Learn about Crypto, DeFi and ease.org DeFi cover
< All Topics
Print

The $Ease token: what is it, how to get it and use cases

Updated

The $Ease token

The $Ease token is the base of the Ease DeFi ecosystem. Ease and its staked version $gvEase have many uses for DeFi users, Protocols and the Ease DAO.

The tokenomics, how to obtain it and the following uses will be explained in this and related articles:

  • $Ease can be staked in which case it becomes $gvEase.
  • $Ease can be used to bribe $gvEase holders to lower the payout in case of hacks.
  • $Ease can be traded on DEX’s, $gvEase can’t be traded, holders need to withdraw to $Ease first.
  • $Ease can therefore be bought, but it can also be earned through Ez-token farming, Lease Farming and through leases and bribes.
  • $gvEase can be used to lower the payout in case of hacks.
  • $gvEase can be used to vote in the DAO (“gv” stands for Growing Vote).

Tokenomics

General

The $EASE token is a tradeable Ethereum-based (-20) token with a finite supply. It offers various levels of utility in the Ease  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  vote, the team itself cannot mint these extra tokens.
  • No $Ease tokens (or $Armor) are vesting
  • 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  • $gvEASE is not tradeable, but can at any moment be withdrawn to $EASE again. There is only a week delay before the $EASE tokens can be withdrawn and traded.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  • If it is withdrawn to $EASE, the original $EASE amount is returned, and the acquired extra $gvEASE is lost.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. Click the links for detailed articled about these functionalities.

How to obtain $Ease

$Ease can be obtained in various ways: buying, earning and swapping.

1: Buying $Ease:

You can buy $Ease directly on Uniswap here, using any other ERC-20 token/currency such as USDT, USDC, DAI, ETH, wBTC etc. Due to the ongoing safety concerns regarding Centralized Exchanges (CEXs) and their unreasonable demands regarding “listing fees”, we are not currently pursuing this.

2: Earning $Ease

You can earn $Ease in various ways:

3: Swapping $Armor to $Ease

The $Armor token was the governance token for the $Armor DAO. It didn’t have other uses, but all $Armor holders can easily swap their $Armor and staked $vArmor 1:1 for $Ease or staked $gvEase. See the swapping announcement and full instructions here.

What are the use cases and demand for the $Ease token?

The $Ease token offers three use cases to those who hold it:

  1. Voting on the Ease DAO
  2. More direct control over the coverage in the Ease Uninsurance P2P ecosystem
  3. Farming weekly $Ease rewards in $Ease, by leasing the token’s utility to other users

1: Using the $Ease token to vote

The $Ease token is different from other voting tokens. It’s inspired by Curve’s veToken model, but turns it on its head!

Depositing the tradeable $Ease in the protocol gives you the untradeable gvEase. “Gv” stands for “growing vote”.

The Ease tokenomics model doesn’t restrict users by locking their investments. gvEase holders are free to withdraw from this opportunity at any moment with just a 7 days waiting period.

Users are incentivized to keep the tokens deposited though: the amount of gvEase linearly increases (grows) with time! Users that leave their $Ease deposited for longer periods of time receive more voting power.

Thus, gvEase achieves three important effects:

  1. It makes the Ease DAO more resilient to attacks since an attacker must commit a purpose-defeating amount of time before trying a harmful move
  2. Its steady growth with time discourages centralization as there’s no benefit to building on top of the protocol
  3. Long-time and committed holders have a bigger influence on DAO proposals

The Ease DAO is a powerful tool that offers deep control over the ecosystem. Holders and protocols alike can use $Ease to vote on:

  • their preferred protocols to join the ecosystem
  • vault capacities, which manage the ecosystem risk
  • changing token emissions or buying them back
  • starting to charge fees, profit sharing, etc.

The DAO also accepts or rejects the validity of hack events that concern Uninsurance users. Holding $Ease in order to have a say in this process is of direct interest to every coverage user.

$Ease provides all these benefits while allowing users maximum flexibility.

2: Using the $Ease token for a truly free coverage

By staking gvEase on an Uninsurance vault, users lower the cost of coverage for the assets in that vault in case of a hack. And even protocols themselves can do the same to protect their own users!

Again, Uninsurance is free while no events are happening: there are no premiums. Only when an event occurs, users will pay exactly what it costs to cover the assets. But gvEase gives users the power to discriminate which vault will pay less to recuperate the loss.

Every user is free to choose which vault to stake their gvEase on. The vault with the most gvEase staked on will pay the least to recuperate the other vaults in an event.

It’s absolutely possible if a vault has enough gvEase staked on it, to be charged 0% for coverage when a hack occurs.

Note that no gvEase is consumed in the process. This means, that simply by depositing enough $Ease, users may not only enjoy truly free coverage for their DeFi assets but also offset the expense it’s due. That’s why it’s so advantageous for DeFi protocols too to hold and stake $Ease.

3: Farming: using the $Ease token to earn money

Token holders can lease their gvEase to other users who need its power to offset coverage costs on the vaults they’re interested in, for a certain period of time.

This $Ease farming is based on bribes, which are paid by interested users or even by covered protocols themselves. This means, that the value of the farming rewards comes from outside the ecosystem, which avoids inflation and dilution of the token supply.

Many DeFi farming protocols create inflation by emitting or even creating additional tokens for rewards. Thus they put DeFi farmers in the uneasy position to undermine their own business every time they produce profits. In contrast to this, the $Ease token has a capped max supply and bribers offering rewards will need to buy $Ease tokens on the market.

The more people that need to borrow gvEase utility, the more rewards $Ease farmers receive. In effect, the tokenomics model offers the benefit of having no inflation, with the compromise of having a harder-to-predict APR%.

The $Ease token is rewarded to users based on the amount of gvEase they lease. But gvEase grows linearly with time after the initial deposition of $Ease (up to double the amount). Thus, users will receive a more significant portion of the rewards the longer they hold their $Ease with the protocol.

Our tokenomics model always incentivizes, never locks assets or restricts flexibility.

Why borrow the $Ease token utility?

An economic way to protect yourself

Borrowing gvEase token utility by bribing existing holders with rewards gives users additional flexibility.

Adverse security events may or may not happen. One of the biggest drawbacks of traditional premium-based insurance models is that most of the time, users pay for coverage without an event taking place. In other words, in almost all cases users pay for a service they didn’t need in the end.

If users think there’s an increased risk for certain protocols at a certain time, they can borrow gvEase utility from holders who already have sizeable positions. That way users have the flexibility to enjoy reduced possible coverage costs on the vaults that interest them.

Protocols can protect their users

Protocols themselves (Aave, CRV, Sushi etc) can actively protect their users by borrowing extra gvEase and staking it on their own vaults. That way, even in a case of a hack, their users might pay nothing or very little.

However, sizeable stacks of gvEase may not be easy to amass in the future. The $Ease token is built to incentivize long-term holding as much as possible.

  • The low incentives to sell $Ease,
  • coupled with the time required to amass a sizeable gvEase stack,
  • together with the capped Max Supply…

…means that borrowing gvEase may someday be the easiest way for most users to apply its utility. In order to obtain gvEase, higher $Ease bribes will need to be posted, which will increase the flywheel effect. If it would be cheaper to buy $Ease off the market and deposit it themselves, rather than borrowing it, then they would do so, increasing the price of $Ease.

You can’t borrow DAO votes!

Only $Ease depositors can use one important $gvEase utility. You can’t rent DAO voting. Only actual gvEase hodlers can vote.

Though you can rent gvEase to lower costs in case of a hack, you can not vote with those rented gvEase. So you can’t rent extra votes to pass a proposal.

Early $Ease adopters are 2 steps ahead

Given the low incentives to sell and high incentives to hold long-term, Ease incentivizes early token adopters the most.

The only real incentive to sell $Ease would be when cashing out rewards from $Ease farming. This way, $Ease liquidity availability is dictated by the natural free market forces and the allure of the token utility.

With all of its usefulness and its powering of an innovative coverage model that strives to be a game-changer in DeFi, $Ease is one of the tokens you don’t want to miss.

Can you make a 1000x on your long-term investment in $Ease? We can’t give financial advice or promises and this explanatory article should not be seen as such.

But the team can promise that they will stay true to themselves and continue doing what they love. The decision to join them in our quest to cover every single dollar in DeFi is up to you.

Notes:
* Nothing in this educational article is financial advice.
* Some parts of this Knowledge Base Article are taken from this dedicated blog post about the Ease token and the opportunities it represents.

Tags:
Table of Contents
Scroll to Top