TULIP Plan ELI5 (Explain it Like I’m 5)
The Telos Uniswap Liquidity Implementation Plan (TULIP) is a way to solve the liquidity problem that’s keeping the price extremely low compared to blockchains with similar features. If the TULIP plan works, Telos will quickly have much more liquidity and the price could potentially increase over 1,000X as it approaches the market capitalization of those similar blockchains.
The Situation
Telos is one of the fastest, highest capacity public blockchains in the world. It has been ranked number two on Blocktivity.info for daily transactions for much of 2020 and has the record for the highest Blocktivity Potential Index, which measures a blockchain’s potential market capitalization based on its price and usage. The Blocktivity Potential Index of Telos is 373,142. The next closest project (HIVE) has a BPI of 15,125 and Ethereum has a BPI of 9.
Telos is a leader in blockchain innovation that has made many valuable technical contributions and is attracting dapps and users based on its tools. However, the Telos system token, TLOS, is not traded very heavily on exchanges which makes potential investors concerned about being able to quickly sell any TLOS they buy, if they should choose to. As a result, the total market capitalization is far lower than other blockchains that are quite similar to Telos like Ethereum (ETH $73B m.c.), Cardano (ADA $5B m.c.), Tron (TRX $2B m.c.), and Tezos (XTZ $1.7B m.c.), meaning that the Telos market capitalization is just 0.2% that of its lowest-priced close comparable. In other words, for the value of Telos to match that of Tezos, which Telos matches or beats in all technical categories, the price of TLOS tokens would have to increase by 500X. To match Cardano—a blockchain that is still yet to fully launch—the TLOS token would have to increase in price by 1,500X. To match Ethereum, which is currently congested and requires high gas fees, the TLOS token would have to increase in price by 21,000X.

Blockchains similar to Telos, and often with less impressive stats, are trading at hundreds to thousands of times more than TLOS, perhaps largely due to the low TLOS liquidity. If this problem could be solved, the Telos market cap could potentially skyrocket and the network would be easier for users to take part in and would have more money for new development and promotion, creating a virtuous cycle of value building.

The Solution
The Telos community recently announced a clear solution and is a already implementing it. The TULIP plan sets out a clear set of actions to solve the TLOS liquidity problem.
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Telos will sell some TLOS tokens from its reserve as T-Bond NFTs to raise funds for future steps. (T-Bond NFTs are a type of locked token sold at a discount so they do not come to exchanges immediately).
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The first ERC-20 TLOS tokens will be created on Ethereum with the help of pTokens. These will be sold in two presale rounds at a discount to where prices are expected to begin once Uniswap trading begins.
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ERC-20 TLOS on Ethereum will be pegged 1:1. If the price of native and ERC-20 TLOS rises, a small number of smart traders can profit by equalizing the price difference between the two. This may likely increase the price of TLOS on existing exchanges.
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Once the ERC-20 TLOS presales are complete, which could be a very short window, a Uniswap trading pool of ETH and TLOS raised from the presale will be locked for two years to ensure long-term liquidity on the Uniswap platform—creating ongoing liquidity for TLOS.
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The Ethereum community will have 1-3 days to exclusively trade or add to liquidity pools on Uniswap before the pTokens bridge opens to allow tokens to pass effortlessly between the two chains.
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Other funds from the presale will pay exchange listing fees on top centralized exchanges with dedicated liquidity pools for those as well.
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A large pool of pETH and native TLOS tokens will be locked into the TSwaps DeFi platform on Telos ensuring that high liquidity exists on both sides of the pTokens Ethereum-Telos bridge.

The TULIP plan is already underway. The T-Bond NFT sale will begin shortly and the Ethereum TLOS presale and Uniswap pool launch are expected in mid-January 2021. New exchange listings are expected by the first weeks of February if not sooner.