Changing the Crypto Landscape: A New Era With ‘Reflections’

First and foremost, I’d like to discuss the concept of reflection in the context of cryptocurrencies, before looking at the centralised exchanges (CEXs) and how they’re going to have to adapt to accept reflection tokens as they become more common. Furthermore, I will discuss the challenges that CEXs have in onboarding reflective tokens, the solutions that have been developed, and how reflective tokens have the potential to change the way cryptocurrency is used throughout the world. In addition, I will talk about SafeMoon, which was the first project to employ reflective tokenomics; and finally, I will review Tiki Token, which is the first BNB redistribution auto-claimed token.

The Reflections Concept in Cryptocurrency

Yield farming, staking, and liquidity mining have all swept the market in recent months, due to the significant growth the DeFi ecosystem has experienced. With investors generating interest on their tokens by simply ‘locking’ them as deposits for certain periods of time. While in theory this is appealing, these techniques have one disadvantage: irrevocable loss of the asset. Even if you earn interest on your crypto assets, if the value of the underlying token changes dramatically, the value of your tokens will rise far less than if you simply retained them. As a result, we’ve seen widespread acceptance of reflective tokenomics, often known simply as reflection, a distinct idea that aims to alleviate the difficulties associated with farming rewards. The reflection concept is volume-dependent. This mechanism alleviates the negative sell pressure on the token caused by early holders liquidating their holdings. The reflection mechanism also incentivizes holders to retain their tokens in order to earn larger returns that are proportional to the holder’s token holdings. The reflection system actually doubles the profit for holders that keep their tokens the longest.

Reflection works by charging a penalty tax (usually in percentages) to each transaction and distributing the fee to all token holders according to the percentage of assets they are holding. Holders do not need to stake or wait for the fee to be delivered. Fees are awarded by smart contract and are in most cases immediately reflected in the holder’s balance as tokens, or more recently as BNB as we will discover a bit later in this paper, when we look at the Tiki Token. There is no action required at your end other than to keep the token in a wallet that you control.

Real Decentralisation

The majority of DeFi business models need users to stake or deposit their tokens in a contract in order to receive a yield. In addition to generating yields from transaction fees, reflective token holders can make use of their tokens in third-party lending, yield farming, and other smart contract related activities, allowing them to earn even greater yields. A new set of techniques is provided by the reflection smart contract capabilities to enable staking contracts to simply determine the fees received by each holder over any length of time, even when money is pooled together. This is a significant advancement because it allows for direct staking of tokens, as well as double yield generation.

Major Innovations in Reflection Tokenomics

New innovative features have continued to spring up daily with this new tokenomics. Let’s examine a few of them here; the first serves a dual purpose for holders by mopping up tokens from both buyers and sellers, and adding them to the liquidity pool, to establish a stable price floor for the token. Secondly, the penalty function, can be used as an arbitrage-resistant mechanism to ensure that the token’s volume remains stable as an incentive for holders. In principle, the additional liquidity pool provides stability by adding the ‘tax’ to the token’s total liquidity, therefore raising the token’s overall liquidity and sustaining its price floor. Lastly, the burn function, which serves to create scarcity resulting in a decrease in token supply.

CEXs Involvement To Accept Reflective Tokens

Reflective tokens like Tiki Token and SafeMoon are the two main tokens I will be looking at in detail much later. The concept underpinning reflection in cryptocurrency is as building blocks for new and existing crypto projects around the globe. Reflections are a component of the ‘tax’ that we pay for using the token. This ‘tax’ is referred to as its tokenomics, a certain percentage of the activities that goes on in the token (buy, sell, or transfer) is dedicated to these tokenomics. For example, SafeMoon and Tiki Token charge a 10% and 15% fee respectively; in SafeMoon, half of it is allocated to liquidity, while the remainder is allocated to reflections. Whereas in Tiki Token, 10% is redistributed and 5% goes to the liquidity pool. The percentage going to holders is shared equally between all holders according to their stake in the token. If you own 2% of the token for example, you will receive 2% of the amount redistributed to holders. The burn wallet which contains the most, receives the most reflections and will gradually expand in size.

This is how it technically works. However, reflective tokens have exploded in popularity and are currently available on a growing number of exchanges (with more to come), such as SafeMoon. These exchanges are increasingly interested in these tokens, driven by the growing desire from token holders to make these tokens simpler to purchase on more centralised exchanges, such as Binance, Bitfinex, and others. Developers will have a key decision to make, either increase the simplicity of purchasing these tokens (by adding additional exchanges) or lose the race entirely. It appears they have decided on increasing the number of exchanges and spreading these tokens to a larger number of individuals. Was it the best decision? In my opinion, yes.

Pain Points for CEXs to Onboard Reflective Tokens and Their Solutions

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a blockchain-based financial infrastructure that has lately attracted a lot of interest. The concept typically refers to an open, permissionless, and highly interoperable protocol based on public smart contract platforms, such as the Ethereum, Tron or the Binance Smart Chain. Smart contract based tokens are the champions of reflective tokenomics and as a result, a transaction does not need a third party or an intermediary to be executed. This has made it possible for users to trade one kind of token for another without the need for an intermediary; while other users who stake their tokens in liquidity pools earn a portion of the transaction rewards. DeFi that is anchored on smart contracts has brought about innovations like atomic swaps, autonomous liquidity pools, flash loans, zero-knowledge proofs and other numerous innovations demonstrating this ecosystem’s enormous potential. However, for CEXs to onboard this new tokenomics, and avoid the teething problem some CEX’s have with SafeMoon, they will have to solve the following onboarding challenges:

1. Centralization (intermediary)
2. Autonomous liquidity pools
3. Atomic swaps
4. Static accumulation

For CEXs to evolve to accepting reflection tokens, it is imperative that they establish all the possible ways to onboard reflection tokenomics onto their systems. However, solutions are being found, such as SafeMoon being listed on a CEXs. They can keep track of all the exchanges, and make the fees appear to users on entrance to, and exit from the CEXs; or they can follow Bitmart’s example by accumulating rewards due to ‘HODLers’ and pay them at a set time of the month.

How Reflection Can Change How Crypto Work Worldwide

The strong case to be made in favour of reflective tokens is the key problem it solves for DeFi, the tokenomics concept, and its frequently extraordinarily high token supply that are mostly quadrillion in number; plus the reflection token dynamics, which has the advantage of preventing whales from simply exploiting DeFi projects with low token supply. It also attempts to do this in part by preventing early players from dumping their tokens at the start of the token’s price discovery period. While there are problems associated with DeFi smart contracts such as market risk and price risk, risk associated with trust, security vulnerability, and economic risk associated with its design. However, reflection tokenomics is suited to addressing these issues and mitigating the associated dangers. Consider how reflective tokens mitigates each of the risks I’ve outlined above:

Price and market risk: there are inherent dangers of crypto currency trading as in any open market. No one can guarantee a certain yield or can remove this danger.

Risk associated with trust: there are no monies available to the community that may be mishandled. There may be no need for initial coin offering or pre-sale, and no crowdfunding. There are no treasuries or banks.

Security vulnerability: fee generation and distribution are integrated at the centre of the smart contract. Everything is written in the code and accessible and readable by everyone. Nothing’s hidden, everything is transparent.

Economic risk associated with design: earning yield through network fees is a proven technique of generating revenue.

However, if cryptocurrency continues to experience the surge it has seen in last decade, particularly over the past twelve months characterised by the bull run, it’s de rigueur for major players like the CEXs to move in the direction of tokenomics protocols which are designed and implemented in order to discourage the sale of tokens and encourage ‘hodling’. This will encourage traders to rethink their decisions before selling the assets, and it will provide an additional benefit to existing asset holders. This technique seeks to prevent the pump and dump we have seen so far in the crypto market, that can result in significant price fluctuations and possible market collapse in the future.

SafeMoon Was the First Reflection Token That Introduced This Tokenomics

By offering reflections, SafeMoon recognises and compensates long-term holders. Traders who sell, purchase, or transfer tokens will face a 10% penalty tax on their transactions. The remaining 5% of this tax is subsequently divided between holders as follows:

1. All holders get tokens redistributed according to their holdings.
2. The burn address is a holder: it gets 41% of the 5% reflections, resulting in a 2.055% burn.
3. The remaining 2.95% is distributed proportionately to all investors based on their current holdings.

Five per cent goes to the Pancake Swap for liquidity pools. So ideally, 5% of the total is allocation goes to reflection rewards, while 5% is allocated to liquidity pools. Half of the 5% that is delivered to liquidity pools is converted into BNB in order to maintain the liquidity of the SafeMoon and BNB pairs. A portion of the transaction fees and a portion of the penalty transaction fees is distributed to the current token holders. SafeMoon is composed of three fundamental components:

1. The reflection: a fee is imposed on SafeMoon transactions at this point, and the fee is subsequently distributed among token holders.

2. The second component is where a fee will be paid on transactions that is distributed to various liquidity pools on platforms such as SushiSwap, PancakeSwap and a host of others.

3. The third component is a token burn that occurs at the conclusion of each transaction.

SafeMoon is built on the Binance Smart Chain, which employs proof-of-authority as its consensus mechanism to achieve its goal of decentralization.

Tiki Token: the First BNB Redistribution Auto-Claim Token

Tiki Token ($TIKI), the largest BNB reflection token and the only one that enables auto-claim, has emerged as a result of the reflecting tokenomic principles. Maintaining a positive balance of $TIKI tokens in your wallet is all that is required to earn BNB. This is part of the next generation of a Binance Smart Chain yield-generating contracts. Instead of receiving tokens as compensation, you will receive BNB instead. The token contract is based on a static incentive structure in which 15% of each transaction is divided into two parts: the first is allocated to the token contract, and the second is allocated to the blockchain. Around 10% of BNB is redistributed to holders, with the remaining 5% utilised to expand the liquidity pool exchange’s capacity. The Tiki Token contract utilises a static reward system in which 15% of each transaction is split into two parts:

• Ten percent of BNB is redeemed by holders.
• Five percent is used to fuel the growth of the liquidity pool exchange.

The contract keeps track of all token holders by storing them in an array and tracks the array indexing for the sake of processing. Each transaction handles a specific number of users, which varies depending on the transaction’s size. According to the dividend-paying token standard, all BNB contract profits will be divided evenly among token holders if the token follows the rules of the standard. The contract examines the balance of a user’s withdrawable dividends as they are processed and, if it exceeds the minimum level for auto-claims, either automatically claims those dividends for BNB or automatically purchases the users’ tokens. This system is completely automated, and there are no minimal gas taxes proportionate to the amount transmitted, as there are with other systems. The number of holders processed via each transaction is dynamic and is determined by the amount of the transaction. According to their place in the queue, holders will receive dividends from the pool of investors. It is therefore a fair method that is completely automated.

Other Redistribution Models

Traditional redistribution is a position advocated by SafeMoon. The system encouraged token holders to retain their tokens in order to reap the benefits of transactional dividends (buys and sells). The percentage of tokens distributed is determined by the contract, the current token balance, and the total number of holders. In a nutshell, you will instantly receive additional tokens.

With BNB a transaction fee is applied to each buy/sell order, which is popularised by HODL and GhostFace. Tokens are then converted into BNB and placed into a pool in real time (just like how liquidity pools work). Holders can then submit a manual claim for the BNB they have earned over a specified time period. Their ability to collect BNB is related to their token ownership and the size of the current pool.

Conclusion

Many projects have tried to copy the success and features of Tiki Token since it was released as the first-ever auto-claim BNB on the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem. But while many of these forks have attempted to duplicate the project, most have failed to survive. In comparison Tiki Token continues to grow and develop new features, maintains a clear roadmap, and has a vibrant community of developers and users. Tiki Token has clearly blazed the trail and gone on to become a market leader in the BNB auto-claim redistributed concept in the crypto space. A few of the other successful projects include Baby BNB, SafeHaven, and MoonMiner.

With many different crypto plays coming into the market such as reflective tokens it’s worth considering all the options for your crypto assets. For those experienced investors who have already keen participants in the crypto ecosystem, you will find the new reflective concepts worth a closer look. For the newcomers who have recently joined the space, the best approach at the outset is to sit back, watch and learn from videos and supportive communities.

Author

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial blockchain entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is the bestselling author of ‘Blockchain Revolution 2030’. Anndy is the Chairman for BigONE in Asia, and the Chief Digital Advisor for Mongolia.

Anndy is part of the Gyeongsangbuk-do Blockchain Special Committee, Government of Republic Korea, together with industry experts such as Brock Pierce. He also played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region and is also as an Advisory Board Member of Hyundai DAC Technology.