Treasury Bills: An ApeSwap Community Success Story (With More to Come)

Inside ApeSwap HQ, there was apprehension and curiosity about the launch of our new Treasury Bills product. Would the launch be successful? Will the community see the value proposition and utility of the NFT?

Those questions were answered in the opening moments of launch, when the Treasury Bills sold out nearly immediately after they dropped. Our community ensured the success of the limited-edition NFTs, with heavy anticipation for the next round.

With the early success, we wanted to give our community a look at how the Treasury Bills were successful at launch, with a vision of the roadmap to come.

Why the Treasury Bill Presale was Successful

The launch of the Treasury Bill product was one of the most anticipated events of the year. Within minutes of launching, the discount turned negative — meaning the Treasury Bills price was higher than the price of BANANA — and purchases were disabled. This made many community members ask how the Treasury Bills can become unavailable so quickly. The answer lies in tokenomics.

The key utility of the NFT is selling Liquidity Pool (LP) tokens, and receiving BANANA tokens which vest over a 14-day period. There are three key incentives for purchasing the Treasury Bill NFT: The unique art procedurally generated with each mint (more on that later), the ability to earn BANANA tokens at a discount, and generating protocol-owned liquidity for the ApeSwap DAO to build long-term sustainability for the product.

How the Discount Rate Works

As Treasury Bills are minted, the BANANA discount rate slowly decreases until it gets to (or below) 0%. This has two primary effects: First, a lower discount increases the return on emissions (ROE) for the entire protocol, adding inherent value to the BANANA token. Second, once the BANANA discount crosses 0% and goes negative, Bill purchases are disabled until the discount rate becomes positive again.

When the community visits the Treasury Bills page, they will see the available LP combinations, the current price, and discount against the current BANANA market rate. If the discount is in the red, then it is currently at a negative rate and the buttons will read “Available Soon.” This acts as a countdown for buyers to anticipate the next release. Once the discount rate goes above 0%, the NFT — along with the earning utility from purchasing Treasury Bills with LP tokens — will be available for purchase.

What’s Next for Treasury Bills: New NFT Art

Building on the excitement, there’s much more to come for the project. Over the course of the next phase of the Treasury Bills rollout, the NFTs will feature new art, with each unique piece created procedurally at mint.

The ApeSwap team is working with the very talented iliana.ink, a Uruguayan artist who primarily designs tattoos. Her experience in ink offers a very creative eye to illustrate one-of-a-kind, unique NFTs that pay homage to designs from traditional paper notes. Although it is her first NFT project, we’re confident it won’t be the last.

At minting, each Treasury Bill NFT will feature six variables with 10 options each, creating over 100,000 original combinations which honor the trailblazers of cryptocurrency. Although the history of crypto is relatively short, the activity to further the industry by these trailblazers is immense. We are excited to acknowledge and celebrate our collective past, with an eye towards the future.

The six variables found on every Treasury Bill NFT are:

• The Certification: The frame color around the legend reflects the purchase amount, ranging from bronze to diamond for the highest-value NFTs.
• The Legend: The trailblazers of cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, and Lighting Labs CEO and founder Elizabeth Stark.
• The Location: Digital and physical spaces which created early use cases for cryptocurrency, such as The Silk Road, The Sandbox, and Switzerland’s Crypto Valley.
• The Moment: Key developments which helped to shape where the cryptocurrency atmosphere is today, including the Bitcoin hard fork, the moment when Tesla began accepting Bitcoin for purchases, and Bitcoin becoming legal tender in El Salvador.
• The Trend: Trends which developed further utility and use cases for cryptocurrency, including the HODL phenomenon, GameFi, and (naturally) NFTs.
• The Innovation: Innovations like the mining rig, stablecoins, smart contracts, and hardware wallets which helped drive cryptocurrency forward into everyday adoption.

The full range of the Treasury Bills NFT collection will launch on April 29, 2022. For those who want the special edition Obie Dobo NFT, it will be available for an additional seven days.

The Future of Treasury Bills

The launch of Treasury Bills was a successful case study in creating a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) through an NFT, and the ApeSwap community has played a key role in this success. The sale of Treasury Bill NFTs shows a demand for a liquid token, where the utility is purchasing BANANA at a discount (as needed based on the SAFT), which can be sold or traded at the discretion of the NFT holder.

Treasury Bills are also one of the first recorded cases of fundraising for community-focused projects after an initial Token Generation Event (TGE). By generating growth without mining more coins, we can work towards BANANA becoming a deflationary token, while returning rewards to NFT holders.

Finally, the Treasury Bill product is a complimentary solution to our liquidity mining products. While liquidity mining is a short-term liquidity source, the Treasury Bills represent a more robust and sustainable liquidity source for products. Our DeFi Hub approach to multi-faceted product offerings fulfills the needs of users interested in both short-term opportunities (like Yield Farming) and long-term opportunities (like the purchase of Treasury Bills).

The future of DeFi is a collective effort: it’s up to the greater community to bring ideas to life, and ultimately approve their proposed value proposition. The ApeSwap team couldn’t be more excited to build a new world of products in the crypto space, charting the future of DeFi with our incredible band of Apes.