TinyChart at a Crossroads

Hi everyone!

Let me start by thanking everyone for reading this letter - it is truly incredible how much we’ve grown in just a couple of months. What initially was just a simple set of Python scripts (used for my own trading) is now one of the most visited sites in the Algorand Ecosystem.

This is mostly thanks to the support from our community. For this I can only be eternally grateful - your recognition of our efforts has enabled us to receive the development grant from the Algorand Foundation. I also want to thank the Foundation for their support in making the DeFi ecosystem thrive. In order to do that even better, we want to officially transform our work from a pet project into something bigger.

We have a few big changes to share.

The Hard Reality

As most of you know, the token for the project was “fair-launched”. I started pretty early on the history of Algorand DeFi and I thought that’s just how you are supposed to launch a token - most of the tokens shouldn’t be in my control, but instead in yours, the early backers. This was a great way to bring trust into a nascent platform that was originally going to be a pet project.

This is where we run into our first major obstacle - tokenomics. It has grown exponentially and the potential growth and opportunity have also expanded, in order for us to fulfill that potential, we need capital. Our current tokenomics handcuff that growth and ability to offer investors equity in the future of the project. As a consequence, we have become over-reliant on grants to continue progress (from the Foundation or from the community) which in turn has limited our ability to be more agile in the ever-changing DeFi world.

As an example of our limitations prior to the grant, we had one full-time developer working (myself) with no ability to fund the audit for TinySafe. This limited our ability to expand and speed up our development times. These restraints in addition to the changing grant system and overall less capital in crypto in general have combined to create a creditable threat to our projects ability to survive.

The combination of factors primarily driven by these unfavorable tokenomics have made TinyChart uninvestable and starved for the long term capital needed to reach its potential.

Two Choices

This leaves us with two very difficult choices:

1. LIMIT THE SCOPE

Keep the project to its current format (a website with a few DeFi tools attached to it), with an attempt at building systems to gain a higher stake on the ASA, as the last Hail Mary to reach a higher percentage stake (buybacks have not had a significant impact), or

2. RELAUNCH THE PROJECT

Relaunch the project so that we can build the product the community deserves and we can raise the capital to onboard the few core people we need to build up the project to its full potential, essentially re-launching with better tokenomics. We realize the only way to do this would negatively impact our early backers in the short term. We aim on taking a potential price hit now, for the potential upside in the future of a much bigger vision and for the long-term viability of the project.

I believe that relaunching this project is the only viable way to ensure that this project will survive and thrive the way it can.

What Happens Next

Taking all of this into consideration, we’ve decided on a new course of action:

REBRAND: TinyChart will be rebranded entirely to Vestige, a DEX-agnostic platform for Algorand DeFi tools & analytics. TinyChart.org will stay operational until all promised functionalities (e.g. wallet connect) will be implemented under vestige.fi - more info specifically about the rebrand will be released at a later point

TOKEN RELAUNCH: The Tinychart Token (TINY) will be relaunched with new tokenomics, its utility will remain as the token used for regulating access to premium site features and used as payment for future products (e.g. locker vaults)

TINYCHART API: The TinyChart API will be available for free to anyone with 1 minute of cache on most endpoints. Database-heavy endpoints will still be available for key owners. This enables most projects to use our data without needing to setup their own architecture.

It is already available under:https://free-api.vestige.fi/

ASSET LOCKER: Our asset locker (previously named TinySafe) and future projects will be directly integrated into Vestige to create a seamless experience for all users

The Tokenomics

Current TINY tokenomics:

In order to allow long-term growth, VEST tokenomics will fit this scheme:

● Vestige (VEST) token will be launched with a total supply of 100M (and six decimals)

● A smart contract will be used for the exchange from TINY to VEST at a rate of 1:3.
For every 1 TINY, holders will receive 3 VEST tokens

● All team members and the reserve wallet will renounce their stake - their balances will be added as a bonus to community incentives (giving everyone around a 12% boost to their token value)

● After 3 months the remaining tokens in the exchange will be airdropped to all the VEST holders proportionately to their holdings (with a snapshot taken at an undisclosed time nearing the end of the exchange)

● All holders that exchanged their TINY to VEST will receive a Tiny Mug NFT which will grant bonus (selectable) site theme

● 70M of the newly minted token will now be in team-managed wallets:

● 15M will go to a long-term reserve account, accessible 50% in 3 years and 50% in 5 years from now

● 25M will be used as team equity for development (with 2 year vesting periods, of which the first release will only be done after delivering our current grant objectives)

● 5M will be used as liquidity provision divided between currently available DEXes

● 10M will be used as extra incentives to the community through different LP reward systems over a period of 2 years in 4 slots of 25% every 6 months

● 10M will be used to raise capital as seed investment (with long-term vesting period attachments)

● 5M will be used for general ecosystem development after our grant fulfillment (e.g. CEX listings, second round capital raising)

I believe these improved tokenomics will allow us to grow and become one of the biggest projects in the ecosystem. It will allow us to expand our team and ensure the project is set for a much more scalable future. We have spent countless hours discussing all of the possible scenarios and fully believe with all things considered this is the path we need to take. It will present challenges along the way and we hope that everyone who has believed in us thus far will continue believing in our vision moving forward.

Recent Developments

I would also like to give more details as to what we’re developing and some partnerships we have already closed.

First on the partnership side, I’d like to take the opportunity to say that we’ve closed an official partnership with Reach; they will be taking on an advisory role in the company, as well as giving us extra support to onboard more developers into the Algorand ecosystem. Not only that, they’ve also agreed to be our security partners moving forward and will be the company in charge of performing the audits for our services. There are four already planned on different stages of development:

1. Liquidity & asset locker

Our liquidity locker (previously named TinySafe) which will go through a rebrand as well. This project is already done and we’re certain that it will hit MainNet sooner rather than later.

2. Staking and launchpad contracts

We also want to take the opportunity to announce that we’re working on trustless staking and launchpad contracts, so that other projects can harness our site to bring the spotlight to their own projects without requiring middleman approval.

These trustless contracts are about to be done, and should be TestNet ready at the start of Q2, hopefully hitting the MainNet as soon as they pass the auditing process. We want to do this as a way to encourage individual grass-roots projects to go out there and start building, having access to crowdfunding mechanisms and token distribution incentives without needing to spend time developing them, or without paying exorbitant fees in the process.

We believe that creating this suite of three services will jumpstart the Algorand ecosystem. As a phase two, we want to vertically integrate all of these three projects into a single cohesive service so that EVERYONE can launch their own thing on Algorand without suffering from what we did (uneven token distribution, lack of capital access, and lack of initial trust).

3. DEX aggregator

Lastly, I’d like to announce that we’re working on an off-chain first DEX aggregator that will ensure you’ll always get the best deal when swapping. This aggregator will go through three phases of development:

● Naive aggregator: it will only compare the input trade on all available DEXes and give you the best

● Optimized aggregator: It will split your trade into different DEXes and give you an optimized version of it, allowing for optimization when it comes to slippage and price impact

● Fully-Decentralized aggregator: It will work as an on-chain protocol, allowing ANYONE to optimize their trades without needing to use our servers. This is currently not possible on Algorand, but we believe it should soon be, and as soon as it is, we’ll build it

I hope you understand the reasoning behind our decisions. Please join us in our Discord server where me and Bunsan will answer any of your questions. We will meet have a live Q&A event after Easter holidays.

Once again thank you for your continued support - we’ll do our best to deliver on these achievables and to move forward to become one of the cornerstones of the Algorand ecosystem.

Greg Raczek, Founder