Introduction
After months of hard work by the Ease team, the new $EASE token has launched today. This marks the final step in the transition from Armor to Ease.
It’s much more than a simple change of tokens; the new $EASE token and its staked version $gvEASE have innovative utility and play central roles in the Uninsurance system.
Tokenomics
General
The $EASE token is a tradeable Ethereum-based (ERC-20) token with a finite supply. It offers various levels of utility in the Ease DeFi Uninsurance system.
Supply
In numbers the $EASE supply stays the same as the $Armor supply, with some slight differences:
- Originally 1 Billion $Armor tokens were minted.
- 250 million of those were sent to the Ethereum burn address, leaving 750 million as the maximum supply.
- Therefore 750 million $Ease tokens have been minted as well, allowing for a 1:1 swap of all current and future circulating $Armor tokens.
- The contract allows for additional minting of $Ease tokens, for a max of 250 million extra tokens. This would effectively bring the burnt tokens back. The maximum total supply could therefore be 1 billion.
This can only happen after a DAO vote, the team itself cannot mint extra tokens. - No changes have been made to existing vesting and other allocations.
- The Ease DAO will control the majority of the tokens (400 million).
$gvEASE
The $EASE token can be staked in which case it becomes $gvEASE. The ‘gv’ stands for Growing Vote, as it increases with time.
It has some special qualities:
- $gvEASE is not tradeable, but can at any moment be withdrawn to $EASE again. There is only a week delay before the $EASE tokens can be withdrawn and traded.
- The longer $EASE is staked, the larger the amount of $gvEASE becomes.
- If it is withdrawn to $EASE, the original $EASE amount is returned, and the acquired extra $gvEASE is lost.
- It can be used to stake on chosen Uninsurance vaults, in which case a possible payout (only in case of a hack) is lowered.
- If a user has no funds in a vault, then they can also lease out their $gvEASE, for bribes.
These latter two scenarios are explained below.
Staking $gvEASE
Ease DeFi’s Uninsurance vaults offer DeFi cover without any premiums, the only time there might be a charge is when a hack takes place. No hacks? No charge.
This creates a much lower cost for DeFi users. By using the brand new Dashboard, users can use their $gvEASE to stake on 1 or more Uninsurance Vaults. This way, if a hack occurs, they get charged less.
This also offers a great chance for popular protocols such as Aave, Convex, Curve, Sushi etc to offer their users extra protection. They can also stake on their own vaults, which will mean a lower payout (maybe even 0%!) for all of their users that enjoy free DeFi cover on their holdings!
Leasing & Bribing
Some $gvEASE holders will not need lower costs on vaults in case of a hack. Maybe they currently have no investments they need to cover, or their vaults already have a very low possible fee.
In that case, they can lease their $gvEASE tokens to anyone who posts a bribe.
Bribes are posted to specific vaults and are denominated in $EASE tokens per week.
For example:
- Convex could deposit a bribe for their cvxsteCRV vault for 1000 $EASE/week for 4 weeks..
- Everyone that has leased their $gvEASE tokens during any of those weeks will automatically get a pro-rata share of the bribe.
- In return, the briber (Convex in this case) uses the bribed $gvEASE to stake on the specific vault.
This can be a great way for protocols to lower the possible fees on their protocols. For users, it is an Easy way to earn yield on their $gvEASE tokens.
What can’t be done with the bribed $gvEASE is to vote on proposals!
DAO and Governance
The Armor DAO will hand over all assets and responsibilities/ownerships to its newly created mirror, the Ease DAO. The DAO will be in control of the vaults and the uncirculated tokens. Every transaction that the DAO does needs to be preceded by a proposal and a vote.
This is also where the “Growing Vote” of the $gvEASE tokens comes in, as the $gvEASE tokens are quite special:
- The longer $EASE holders stake their tokens, the more $gvEASE they get, which they can use to vote on proposals.
- This means that committed Holders will have a larger influence than new $gvEASE holders.
But what about the leased tokens? Can’t bad actors just bribe a lot, thus temporarily owning a lot of $gvEASE? Can they influence votes that way?
No, as one other great aspect of the new $gvEASE token is:
- They can be leased out to bribers, who can then stake them on a specific vault.
- Those bribed tokens can’t be used to vote on DAO proposals!
So, how does one acquire $EASE and $gvEASE?
Obtaining $EASE & $gvEASE
The token swap
As announced earlier this month, existing $Armor and $vArmor owners can swap their tokens to $EASE and $gvEASE. Please read the details about the different types of tokens and the swaponomics here, but basically:
- It is a simple 1:1 swap (you get 1 $EASE for every $Armor).
- It is open-ended, there is no hurry, though the sooner you have $(gv)EASE, the sooner you can enjoy all their benefits.
- Both $Armor tokens can be swapped for both $EASE tokens. Note that the $vArmor -> $gvEASE swap is special, so do read our dedicated Knowledge Base about it.
- Those who had staked $Armor to get $vArmor will receive extra $gvEASE, but only if the $vArmor gets swapped to $gvEASE directly.
The Token Swap page is located here: https://app.ease.org/token-swap
Once you connect your wallet that contains your $Armor and $vArmor tokens, you will be able to swap them easily and quickly. Please check the Token Swap announcement post or the Knowledge Base How To Swap article for more details and instructions.
Do you still have questions? We created a special contact form, so do contact us if you:
- have questions about the token swap
- encounter any difficulties swapping
- would like your $gvEase to be sent/connected to another wallet than the one your $vArmor is
Exchanges
The Ease Treasury will remove the current $Armor liquidity on the Decentralized Exchange (DEX) Uniswap. The tokens will be swapped to $EASE and ETH/$EASE liquidity has been started on Uniswap V3. The pool is here, you can add your own liquidity as well and earn swap fees! If you just want to trade $EASE you can go directly to the Uniswap $EASE/ETH Trade page here.
The team is talking with the current Centralized Exchanges (CEX) to see how we can best arrange a token swap on their exchange. There will be separate announcements on that later.
Until then, one can also simply buy $Armor tokens on the CEXs and DEXs and swap them.
Next steps
This is only the end of the first phase of Ease DeFi. Now that the $EASE and $gvEASE tokens have launched, the team can continue working on the other projects in the Ease DeFi ecosystem.
Expect more tools to make you safer, information and thought pieces to make you wiser, and even easier ways to buy and protect your DeFi investments!
