Key Terms

Fixed Income: The umbrella term that refers to investments that typically pay interest to investors at regular intervals over specified periods. Examples in traditional finance include government and corporate bonds.

Reference Rate: A rate that determines pay-offs in a financial contract that is often outside the control of the parties to the contract.

Benchmark Rates: Reference Rates that have become universally accepted as a bearer of the standard, e.g., the United States Treasury Yield Curve for USD assets.

Reference / Benchmark Rate Setting: The process of determining a Reference / Benchmark Rate.

“Risk-free” Rate: The safest theoretical yield for an asset. The “Risk-free” Rate is a crucial metric for investors to price financial instruments, compare returns, calculate the cost of carry, and more.

“Risk-free” Curve: The safest theoretical yield for an asset with respect to time (maturity). Plotted on a graph, the curve helps investors visualize the relationship between risk, reward, and time.

Liquid-Staking Token (LST): Liquid staking tokens (LSTs) are tokenized receipts for staking assets. This “receipt” proves you staked your assets and lets you trade or use it in other DeFi protocols while keeping your original assets staked.

Cryptoeconomic Security: Models that use economic incentives and cryptography to ensure the proper functioning and security of a distributed network.

Treehouse Assets (tAssets): a liquid-staking token (LST) that works to provide real yield in excess of a chain's risk-free rate through interest rate arbitrage.

tETH: Treehouse’s first tAsset, launched to converge the fragmented ETH interest rate market on the Ethereum blockchain.

Market Efficiency Yield (MEY): Real yield in addition to ETH PoS through rate arbitrage.

Decentralized Offered Rates (DOR): A reference rate derived from the Treehouse Protocol, used by Referencers.

Operators: Initiators of DOR feeds that help to maintain its integrity and success.

Panelists: Entities (i.e., market-makers, oracles, staking houses, exchanges) that are equipped with proprietary models and Treehouse DOR software to provide interest rate data or forecasts.

Referencers: Entities that integrate DOR feeds into their own interest rate related services or products.

Delegators: Stakeholders that assign their assets to Panelists for the fulfillment of DOR duties.

Delegation: The process where stakeholders of Treehouse delegate assets to Panelists to fulfill DOR duties on their behalf.

End User: End users of the underlying interest rate related services or products developed by Referencers.

Ethereum Staking Rate (ESR): The first DOR, operated by Treehouse to derive Ethereum’s “risk-free” rate.