Technical update: new token and staking platform

It’s been almost three weeks since we announced the changes that we thought were needed to strengthen our protocol and our tokenomics. In these three weeks we had the time to refine our ideas, determine how we were going to implement these changes, and complete most of the actual implementation. As we are now done with the biggest part of these developments, with only the final review and some design improvements remaining, it’s time we share in more details how these changes are going to take place, and what they will mean in practice for Interlude’s players and investors.

We are aiming at Sunday 31 October for the opening of our new platform (eg for staking to be available).

Staking platform and reward

Users will be able to lock their tokens for the duration they choose. Our smart contract allows for any locking duration between 30 and 180 days but for simplicity our UI enforces 6 different duration, ie 30, 60, 90, 120, 150 and180 days.

The specific yield (APY) of our platform is calibrated so that locking for 6 months brings a 20% reward, with a corresponding quadratic reward for the other locking durations. This is equivalent to a 44% APY for a 6-month lock.

A new token: the TimeShell (TSH)

We’re introducing a new quantity in our protocol, that we call TimeShell (TSH). It’s a non transferable token that will only be used internally in our network. Players can get TimeShell (TSH) by staking their Shells (ISH)for a specific duration. The amount of TimeShell received will be proportional to the amount of Shells locked and the locking duration (hence the name: TimeShell = Time x Shell). The number of TimeShells a user get for each staked Shell depends on the lock duration: locking one ISH for 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, 180 respectively yields 1, 4, 9, 25 and 36 TSH. This corresponds to a quadratic increase, which means it is always better to lock longer. Locking for two months three times in a row only returns 12 TSH, compared to 36 if you lock directly for six months (so three times less).

Now the biggest change in our product: instead of paying in ISH, player will be able to pay for a scavenger hunt in TSH. The TimeShells will be burned whenever a player wants to start a scavenger hunt. Each of our events will also have a fixed fee to be paid in TSH (that will then be burned).

Why are we doing that?

After the last scavenger hunt it was obvious we needed to straighten our tokenomics, and the solution was of course to require players to lock ISH in order to play. The problem is, how long should the lock be? Our first idea was to implement a unique duration, but this would be too restrictive. So our next idea was to introduce a kind of equivalence between different locking duration, to be able to say “X ISH locked for x months is equivalent to Y ISH locked for y months”. And this is where the TimeShell comes from: we’re converting all these different lock types into the same unit. The result is that players can decide the amount of ISH and the duration they want to lock: for the same price they can lock less ISH for a long time, or more ISH for a shorter time.

For now TimeShells are not transferable, and can only be used to play with the same wallet. In the future we will introduce transfer mechanisms internal to the network. This is effectively how the betting/champion system that was alluded to in the previous article will be implemented in practice .

Early bird bonus

To reward long-term investors that will lock immediately and to incentivize early locking, we also introduce a bonus for the first users that will lock their tokens. This bonus will take the form of a multiplier for the staking yield, and will be a decreasing function of the number of ISH that have been locked on the platform. Note that it depends on the number of Shells that have been locked in the platform history, not on the number currently locked, eg the bonus will not increase when ISH are released.

The multiplier will be greater than 1 for the first 50 millions token locked on the platform, with a decreasing step function:

In practice this is equivalent to having six staking pools (the first four of ten millions tokens, then two pools of five millions each) with decreasing rewards like other platform do, except it allows for variable locking duration.

This means that being among the first to lock your ISH, and locking them for 180 days (the longest possible duration) will bring a 50% total yield. It may seem high but keep in mind it is only because of the temporary bonus. After the first 50 millions ISH have been locked we will go back to a 44% APY at 6 months, so a 20% yield over the period. So this can be seen like a one time reward, to reward long-term investors that have kept their ISH until now and don’t mind locking for a long time, because they believe in the project!

Take away

• Shell holders will be able to stake their ISH for the duration they choose, from 30 to 180 days, with an increasing APY set at 44% for a 180-day lock.
• On top of the staking reward, when locking ISH holders will receive a certain amount of a new token called TimeShell (TSH). The amount received depends of amount of ISH locked and locking duration. TSH will be used as a fee to play the scavenger hunt and participate to our events.
• We have set up a bonus for the first holders to lock their tokens. Users that lock when less than 10 millions of ISH have already been locked will see their earning multiplied by 2.5, which gives a 50% maximum total yield over the ISH locked (when locking for 6 months). The bonus will be decreasing for the first 50 millions token locked.
• The platform will be open on Sunday 31 October. Get your ISH ready if you don’t want to miss the bonus!

The next scavenger hunt will be announced soon, and will be the first to require a fee paid in TSH. Stay tuned! Thanks for reading, and as always, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date, and to join our Telegram to discuss the project or ask questions.