What's Epoch

Epoch concept is implemented on Tidal's platform to re-balance reserves and purchased cover on a weekly basis. In simple words, at the beginning of every epoch | week, reserve pool size will be adjusted base on last week's deposit and withdraws, and the purchased cover cost will also be adjusted base on the new reserve level. (if the purchased cover amount is higher than reserve, the weekly cover cost will be automatically adjusted down to the cost of reserve amount).

The adjustment happens every week at UTC 0:00 AM on Sunday. https://time.is/UTC "Current epoch ending in xx days" is displayed in the app on the top right corner on USDC reserve page.

Such design improves the platform operation in a few ways:

1. Provides cover buyer a pay-as-you go weekly subscription model.

2. No need to worry about paying more coverage than what could be covered (adjust to reserve level).

3. Allows reserve provider to withdraw funds on a weekly frenquency.

4. Lower the insolvency risks while allowing high leverage. (under a payout, reserves will be deducted and auto-rebalance happens right away next week).

Due to this design, pending period applies on epoch | week basis when user deposit or withdraw fund.

1. Provide USDC reserve: Become effective next week (if there is no valid claim)

2. Withdraw USDC reserve: Become effiective the week after next (if there is no valid claim)

3. Initialize/Select protocols to back up: Become effective next week (if there is no valid claim)

4. Update/Change selected protocols to back up: Become effiective the week after next (if there is no valid claim)