Interpretation of Hourglass and time-bound token TBT in one article

For most Crypto users, there are only two attitudes towards the coins in hand: Hold or Filp. More people choose the latter, not only because it is too difficult to be a Holder, but more importantly, the liquidity at hand is often taken up due to dead holding or lock-up, which greatly increases the opportunity cost of holding coins. How to solve this "eternal problem"?

Hourglass brought their solution: Time-Bound Tokens (TBT, Time-Bounded Tokens).

What is Hourglass?

Hourglass is a platform that provides TBT-related services, including staking and trading TBT.

So what exactly is TBT? In simple terms, it is more like a pledge certificate.

To give a simple example: you have pledged FrxETH-ETH on Curve and received LP tokens. At this time, you can pledge LP tokens on Hourglass staking. The platform provides users with pledge vaults with different maturity dates. When users pledge LP tokens into the vault, they will get Frx ETH-ETH TBT tokens corresponding to the pledge time and quantity as "receipts", and by holding TBT Receive Merkle airdrops as rewards.

After expiration, users can redeem LP tokens in the vault with TBT.

Hourglass also provides market participants with TBT trading services. Through the order book, users can purchase TBT tokens with different maturity dates at corresponding prices.

game of time

In the Crypto world, the opportunity cost is often the most expensive, and new hotspots and Fomo are generated every day. In this case, if most of the liquidity on hand participates in the pledge, the opportunity to get rich will undoubtedly be missed.

But more importantly, the pledger itself cannot participate in the logical game of token pricing power, either passively going up and down with the token price on a roller coaster, or hedging early to secure the minimum APY, but Hourglass brings the market A new dimension - time, this more option-like logic allows LP holders to choose their own strategies more calmly in the face of market fluctuations, and make corresponding feedback, while releasing the originally locked liquidity .

Of course, Hourglass and the TBT concept it proposed are not the "holy grail", and there are some problems and deficiencies in the agreement at this stage. The most important point is the liquidity problem of TBT - if the liquidity of the order book market is too poor, then users will not be able to avoid the risk of plummeting through transactions, and can only passively become Holders and hold tokens until the maturity date. Of course, the liquidity problem can be solved by introducing external market makers in the future.

But in any case, the emergence of Hourglass has brought a new possibility to the Defi sector, and this possibility has also been recognized by capital—just a few days ago, Hourglass completed a $4.2 million seed round of financing, led by Electric Capital , participating investors include Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Tribe Capital, and Hack VC.

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