IHO #01: How to Participate in the Pontoon Finance (TOON) Token Sale, Hosted by Hot Cross on Binance Smart Chain

Everything you need to know in order to prepare for the IHO on October 28th.

Oct 22, 2021

Everything you need to know to prepare for the IHO on **October 28th**.

📰 TLDR: Registrations close in a few days. Hurry. Max cap per person is $1,000 in the Capped Session and ∞ in the Uncapped Session. Zaps are explained. The IHO will be on October 28th, and you will not want to miss it.

Earlier this week, we revealed our first-ever Initial Hot Cross Offering. Lots of detailed information was shared in the first post about the when, what, how, and why of the IHO, so in this post, we’ll dig a little deeper. No fluff here - it’s time to dig in.

Read This First

You must be KYC’d to participate in IHO’s. There is zero wiggle room in this regard and, based on the data that we are seeing, our community understands that if Hot Cross is going to be sustainable as a business and a project, we must be pragmatic. The term DeFi does not mean non-compliant. It means on-chain for the most part, so we’re okay with the CeDeFi tag if that works.

This is part of our original pitch: in the present, we are pretty much centralized, non-anonymous, accountable, safe, reliable, and professional on-chain developers and builders who ship. Our collective mental model is at least 2 to 3 years out, and we’re insufferably patient. Hence, compliance. KYC now. (When you have successfully finished KYC, there’s nothing else to do other than wait; you’re done with that!)

IHO #01 Registration and KYC Deadline

The deadline for IHO #01 email registration will be on October 24th at 5 PM UTC. We strongly advise that you don’t wait until the last moment. However - there is no guarantee that our KYC provider, Synaps, will be able to process you in time or troubleshoot any errors with your submissions in three days, especially given that the weekend is approaching.

Hot Cross doesn’t see your documents. The only information we need is 1) your email address and 2) your wallet address. That’s it—nothing else. We don’t care who you are, but we care that you’re a human being. Synaps handles the rest.

Also, please keep this in mind: when you register your email address, please wait.

After registering your email address, **wait**. Those are processed and sent off to Synaps every 12-24 hours. Only then will you be able to proceed with KYC and complete whitelisting. We will also email you from **kyc@hotcross.com** when your email address has been deployed into the Synaps system. Whitelist that email address.

Troubleshooting KYC Issues

If you have issues with KYC documents, verifications, login attempts with Synaps, or anything related to the actual KYC procedure, 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 want to know if you are a KYC’d email address and wallet.

How Do I Pay for TOON?

There are three ways to pay for TOON during the IHO:

HOTCROSS-BNB PCS LP tokens. (Info, BscScan)
BUSD, which converts into HOTCROSS-BNB PCS LP tokens.
BNB, which converts into HOTCROSS-BNB PCS LP tokens.

Whichever way you decide to pay, the final input into the IHO is an LP token. If you are not familiar with LP tokens, then please read this and also be aware that there is a chance of Impermanent Loss by becoming a liquidity provider. This is well-known and why incentivization for being an LP is so high. LP’s are the lifeblood of AMM’s (DEX’s) and are highly valuable. Without liquidity providers, decentralized exchanges would never exist as they do today.

**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.

What Is a Zap?

Yesterday we tweeted a look into how zaps work. The concept is simple: allow anyone registered with Hot Cross to participate in a Binance Smart Chain IHO with either BNB or BUSD, even if they don’t understand how to enter into a liquidity position. We also have the same feature in Cross Yield.

Zaps are a feature, totally optional, and something that (to our knowledge) no other on-chain platform currently offers. There is a barrier to entry in on-chain fundraising via LP’s because people do not understand LP tokens, so we added these two additional methods to make the process easier for you. Yes, you will enter into a liquidity position. Yes, there is a risk of IL. Yes, you will have to manually unwrap your LP if you wish to exit that liquidity position post-IHO. Yes, this will save you time.

**Zap is a short term for “enter into LP quickly.”** Either way you enter into the IHO, you’re still going to be paying with an LP token. A zap is just a super-simple way to do it that doesn’t require you to manually create the LP yourself during the time that the IHO is running. The same logic applies to Cross Yield zaps.

Zapping into an LP position and IHO with **100 BUSD**.

Zapping into an LP position and IHO with **0.5 BNB**.

What Do Zaps Look Like?

It’s super-easy. When you contribute to an IHO, you’ll immediately see the option to commit an LP token, BUSD, or BNB. It’s impossible to miss it:

**Commit LP tokens or zap BUSD / BNB into an IHO**. Easy. The image shown above is an example uncapped contribution session.

Why Do I Have To Pay 0.0625 BNB To Register?

Because infrastructure is incredibly hard, and a team of 10 have been glued to their screens during the last week to ensure that all of this goes smoothly. Nothing is free. There is good news: this is a one-time fee. That’s it. When we run future IHO’s, have any compliant products released, or anything related to KYC, you will automatically be eligible to participate in all of it.

The cheeky response would be that if you’re not happy with a $30 registration fee, then don’t participate, but the natural response is that it’s just infra costs. Based on the input in terms of registrations, we are delighted with taking this sustainable decision. No bots. Compliance. Everyone wins in terms of playing along with other human beings. It’s fun when you’re not fighting computers.

Also, you’re not forced to hold onto HOTCROSS, and there is no concept of tiers with our IHO’s. No nonsense. Pay a small fee and access the platform. Done.

**No platform holding requirements.** Pay to KYC. Finish it. And you’re in forever.

When Will the IHO Take Place?

Lots of information has already been shared here. The time frame we are looking at is as follows:

2:30 PM IST October 28th, 2021 IHO Begins;
5:30 PM IST TOON Bootstrapped on DEX by Pontoon team;
6:30 PM IST the IHO ends, and you can claim your TOON

The Pontoon team absolutely must have time to set up their liquidity properly and lock it, as well as make sure that everything goes well without interference, so we’ll show them that respect and close off the IHO and allow claims an hour post-bootstrap. This is pretty standard on most IDO-style platforms.

Two teams in 4 time zones are coordinating this IHO. The **duration will be shortened to 4 hours** to accommodate this. This should be more than enough time to not only fill up the IHO but also allow the community the enter without rushing and for us to troubleshoot if anything comes up.

Capped Session & Uncapped Session

The details of the capped session and uncapped session are below. You can participate in both sessions.

**Two sessions will run at the same time. One capped and one uncapped.** This is to make both fishies and whales happy. Everyone will fill included.

Capped Session

Duration: 4 Hours
Available: 1,000,000 TOON
To Raise: $350,000
Price per TOON: 0.35
Maximum Contribution: $1,000 USD. You can commit up to $1,000. This will also work on an overflow model, so if lots of participants come in, the amount that you receive may be less than $1,000 USD, e.g., $500 in TOON and $500 in LP returned. We believe this high cap is super-attractive and exciting while also ensuring that whales cannot overplay their hands.

Uncapped Session

Duration: 4 Hours
Available: 1,000,000 TOON
To Raise: $350,000
Price per TOON: 0.35
No maximum contribution. You can enter as much as you want here. This will work in an overflow model style. Your share of the session will come back to you, and any unspent funds will be returned to you as well. We anticipate quite a bit of money to flow into this session based on the data we are seeing.

No holding requirements. No tiers. Attractive maximum caps. Zero barriers to entry other than simply registering and KYC’ing one time ever.

We’re beginning to like the looks of this.

Do Not Get Scammed. TOON Is Not Trading Anywhere on Market Yet.

Don’t be rushed. Please pay close attention to official Pontoon socials and official accounts, as well as their website, for details related to their DEX launch. While we are assisting with their IHO, you must stay tuned to the Pontoon social accounts to keep up with their official launch addresses.

Our focus will be almost exclusively on the IHO during October 28th, and we won’t be monitoring DEX-side activity much. That is not the role of Hot Cross.

Get Ready. But Patience.

Our community has been on fire the last week, in the best way possible. We have a giveaway ongoing, users are registering, and the Hot Cross Cadets are helping each other so much. We can’t wait for the coming days and thank everyone in the community who has been so helpful.

🤝 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

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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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