IHO #01: Introducing the Pontoon Finance (TOON) Token Sale, Hosted by Hot Cross

Whitelisting has already begun. The sale will take place on October 28th.

Oct 18, 2021

**Whitelisting has begun.** **Get started** and read more about our access portal.

🔗 Quick Links: IHO | KYC | Pontoon (Audits) | Pontoon Twitter & TG (Announcements)

Hot Cross is extremely thrilled to unveil our first-ever Initial Hot Cross Offering: Pontoon Finance. Pontoon is a one-click, cross-chain liquidity mirror protocol that aims to solve fragmentation and composability concerns in the blockchain ecosystem in a completely trustless way.

The protocol offers users one-click liquidity mirroring across Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, HECO, xDai, and Optimism with an incentivized relayer network and liquidity mining for cross-chain liquidity providers. In short, Pontoon is a multi-chain liquidity wormhole.

Hot Cross is a cross-chain and multi-chain tool suite, and it only makes sense that we form a strong relationship with another cross-chain team. Pontoon is the perfect fit for IHO #01, which debuts on October 28th, 2021, and we couldn’t be more excited to have them. There is synergy here between the bridging efforts that both teams are doing, and we look forward to a fruitful future of working together.

**Introducing Pontoon Finance:** A Cross-Chain Liquidity Mirror Protocol

Pontoon Features

Pontoon walks the walk. They have been extensively audited by some of the best in the industry with solid backing to boot. The feature stack includes, but is not limited to:

Decentralized Relayer Network: The relayer network makes cross-chain transfers trustless and gasless. And it passes on events across chains for each transfer to the bridge;
Trustless Cross-Chain Bridge: Token swaps across multiple chains are conducted seamlessly with Pontoon’s state-of-the-art relayer network;
Cross-Chain Liquidity: Users can add liquidity and earn rewards in Pontoon’s native token, $TOON, across various chains;
Composability: The design of Pontoon is meant to interact with any DeFi application seamlessly. Pontoon enables multichain liquidity mirrors to unlock underutilized assets trustlessly without any need for intermediaries. Pontoon users can launch a single window with unified access to digital assets and ease of cross-chain DeFi composability with just one click.

The industry needs all the seamless experience it can get and this is what Pontoon’s liquidity mirroring is about making it extremely easy to bridge liquidity for crypto-assets in an efficient manner. **Read More.**

TOON Token Utilities

TOON is the native token of the Pontoon Protocol. It contains features such as governance, incentives, and Proof of Stake (PoS):

Governance: Token holders can vote on the direction of the protocol and fund allocation from the treasury.
LP Incentives for LPs and Relayers: Liquidity providers will be incentivized for providing liquidity on each network.
Proof of Stake Relayer Network: A network secured by a series of validators running relayer nodes and getting incentivized on the fee collected.

Details about the Initial Hot Cross Offering

When we announced IHO’s last month we knew that the first one had to be special, aligned with our multi-chain and cross-chain mission, and a team that has strong technical competency. Pontoon fits the mold, and we’re happy to share the exact details of the sale. More information will be posted in the coming days also.

First and foremost, whichever way you enter into this IHO, you will be paying in in HOTCROSS-BNB LP PCS V2 (contract address). This is why we set up an insanely massive pool on Cross Pool a few weeks ago. Those who have been following us long enough know that everything we do has some relation to something that may come next in line for us. That is to say, all you had to do was set up your LP and stake it into Cross Pool, and wait. Patience is precious.

Hot Cross @hotcrosscom

💎 New gem alert! $CAKE comes to crosspool.hotcross.com for #BinanceSmartChain with a self-funded rewards pool of $400,000. 30 Days. No delay. Stake your @PancakeSwap HOTCROSS-BNB LP's and your single-sided #HOTCROSS for a piece of the 🥞. Why do this? It's quite simple: 🧵

HOTCROSS-BNB LP’s In → TOON Out

The general method by which Initial Hot Cross Offerings operate is really not much different than ApeSwap IAO’s or PancakeSwap IFO’s. There are some nuances which we’ll outline below, but the premise is quite simple: you use HOTCROSS-BNB LP’s to pay for TOON, and any excess funds unused are returned upon claim. A portion of the sale will be capped and a portion of the sale will be unlimited (overflow) so that a healthy balance between fair and full is reached.

The percentage (%) breakdown between the two models will fully depend on how many of you successfully register and KYC with the Hot Cross Protocol. If a small number of participants KYC, then we’ll likely go with a high % for uncapped. If a very large number of participants KYC, then we’ll likely go with a healthy % for capped and uncapped. It’s all about balance here. So let me ask you, cadet, do you want TOON?

**A twist!** If you are too lazy or too tired or don’t understand how LP’s work, then you can still **participate in the sale with BUSD or BNB, with a “zap”** that automatically creates the LP for you. This is what makes the IHO mechanism work well. Not everyone has to understand LP’s in order to participate.

When? What? How? Here Are the Details.

📝 Details about the sale are as follows:

Where to buy TOON: IHO page;
Where to whitelist and KYC for the sale: KYC page. You must have a KYC’d wallet to participate in this sale. There is no wiggle room here - we are a B2B compliant-facing team that is non-anonymous and serious about pushing innovation and ideas forward in the on-chain space;
Amount to raise: $700,000;
Tokens for sale: 2,000,000 TOON (2% of Total Supply);
Token price: $0.35 per TOON;
TOON Metrics: Metrics PDF;
Payment method: HOTCROSS-BNB PCS V2 LP’s, BNB zapped into HOTCROSS-BNB PCS V2 LP’s, or BUSD zapped into HOTCROSS-BNB PCS V2 LP’s;
Launch Time: October 28th, 2021. The exact clock time will be announced super soon. You will have ample time to participate;
IHO Duration: ~4 Hours;
Vesting: No Vesting;
HOTCROSS Holding Requirements: 0 Holding Requirements;
Tiers: 0 Tiers, everyone is on the same level;
Lotto: No lotto, everyone who KYC’s can participate;
Deadline to whitelist: October 25th, 2021 (00:00). Do not delay. Start now;
Capped Session Amount: TBD;
Uncapped Session Amount: TBD;
HOTVIP: This is absolutely not required for participating in the first IHO. It’ll come, soon, but not needed right now.

Support and Safety

During the runup to the IHO, many questions will come in. We will also run events and have tons of excitement during this time. We ask that you remain calm, levelheaded, and take heed to the following instructions on how best to get support.

For ACCESS and KYC related questions, email kyc@hotcross.com.
For product and general support, email support@hotcross.com.
Note that the TOON token has not yet been deployed to the Ethereum mainnet or Binance Smart Chain mainnet. Do not get scammed on fake tokens. Please be cautious and careful.
Nobody from the Hot Cross team will ever direct message you for support. We absolutely don’t do this. Email us or direct message us from a support box on our official website.

A Note on the KYC Process

Please make sure that you carefully read our post outlining the access process for the Hot Cross platform. Many questions have come in about this process and we will cover some of the most common ones below.

**Hot Cross KYC & Access Flow.** Bad actors are punished. Good actors have a smooth flow into compliant products in the Hot Cross tool suite.

Some Answers to Common Questions:

You need to register an email address with us;
Every 12 to 24 hours we pass email addresses to our KYC provider, Synaps;
When your email address has been added to the Synaps system we will not only contact you, but you will also need to follow our social accounts and be proactive about monitoring your KYC status. This is a must. Registering with 0.0625 BNB is not fully performing KYC and you absolutely must do both an email registration and KYC;
If your status shows as “Pending” even after you have a) submitted your email and b) KYC’d, then just wait. Synaps’ API has a slight delay in which successful KYC’s need time to relay that information to the API stack;
If you have issues with KYC documents, verifications, login attempts with Synaps, or anything that is related to the actual KYC procedure, then you must contact Synaps at support@synaps.io. We have 0 power over your KYC process and nobody at Hot Cross has control over this documentation. We do not need to see your information ever. We just want to know if you are a KYC’d email address and wallet;
Please be mindful that sharing your addresses, wallets, or screenshots in our chat rooms is risky and dangerous. You don’t know who’s lurking in there. Be safe!
Some wallets and devices don’t play nice with our DApp ecosystem. If you run into issues please hop into chat or email support@hotcross.com with your questions.

Not just an IHO, but a **partnership**. We go further together.

How Do IHO’s Benefit the Hot Cross Platform?

Initial Hot Cross Offerings offer HOTCROSS holders and HOTCROSS LP’s a significant number of incentives, not least of which is gaining access into another project early. In addition to that, the very nature of IHO’s is to increase the Hot Cross Protocol’s network expansion and “stickiness”. The goals with IHO’s are clear:

Bring amazing ideas and partnerships into the Hot Cross ecosystem;
Allow compliant access into on-chain projects;
Incentivize LP’s to be a part of the Hot Cross ecosystem;
Reduce HOTCROSS emissions by returning a portion of the raise to the protocol itself, thus taking away the need to pollute the protocol with more tokens than necessary;
And to have fun!

**The IHO #01 model.** This may or may not change in the future depending on how well it works out and also when we launch HOTVIP. Remember, HOTVIP is not related to IHO’s. The end goal here is to have a win-win mutually beneficial raise that helps the Hot Cross ecosystem but more importantly helps to raise awareness and bootstrap a new team’s efforts in the industry.

How Does This IHO Benefit Pontoon?

We’ve gone through quite a bit above, but the largest win here for Ponton will be immediate access to our network, community, social events, and marketing efforts. We view Initial Hot Cross Offerings through the lens of partnerships. We can proudly say that we have experience being an IFO ourselves, and deeply understand how important it is to keep relationships, incentives, partnership efforts, and collaborative efforts going.

The IHO is just step 1. There are many steps after that from a B2B standpoint where we will be working closely with Pontoon to ensure that we are here to help when needed.

Win-win, together we go far.

Get Excited!

An exciting week ahead is lined up for the upcoming IHO with Pontoon. We can’t wait to roll this out and also know that many of you will have questions, confusion, glee, fun, and excitement. We are here to help. Drop us a line in our chat room or email address and we will help you right away! Get ready and whitelisted today.

🤝 Are you a team interested in participating in a Cross Pool or launching out your idea on any ETH and EVM Network? Get in touch. We’re waiting to hear from you.

Ongoing Work at Hot Cross

📣 Tell a friend about @hotcrosscom, @hotcross, @hotcrossann. It would mean the world to us. We have been building since last year, but we work like it's still the beginning. Bookmark Linktree and subscribe to our updates for more.

About Hot Cross

Hot Cross is an extensive multi-chain and cross-chain tool suite that enables blockchain teams and their communities to thrive. At its core, Hot Cross aims to be the best toolbox for ETH and EVM networks. Their development philosophy is agile, and they are a cohort of builders who aggressively seek out opportunities to meet the demands of the now for both B2B and B2C. The core thesis that Hot Cross presents is that users and teams will migrate in part to new networks that feel familiar when presented with good tooling and freedom. Hot Cross is a company and an ecosystem in and of itself, and our goals are towards allowing communities to flourish using our technologies, whether or not they know we are the ones building them.

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