ENote Protocol

Overview

The Obligate platform enables BulletBond issuances using smart contracts, deployed on Polygon PoS. The operator (Obligate) determines the off-chain terms and allocations, with issuers confirming their correctness through on-chain signatures which deploys the bond and opens the funding window. Investors fund their allocated orders into escrow, and once completed, funds and bonds are exchanged between issuer and investor. Obligate pre-identifies and whitelists primary market participants.

Bond holders can transfer their ERC20 bond tokens freely, unless restricted by the issuer. At maturity, issuers repay principal and coupon, allowing bond holders to burn their tokens for repayment.

Book building

The book building process occurs on the Obligate platform, where terms and allocations for BulletBond issuances are established off-chain. Obligate facilitates the negotiation and agreement between issuers and investors, ensuring that both parties are legally bound to their respective commitments.

During this phase, issuers define the bond's structure, including interest rates, coupon frequency, maturity, and any transfer restrictions. Investors, in turn, submit their order preferences. Both issuers and investors provide legal signatures, binding them to issue or fund the bond orders as agreed.

Currently, bonds are denominated and settled in USDC or EUROe, with more currencies to be added later.

Issuance

Following the book building phase, Obligate initiates the issuance process by deploying a smart contract reflecting the finalized bond terms and allocations. Issuers then review the smart contract to ensure its accuracy based on the prior agreements made during book building.

Once the issuer confirms the contract's correctness, they provide an on-chain signature as a form of acceptance. This action triggers the deployment of the BulletBond smart contract and opens the issuance program for investor payments.

Investors can now proceed to fulfill their orders by making payments into the smart contract's escrow account.

On issuance date the bonds are issued to investors and the funding goes to the issuer's payment address.

Bond holding period

From the point of issuance to maturity, investors hold their bonds in their wallets. They're able to freely transfer them (or sell them) to other wallets unless there are transfer limitations set by the issuer.

Coupon payment

Before the coupon payment deadline the issuer transfers the amount due into the escrow smart contract. At the scheduled coupon payment date every holder of the eNote will receive a transferable payment redemption token. Using it investor claims the payment from the escrow.

Maturity

On maturity the issuer repays the entire obligation (principal and the last coupon) into escrow. Investors will get the payment redemption tokens at maturity of the eNote and will be able to settle the bond by burning their tokens and receiving the final payments in exchange.

Collateralized Bond

On Obligate, issuers are able to optionally secure their bonds with collateral. This adds a security agreement to the bond which in case of default leads to the liquidation of the provided collateral.

Collateral could be digital assets but also deliverables. Obligate works with Apex Group as a security agent to provide those services to customers.

Audits

Meanwhile, find the audit from sec3:

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