Thales platform expands to BNBChain
Positional markets for BTC, ETH, BNB, and CAKE have been deployed
Thales continues expanding its offering
Two months ago we shared with you the deployment of the Thales markets platform to Arbitrum, and today we are happy to announce the addition of a fourth chain where users can now find simple and easy-to-understand positional markets: the BNBChain.
Thales markets platform has been deployed so far on Optimism, Polygon, and Arbitrum, amassing an aggregated volume of almost 12 million USD and more than 26,000 trades.
The Thales community thought the BNBChain would be a good fit for deployment as an EVM-compatible chain (minimal code changes where required) with fast transactions and low fees boasting a vibrant ecosystem, so TIP-80 was discussed with the community, put to vote, and ultimately approved by the Thales Council.
It’s also important to note that with any deployment to a new chain a new SafeBox contract is deployed, which ensures protocol fees accrual currently being used to buyback and burn THALES tokens according to TIP-78.
Before going any further, let’s give a brief about Thales to the newcomers!
What is Thales and how does it work?
Thales is both a protocol and a platform, named after the famous Ancient Greek philosopher, where you can participate in different positional markets with easy-to-understand derivatives.
Wait a second, positional markets?
Positional markets are based on the Parimutuel structure where participants pool collateral in exchange for positional tokens. When a market resolves the winnings are divided by the holders of the winning positional tokens. Basically, every positional token is priced by Thales’ AMM (Automated market maker) between 0.1 and 0.9 USD, depending on the odds it estimates based on Black-Scholes algorithm. The lower the odds, the cheaper the positional token. When the market resolves, holders of the winning positional tokens can redeem each one for 1 USD. Losing positional tokens aren’t redeemable and hold no value.
This simple mechanism makes it easy to understand the risk and rewards of a position and is flexible enough to serve as a money lego for several types of markets, including crypto-asset prices, sports results, and real-life events.
For this BNBChain release, we decided to go with BUSD as collateral, making the firm commitment to support sUSD (Synthetix USD) if it’s ever available and liquid on the BNBChain network.
What novelty does Thales bring to BNChain?
We’ve talked about what Thales is, and how it works, but we also wanted to share what makes Thales different and where its edge is:
- Thales platform requires no registration. One web3 wallet is your passport to novel on-chain derivatives, you just need BUSD (as collateral) and some BNB (for transaction fees) and you are ready to go.
- The results for the settlement of markets are provided by Chainlink. Having an integration with the industry-leader in decentralized data feeds means one thing: Market results you can trust.
- When you buy positional tokens (UP or DOWN) there are no liquidations involved, you can only lose what you risk on each market and no more.
- You can sell back a positional token to the AMM and exit your position at any time up until 24 hours from the market target date, provided there is liquidity in the market. Basically, there’s a possibility for early exits or profit-taking.
- Thales DAO has an amazing community very involved in decentralized governance practices, with engaged members and very smart individuals which help iterate and improve the protocol and platform(s) every day. Resilience is the name of the game.
What crypto assets will be supported with positional markets on BNBChain?
For this deployment, we decided to focus on supporting 4 assets initially.
Besides having positional markets for the classic duo of BTC and ETH, we also started researching and looking for tokens that had:
a) A passionate community behind
b) A Chainlink feed live and ready to be used on BNBChain
So, based on these criteria the decision boiled down to BNB token (native token of BNBChain, used to pay transaction fees) and CAKE token (from the famous DEX Pancakeswap).
For those who are attentive, you might also notice that some ranged markets are also available in limited quantity, to trial the possible demand and usage for these kinds of structured products on BNBChain.
But that’s not all for this deployment!
We also added the possibility of buying “Discounted positions” from Thales AMM. If a position (be it UP or DOWN, IN or OUT) is underbought, then a discount is offered to incentivize users to take that side of the action helping to balance the AMM skew.
Discounted positions can range from 1 to 10% 👀
Pretty cool, eh? Let’s get into how to use the dapp.
How to interact with Thales dapp?
So far we’ve explained what Thales is and what its competitive advantages are, but that’s not enough for us. We want you to understand it and use it, so we’ve prepared these resources for a deeper dive.
If you are an avid reader you can check our comprehensive documentation.
Or if you prefer to learn by watching, you can check the next video tutorial with all the details on how to interact with the AMM.
Thales AMM walkthrough (UP or DOWN markets):
So, where can I participate in these novel markets on BNBChain?
You can check Thales markets here and select the BNBChain network on the top-right corner of the dapp.
We’ll continue building, iterating, and developing both the protocol and the products built on top of it. You are welcome to join us on this journey by jumping into Thales Discord and sharing with the community your ideas, suggestions, and feedback.
Let’s go for more!
