURES, or NFTs. Doing so will likely provide more immediate rewards and will assist in the recovery of the TRUNK price much more rapidly than simply buying it outright. The consensus opinion is that ELEPHANT will gain in value far more quickly than TRUNK.
Learn what TRUNK is, what role it will play, and why you should probably ignore it (for now).
TRUNK is an over-collateralized stablecoin which can always be redeemed 1:1 for BUSD using the redeem function. When TRUNK is trading for less than $1 on the pancakeswap exchange, it may take a varying amount of time for a claim to work its way through the redemption queue, depending upon the quantity of funds in the redemption pool and the amount of redemptions owed.
The redemption pool is funded by the Elephant treasury, aka “Bertha”, and consequently as Bertha grows, the funds in the redemption pool also grow. When the redemption pool is fully funded redemptions should be nearly instantaneous; when the redemption pool funding is less than optimal, redeems take longer.
Full disclosure: Due to a flashloan attack on the Elephant treasury in April 2022 (which has been secured in such a way that it cannot happen again), treasury funds were temporarily depleted, and panic selling ensued, knocking the price of TRUNK off peg. In order to bring the price of TRUNK back to peg, the Elephant treasury value needs to rise to a level approximately 10x that of the circulating supply of TRUNK. Elephant.Money has been making significant strides toward that goal, but it is not there yet. Until that goal is reached, expect TRUNK prices on PCS to remain under $1 and volatile. As mentioned above, new investors would be wise to consider putting their funds into other, more lucrative options such as ELEPHANT token, FUTURES, or NFTs, helping to grow the treasury, until the TRUNK peg returns.
The original purpose of TRUNK was to serve as a utility token for STAMPEDE, which in its initial format was essentially a bond of sorts. STAMPEDE has since been updated to a more sustainable format that closely mimics FUTURES, except STAMPEDE uses TRUNK and the reward APR is adjusted to reflect the peg value. In other words, if TRUNK is off peg and trading for only $0.25, then the reward APR scales to 0.25x the maximum.
The adjustable reward helps keep TRUNK debt obligations low during the recovery phase while TRUNK is off peg, and encourages investors to shift their funds into more suitable product offerings within the Elephant.Money ecosystem.
As of this writing, there are three Elephant.Money offerings which make use of TRUNK:
- STAMPEDE — as mentioned above, this is much like FUTURES, but it uses TRUNK instead of BUSD, and offers a peg adjusted variable APR.
- FARMS — Trustless, lossless farming which allows you to earn TRUNK from staking your blue chip crypto, including stablecoins. We’ll explain why this is truly the end-game, checkmate move for retaining value in the Elephant.Money ecosystem.
- TRUMPET — a token which *only* rises in value — really!
Let’s touch upon them here; more in depth articles will be published for each of these soon.
STAMPEDE
STAMPEDE, as referenced above, is pretty much the same as FUTURES except that it uses TRUNK rather than BUSD, and the APR is scaled with the price peg. So if the price of TRUNK is at half peg, then the rewards are only half, etc. It’s also worth noting that your entire “Available” balance scales instantly according to peg, so for example if TRUNK were only trading at $0.20 and you had 100 TRUNK in “Available”, if somehow TRUNK would achieve peg instantly, your “Available” would instantly jump to 500 TRUNK, as though you had been receiving full APR for the entire duration of your deposit.
When TRUNK is at peg, STAMPEDE is the steady play which can generate a more predictable return over time regardless of market volatility. STAMPEDE pays you TRUNK in exchange for your time and deposits.
Although STAMPEDE probably isn’t the best choice to get into right now, current holders should consider the benefits of simply holding and waiting for peg to return as opposed to compounding or withdrawing at off peg prices. Withdrawing while under peg means that you not only take a hit on the price but also on the token count; if you can afford to let it sit and wait, that is likely your best option while under peg.
FARMS
Elephant Money FARMS are a step above your typical DeFi farm and are the end-game move which will help retain TVL in the Elephant.Money ecosystem. There is no longer any reason to lock in profits and take them out of the system, when you can instead simply convert half of your profits to a blue-chip crypto of your choosing (including many stablecoins), the other half to TRUNK, and farm them right here in a dual staking contract with no impermanent loss while earning a high yield.
The significance of this cannot be overstated; typically DeFi projects begin to suffer when users start taking profits and begin stuffing them into stables or bitcoin etc, reducing TVL. With Elephant Money FARMS, you can instead safely tuck your earnings into a trustless contract — meaning no one else has custodial access to the funds, only you — and keep earning TRUNK.
There’s really no reason to take funds out of the Elephant.Money ecosystem until you’re ready to spend them!
Furthermore, the FARMS aren’t merely a place to rest your Elephant.Money earnings, they’re also a huge incentive to bring fresh new funds into the system. Check out the list of coins which can be paired with TRUNK:
- BUSD
- BTCB
- ETH
- WBNB
- CAKE
- USDT
- XRP
- USDC
- DAI
- DOGE
- ADA
- MATIC
If you’re sitting on a bag of any of these, you could be earning TRUNK just by bringing them to the FARMS and pairing them with an equal value of TRUNK.
FARMS are a steady, reliable way to earn TRUNK from stablecoins and other blue chip crypto. They are trustless, lossless, and allow you to lock in some profits without taking your funds out of the project entirely. They pay less APR than FUTURES or STAMPEDE, however they allow you to claim rewards without affecting your principle, there are no fees to compound, and you may withdraw the full deposit at any time. If you consider FUTURES and STAMPEDE a high yield CD/BOND, it would be fair to consider FARMS as an interest bearing checking account.
Note: While TRUNK is off-peg, the APR’s are scaled down. APRs will increase as TRUNK returns to peg. In the near term, you will realize far greater rewards by investing funds in other parts of the system such as FUTURES. There is one other point to consider however; FARMS require you to deposit an equal USD value of both currencies in the pair, but your rewards are based upon 2X the TRUNK value. This means that you could deposit, for instance, $1000 USD worth of BUSD and $1000 USD worth of TRUNK (currently ~6.7k TRUNK) and your rewards would be based upon 2x 6.7k TRUNK, or 13.4k TRUNK. So when TRUNK returns to peg, you would be receiving APR on over $13k USD on a deposit which you only paid $2k for. When TRUNK displays a more steady upward price movement, I would expect to see the FARMS begin to fill up rapidly as buyers seek to take advantage of the price discount. Until then, you’ll find more generous rewards in other parts of the system.
TRUMPET
TRUMPET uses a unique variation of an “only up” contract which means that the value of the token goes only up, never down. I’ll go into greater detail of the mechanics behind this in another article, but the way this works is that you pay for TRUMPET tokens with TRUNK tokens, and some time later you redeem the TRUMPET tokens for TRUNK tokens, enjoying the rise in value.
There is a 5% buy and sell tax when you buy or redeem TRUMPET. This is designed as something that you buy and hold for a while, since you need additional transaction volume to pay their taxes and cause the price to rise before you can break even.
Normally I am reluctant to enter into these sort of contracts, for reasons I’ll explain in greater detail in a dedicated article, however Elephant.Money does something very special which makes this a fair play for all; Bertha, the Elephant treasury, supports the peg of TRUMPET by buying TRUMPET tokens then immediately burning them, leaving the additional TRUNK in the contract for all TRUMPET holders!
TRUMPET is a long term, set it and forget it play; the rewards will vary depending upon the volume of participants and the size of the Elephant treasury. You need to keep your deposit in long enough to earn back the taxes, however it could become very rewarding over time. If you’re already earning TRUNK from FARMS or STAMPEDE and don’t want to reinvest in those offerings, TRUMPET could be a good alternative.
Note: This is the only TRUNK offering whose rewards do not fluctuate with the TRUNK peg. Although new investors would be wise to consider other aspects of the system to direct their funds toward, anyone who is sitting on an unused bag of TRUNK may want to consider putting it in TRUMPET while they wait for it to return to peg.
Now that you know all about TRUNK, ignore it (for now).
As I’ve noted throughout the article, the rewards for these offerings are and will remain low while TRUNK is under peg on the PCS exchange; with the sole exception of TRUMPET, which won’t deliver better results until the Elephant treasury grows larger and thus provides greater peg support.
Unless you’re in a position to single-handedly move the TRUNK price back to peg yourself and absorb all of the selling pressure (you’d probably need 8 figures to do so) the smarter play is to invest in the parts of the system which are paying good rewards and increase the value of the Elephant treasury, such as the ELEPHANT token, FUTURES, or NFTs.
Once the Elephant treasury is approximately 10x the circulating value of TRUNK, the redemption pool will be funded well enough to push redemptions through rather rapidly, and at that point it seems likely that we should begin seeing a rising TRUNK price, eventually returning to peg value at $1, probably with a great deal of volatility along the way. Don’t be surprised if it touches and falls off peg several times before it finally sticks at or very close to $1.
Then, everything changes.
Once back to peg, TRUNK will change from being a liability to an incredible asset. At peg, all of the APR’s in STAMPEDE and FARMS will be fully restored, creating an increased demand for the TRUNK token. Minting new TRUNK will add value to Bertha, the Elephant treasury.
All of the increased value flowing into Bertha will squeeze the price like never before. If Elephant FUTURES and NFTs can be compared to a quad-turbocharged Bugatti Veyron, the minting of fresh TRUNK for FARMS will be like throwing a 1000 horsepower shot of nitrous oxide into the mix. The acceleration up the parabolic price charts will be unfathomable.
But we don’t get there from here without first building up the Elephant treasury via FUTURES, NFTs, and buying and holding the ELEPHANT token.
This is why you will often see the phrase in the telegram chat, “row in the same direction.”
If we all keep rowing toward a common goal using the tools provided, someday in the not too distant future TRUNK will make sense to buy into again; but that day is not today, and there will be plenty of time to make money in other areas of the system before doing so.
So, now that you know all about it, forget about it for a while and focus on the things which will help us all build a stronger Elephant.Money.
Disclaimer: None of this should be considered financial advice, I am not a licensed financial advisor and present this information for educational and entertainment purposes only. All crypto involves risk and typically proves most fun when you don’t invest more than you’re willing to lose. I may have a financial interest in the product(s) referenced and could benefit from your purchase.
