In June of 2021, we rebranded to Unbanked. Our new identity speaks to the full suite of crypto-friendly services we offer and helps people “get unbanked” from the legacy financial system. Unbanked was founded on the belief that financial access and control is a fundamental human right, best empowered by the blockchain.
As part of this rebranding effort, we are going to be updating our digital asset acronym from TERN to UNBNK (pronounced Unbanked). A few things to set clear right away:
- The total circulating supply is not changing. There were 1 billion TERN and there will be 1 billion UNBNK. No shenanigans around tokenomics.
- Everyone is going to get a 1:1 swap. If you have 100,000 TERN you will get 100,000 UNBNK.
- We will continue to support both native versions of Stellar and Ethereum for UNBNK. This means there will continue to be 900M Stellar UNBNK and 100M Ethereum UNBNK as there were before
Ethereum Based UNBNK (100M)
Ethereum provides a robust ecosystem and unique smart contract functionality. The Unbanked team is building a collection of tools to tap into this ecosystem and those will be announced in the very near future.
Those who held ERC-20 TERN will be airdropped the same amount of ERC-20 UNBNK. All remaining ERC-20 TERN will be burnt. UNBNK holders on Ethereum will have the ability to create wrapped versions of UNBNK and tap into a collection of great companies in the DeFi ecosystem. ERC-20 UNBNK will also be given utility to an upcoming lending/borrowing marketplace.
ERC-20 UNBNK will also be a depositing asset on Unbanked.com for card usage. This functionality will be released soon. ERC-20 UNBNK deposits will be converted to Stellar UNBNK on deposit (similar to other ERC-20 assets).
Contract: https://etherscan.io/token/0x06b884e60794ce02aafab13791b59a2e6a07442f
Stellar Based UNBNK (900M)
Stellar provides exceptionally fast transactions and is great for micropayments. It will continue to be the default asset used on our cards and rewards program.
Those who hold stellar TERN will be able to do a 1:1 exchange to stellar UNBNK within the Unbanked.com dashboard. If you’re already holding all of your TERN at Unbanked.com then you do not need to do anything. In the coming weeks, TERN withdrawals will be turned off and replaced with UNBNK withdrawals on stellar. All functionality will remain the same and all remaining stellar TERN will be burnt
Those who hold their stellar-based TERN in a cold storage wallet like Lobstr will have to deposit their TERN at Unbanked.com and withdraw stellar-based UNBNK.
UNBNK Cross-Chain Swaps
UNBNK holders may have a preference for the Stellar or Ethereum ecosystems as each have their own value prop and functionality. Considering the circulating supply of each native UNBNK asset is different (100M vs 900M) there can be a price disparity between UNBNK based on the native chain.
We plan to build functionality within the Unbanked dashboard in the future that will allow customers to swap cross-chain UNBNK. This will have to be a centralized approach as there is no currently smart contract functionality between Ethereum and Stellar.
Cross-chain swaps will be denominated in US dollar amounts. For example, if ERC-20 UNBNK is trading at $8 and Stellar-based UNBNK is trading at $1.00 then the customer will receive approximately an 8-1 swap. This means that $10,000 in ERC-20 UNBNK will equate to 1,250 ERC-20 UNBNK for 10,000 Stellar UNBNK or vice versa.
We may also implement a 1% burn fee on these swaps. This will prevent people from abusing the swap system, but also introduce an element of scarcity.
Note: This swap is for native assets and is not the same as wrapped assets. It’s possible for anyone to create wUNBNK on either Ethereum or Stellar. These will offer 1:1 swap capabilities like other wrapped assets.
Into The Future
This is a very exciting time for Unbanked as we roll out the new UNBNK asset. We think people are going to be even more excited as to what is in store for our DeFi initiatives and the functionality tied to UNBNK on Ethereum.
