Staking Alchemica to earn time tokens (like an hourly ticket to play), and scholars and others will sell it. And time tokens are issued only for Gotchi x 30 years. Game tokens are consumption tokens, so their rarity comes out over time. If a large amount of steak is made, the price of Alchemica will increase, so I don’t care.
Similar to above, what if GLTR could be used to purchase a non-transferable Caartridge? New players looking to play could acquire GLTR from the open market, or stake Alchemica to earn enough to buy themselves a Caartridge.
Patrons or Guilds could also purchase Caartridges for their Scholars and have them transferred to them directly.
Caartridges could be sold in various durations, with shorter durations (such as a 7-day trial period) and longer durations (90 days, maybe even forever).
This still doesn’t solve completely the botting issue, but it would impose an economic penalty on them if they got banned.
If we’re looking for a less heavy-handed solution than a full-out Invite Only ecosystem, GLTR Caartridges could be interesting, and would extend upon the idea of GLTR as tokenized time.
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If they need a GLTR, just send it to their bot account.
So I think we need a special staking.
It is a mechanism that increases the number of cartridges available from GLTR according to the gameplay time of the account.
I like the way scholars can stake Alchemica and sell GLTR with Carartridges.
It is a mechanism that only large people can not get a large amount of Carartridges.
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Thank you Dan for answering. I am ok with all the arguments you provided. We build “walls”, but possibly, it makes us even more interesting.
I’ll trust whatever the devs think is the best way to fight the bot problem. If they are the biggest hinderance to sustainable growth and ongoing improvements in the gotchiverse then I’m all in for this as a solution.
A lot of folks will probably be frustrated that their short term gains as a lender will be reduced. Think long term anon. If we want the native assets to grow in value and the alchemica economy not tank then let’s take the (minor) hit now for the long term!
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Yes but the minimum Caartridge duration could be 7 days worth of GLTR, which could be non-trivial for a botter to pay upfront. The downside ofc is that we’re then forcing players to pay upfront, but at least they’re earning the GLTR by LPing, which supports the ecosystem.
Looking forward to more discussion in today’s DAO call!
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I think the commitment has to be higher enough to discourage lots of passes for the bot accounts, and
even for 7 days might not be enough if the user could farm it all in 1 day (eg. pass costs 2 usd but the farmer can get 15 usd in a day).
What if in addition to the cartridges, alchemica was in a locked form that you could unlock to sell but with a high slash decreasing over time (eg. 50% to 0% in 30+ days), or you could simply use for crafting at 100% value?
This way, the upfront would put anyone trying to buy multiple passes in risk because if he can only withdraw without this huge slash after a couple of days (or month), he would be commited to the future price of alchemica.
edit: maybe the slash would be too drastic but could be a linear vest over a period of 30 days… this way farmers would still be commited to future alchemica price while having to pay upfront for the caartridge, or still have the option to immediatly use 100% to craft.
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In practice, renters will want to preserve their yield, and I think they would subsidize most of these cartridges. My concern is that this would effectively be a tax on renters. In terms of stemming bots, while a limited run of cartridges will still require some vigilance, eventually most bots will be eliminated. Creating an unlimited faucet of cartridges gated by GLTR will mean the bots will never stop coming, unless the cost of entry is so high that they don’t even try to slip past your detection, which would make the effective tax even more onerous.
One possible solution would be opening up scheduled “buy windows”, perhaps a few days, during which time anyone can buy a cartridge, and not allowing purchases outside of these windows. Botters may take a risk by hoarding cartridges and distributing them to addresses, but their ammunition theoretically would be limited, and would need to be front-loaded. Once one address gets caught, it also may become easier to trace the main botter account this way, and eliminate all associated addresses that were loaded during the window.*
I think it would definitely be wise to impose a minimum duration.
*EDIT: A possible exploit I could see in this would come from a botter, as a form of mutual destruction, distributing cartridges to legitimate addresses to get them banned from the mass ban. I’m not sure how to circumvent this short of blocking transfers of cartridges unless the recipient themselves has whitelisted the sender. But that could be defeated as well by the botter simply distributing GLTR to its subsidiary addresses instead.
I had a thought. The Bonding Curve currently has KYC. What if KYC was imposed on cartridge-buyers, who could facilitate the purchase and distribution of cartridges on behalf of other players? Guild leaders, for example, and big solo renters. Cartridges in this case would be free (and perhaps unlimited) and would be minted at the discretion of the KYC’d individual, and could be easily traced. Scholars desiring a cartridge could approach a cartridge-distributor if they want to join the game.
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Hey Dan,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
I appreciate all the effort you are making to tackle these problems head on.
I really was just concerned with this whole notion of people choosing not to Hodl being penalized or not wanted in the game. I think its a slippery slope and makes me pause and think about how many individuals are here just to flip items on the bazzar and dump ghst. There are many in this community that see it as a way to make money probably similar to the way some of these Scholars look at Alchemica. I mean how many people just buy things in the bazzar relist and flip and dont Hodl but simply look at it as a quick buck. Or those that need to dump all their ghst. Its not like we’ve punished that kind of behavior in the past. Sometimes people just need to sell for whatever reason. Doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy the game or don’t support it. That is mainly why I made my comments. I was really wondering what would be considered an extractor etc. Seems like a though thing to judge and a lot of room for interpretation.
Im all for squashing bots. Those seem to be the true definition of extractors.
Thanks again for some more clarity on your thought process. It helped me better understand.
I think this will be tricky. As its difficult to id players this way right off the bat. Sometimes people may be extractors for a bit but fall in love with the game and completely change their modus operandi. Like judging players that flip in the baazaar dont hodl ghst but like the game and stick around and support it by spreading the word and participating. It will be open to a lot of interpretation based on who is doing the judging. Some would see those individual as adding liquidity and helping while others may interpret them as extractors.
Looking forward to continuing to work through this. As usually I have faith in you all as you usually come up with something clever.
All the best.
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Thanks for speaking for Dan /s. I found his response much more instructive. I don’t think he needs people speaking for him.
Proposal #3 – Integration of Invite-Only and GLTR Caartridge
One final option I was thinking about after yesterday’s discussion would be a synthesis of the Invite-Only and GLTR Caartridge option. It would go like this:
–Caartridges are still dropped to Patrons (crafters, upgraders, maybe also Gotchi Holders?)
– Caartridges come by default with 30 days of play time
– Once their charge is up, they can be recharged by spending GLTR. (Exact rate TBD, currently 1 GLTR = 1 block, so 30 days would be roughly 1.17M GLTR. Not an easy feat for a scholar to accrue. Could give a healthy discount on that for playtime (rather than burning to speed up an upgrade).
–Players that recharge after their charge is expired would be considered “converted” (marketing funnel).
–Patrons whose scholars recharge would receive an invite in Round 2.
–(Supplemental option to GLTR): Crafting could also replenish charge, if the owner has a Caartridge NFT in their inventory.
Benefits
–Scholars are incentivized to think longer term. Love this game and wanna keep playing after your free 30 day trial? LP some Alchemica and provide value, or buy GLTR off the market.
–Still retain the “free to play” option, via invitations.
–Linking desire to play to become active member of community
–Obviates the need to create complicated metrics for what determines a “conversion” event in the Gotchiverse.
Downsides
–No significant downsides that I see present that are not already in the Invite-Only Caartridge model.
What do you think Gotchigang?
- I like it!
- I still prefer vanilla Invite-Only method
- I don’t like either of them
0 voters
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My only comment would be to bring up something that someone said earlier today. We could still have the recharge fee be in glitter, but set it to an ‘x ghst in glitter’, essentially. It’s a much more stable price.
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That could be done but as someone mentioned, it introduces a security vulnerability into the contracts by using the LP price as an oracle (which in generally is a smart contract no-no, if you’re using it for something critical).
An attacker could wait for a particularly juicy arb somewhere, then take out a flashloan, charge their Caartridge, and then hopefully make back the amount by arbing. It wouldn’t break the game, but it would be perceived as unfair by many players.
To do what you’re saying would require an oracle for GHST-GLTR pair, which probably wouldn’t be a very high priority for Chainlink.
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I really like this idea. It offers guilds a clear reason to LP alchemica for recharging their best scholars. It offers a clear use case for GLTR which is pivotal for tokenomic balance. It certainly serves as an initial attempt at gating and can be modified in the future. I would be in favor of dropping gotchi owners the caartridge as it’s the flagship NFT and “makes sense” to newbies learning about the game. I really appreciate your thought and effort on this. I would love to roll it out and get your megachad skillset mostly back in game development vs bot-catching ASAP.
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Have you tired sending Sergey a Gotchi yet? Maybe they are just feeling left out.
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is there any way for the Patron to cancel the Caartridge? in case of bad behavior, for example.
is there any chance of making 4 x 1 week (or maybe 2 x 2 weeks) of Caartridges for the Round 1? As we would only receive an invite for Round 2 if my Caartridges were recharged, I’d like to have a chance of better evaluating who should keep the Caartridges to go to round 2. (if I start with 6 Caartridges and happens that 2 of my scholars didnt work for some reason, id go with only 4 Caartridges for round 2)
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How would you define bad behavior? If they’re clearly botting, they will eventually get spotted and banned.
Sorry I’m not totally clear on the ask here. You mean giving out 4 Caartridges with 1 week of charge instead of 1 with 30 days?
So the general flow as I understand it:
For Round 1, several thousand one-time transferable cartridges will be airdropped to users based on different criteria having to do with investment in the game. These cartridges will be distributed at the recipients’ discretion. Subsequently any cartridge-holding address found to be botting will be banned and their cartridge effectively burned.
Each cartridge will be active for a number of blocks roughly equivalent to 30 days’ time. More blocks can be added to the cartridge duration by spending GLTR or by crafting. If blocks are added in this way, the Patron who provided the cartridge will receive an invite to Round 2. Round 2 will be invite-only, but otherwise will be another cartridge airdrop that will then be re-distributed by the recipients.
Couple questions:
if someone is airdropped a cartridge and just sits on it through Round 1, Round 2, etc, at some point in the future will they still be able to recharge the cartridge and give it to a scholar?
This is not an immediate concern, but because entry into a Round (and therefore access to future airdrops) requires a person to have an untransferred Cartridge to begin with, what path is there for a new player to get into the position where they will be airdropped Cartridges to distribute to borrowers?
Because of the demand for limited supply, we will probably want to establish an open forum for guilds and renters to post their terms, to make it easy for scholars to look around for the best deal and not get taken advantage of.
If you really wanted to do this, you can use time-weighted price average over last week, discarding a number of recent blocks.
I came to say this whole discussion is missing the elephant in the room: extractors will be extractors. You cannot change the behavior of someone coming here to make $$ by making them pay a small entrance fee for the privilege to extract.
Once it is known that a certain amount of dollars can be extracted from the system, by paying part in GLTR up front, it makes no difference – the word will get around to guilds. Except you’re creating additional friction + an information gate, discouraging non-professional extractor player base from attempting to P2E (then perhaps like the game enough to invest). The negative of this for every other player class must be weighed heavily first.
My claim is that this will not affect the extractor crowd, but will slightly negatively impact some other fringe player classes. Pay-to-play has to be done with tact and a better plan than this. This is a yield bearing game, if you heavily disincentivize people who are not playing every second to maximize their gain but then on top penalize who don’t do it by putting a cost to in-game-time where they could be doing other things… I’d be wary of driving the more casual minded folks away. You want casual players who’ll muck around maybe for the social aspects and more that the game has to offer. You don’t only want bloodthirsty penny-pinching money-making machines to spend time in the gotchiverse by purchasing that time, because they will purchase it anyway, so why bother.
I don’t know if I’m explaining this well, but I think this is a pointless pursuit and will likely do only harm. You want people to try the game, enjoy it, and maybe invest in it using motivators like social features, flexing, battles, higher earning potential… Until then, alchemica drops and working P2E is simply a marketing tool. Build conversion by putting out real motivators for people to spend time + invest rather than this petty and pointless barrier.
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Yes that’s a good question. The Caartridge duration would not start until the scholar has activated it (a one-time txn that cannot be reversed). So theoretically you could have Gen1 Caartridges that have never been opened.
The opportunity cost of holding on to one of these would be quite high though, as you would be forfeiting receiving future Caartridges, since your Gen1 was never used. But it might be a fun collector’s item 
Another note is that we would probably want to have a delay period between Round 1 and Round 2. Since not all Caartridges will be opened on Day 1 (some may be opened on Day 30) it would be slightly unfair to the Patrons who gave out their Caartridges later to not be eligible.
A 30-60 day delay between the end of Round 1 and the beginning of Round 2 would probably be okay. So the schedule could look like this:
(Just picking a date here)
July 1st – Round 1 Caartridges are airdropped
July 31st – Round 1 Caartridges activated on day 1 expire
August 1 - 31 – Waiting period (30 days)
September 1 – Round 2 Caartridges are airdropped.
This would give ample time for scholars who received their Caartridges later to activate them and have 30 days of playtime.
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