In traditional finance, interest rates are often seen as the result of market games. But from another perspective: can interest rates be viewed as a form of 'public good'?
Like roads, networks, and electricity, it is an infrastructure that everyone needs, yet is often monopolized and manipulated by a few institutions. The LIBOR scandal teaches us that centralized interest rates are not inherently reliable.
The emergence of the Treehouse protocol aims to liberate interest rates from the 'black box' and make them a publicly verifiable and openly shared public good on-chain. In this process, the TREE token plays a key economic role.
🏛 The public attribute of interest rates
In the sense of finance, interest rates are not merely price signals; they are also a social resource.
The interest rate of government bonds determines the country's financing costs;
Bank loan interest rates influence corporate expansion and consumer spending;
Interest rate benchmarks in the derivatives market relate to the pricing of contracts worth tens of trillions.
In other words, the setting of interest rates concerns public interest, but the authority to set them is often concentrated in the hands of a very few.
This is the old order that Treehouse aims to challenge.
🔎 DOR: A decentralized 'water supply station' for interest rates
The DOR (Decentralized Offered Rate) proposed by Treehouse acts like an 'on-chain water supply station':
Panel members continuously input interest rate data and predictions;
The consensus mechanism integrates them into a forward-looking interest rate curve;
Any protocol that requires interest rate benchmarks can call upon it at any time.
Such a mechanism means that interest rates are no longer exclusive resources for certain financial giants, but a shared benchmark accessible to everyone.
🌳 tAssets: The 'pipeline' that opens up usage paths
Having a water supply station is not enough; pipelines are needed to deliver the water.
This is the significance of tAssets. For example, tETH not only brings basic PoS returns to users but also bridges the interest rate gap between different protocols through arbitrage, allowing the market to gradually converge to a more unified curve.
In the analogy of public goods, tAssets are like a network system that delivers water to thousands of households.
💡 TREE: Economic incentives for public goods
The biggest challenge of public goods is the 'free rider problem.' Without incentives, who is willing to provide data and maintain the system?
$TREE plays a unique role here:
As a usage cost: calling DOR data requires paying TREE to avoid disorderly consumption.
As a staking guarantee: panel members stake TREE to ensure the credibility of the data.
As a reward tool: those who predict accurately receive TREE, maintaining a positive cycle.
As a governance credential: holders of TREE can participate in institutional design and decide how resources are allocated.
This truly gives interest rates the attributes of a public good: everyone can use it, but no one can abuse it.
🔮 Expanding vision: From DeFi to global finance
The significance of Treehouse is not limited to within DeFi. As the demand for on-chain transparency increases from CeFi and TradFi, DOR has the potential to be adopted more widely. At that time, TREE will no longer just be a token in a certain protocol, but may become:
Interest rate auditing tools for CeFi platforms;
Public benchmarks for cross-chain asset pricing;
The passport for the new interest rate derivatives market.
This is the spillover effect of 'public goods logic.'
🎯 Conclusion
Interest rates have never been just cold numbers; behind them lies a whole set of games about fairness, transparency, and power.
Treehouse transforms interest rates into a decentralized public good through DOR and tAssets, while the TREE token serves as the economic engine that sustains this system.
In the future, when we talk about 'public infrastructure,' we may no longer refer only to roads and power grids, but also include a decentralized interest rate system. And in this system, TREE may be the most crucial link.
