Share this article

DeFi Protocol Tranchess Surpasses $1B in Total Value Locked in Two Months

The project has been rising quickly in DeFi Llama’s rankings of DeFi platforms.

Updated May 11, 2023, 3:39 p.m. Published Aug 27, 2021, 5:08 a.m.
(CoinDesk Archives) Tranchess has been quietly climbing the rankings and has made significant progress since debuting in June.
(CoinDesk Archives) Tranchess has been quietly climbing the rankings and has made significant progress since debuting in June.

The Tranchess protocol, a chess-themed decentralized finance (DeFi) asset management platform, has been on a tear ever since it made its debut in June.

Evidence of the popularity of the project, which is backed by investment firm Three Arrows Capital, can be found in its total value locked (TVL), which has risen to above $1.1 billion since the launch. TVL refers to the number of assets staked in a given protocol and is a way of determining popularity.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters

As of press time, the TVL across DeFi protocols exceeded $150 billion, data shows.

Rankings at the DeFi Llama dashboard show that Tranchess has risen from obscurity to 26th on the list in TVL, and it continues to climb the ladder. Two days prior, Tranchess was ranked 38th and is not far behind some better-known projects, including Alpaca Finance, Bancor and Cream Finance.

“The phenomenal growth in TVL shows that investors are keenly attracted to the token system providing varied risk-return solutions,” Tranchess co-founder Danny Chong told CoinDesk. “People of different risk profiles need a safer and simpler way to manage their digital assets.”

Tranchess had been under development for almost a year before it launched on June 24 on the Binance Smart Chain – a network that is designed for budding DeFi apps running smart contracts.

Tranchess’ platform offers such DeFi services as yield farming, staking, leveraged tracking and swapping, and also offers a unique structure of risk/return matrix from a singular primary fund that tracks a specific underlying crypto asset. For the moment, the underlying crypto is bitcoin with more kinds of coins expected to be added in the future.

Last month, the project raised $1.5 million in a seed round of funding that was led by Three Arrows Capital and Spartan Group with participation from other notable investors, including Binance Labs, IMO Ventures and LongHash Ventures.

Read more: Can Avalanche Keep It Up? DeFi Users Rush In as Incentives Roll Out


More For You

Pudgy Penguins: A New Blueprint for Tokenized Culture

Pudgy Title Image

Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.

What to know:

Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.

The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.

More For You

BNB rises 2.5%, nears $900 mark as prediction market growth signals utility expansion

BNB price chart showing a slight 1% increase to $882 amid growing institutional interest and technical consolidation.

A new physically backed BNB exchange-traded product launched on Nasdaq Stockholm, adding to existing investment options.

What to know:

  • BNB token climbed 2.5% to $89e, approaching the $900 resistance level, with increased trading volume suggesting fresh buying interest.
  • A new physically backed BNB exchange-traded product launched on Nasdaq Stockholm, adding to existing investment options like Grayscale's pending ETF filing.
  • BNB Chain saw significant growth in prediction markets, with platforms like Opinion Labs logging over $700 million in 7-day trading volume and cumulative trading volumes crossing $20 billion.