Two types of portals for Haunt 2

[JG1]

As the discussion is evolving re. Haunt 2, one thing is becoming abundantly clear:

Certain market participants have not forgotten the woes of the initial H1 distribution.

Anecdotes and comments are flying in… People want 100GHST portals, regardless of the implications.
Once again suggestions are coming to limit buyers, to gift/raffle portals, to do presales, etc.

The arguments are very strong about having to grow the user base/ecosystem, engage a wider audience, redress the distribution of H1, etc.

The issue is the market has already priced portals, in their current form, substantially higher than 100GHST. I feel those that are requesting a H2 portals at a specific price, are applying a very narrow vision of their desire, without much thought of the implications for the wider ecosystem.

Devs have worked hard at creating a fair and efficient avenue for H2 portal distribution via auctions, the problem is many community members don’t even want to try this method, as they already sense they will be outbid by bigger pockets.

Direct sales at below true economic value have already failed twice (H1 & lil pump), I would urge the community to stop asking for this kind of distribution in chasing the dream of 100 GHST portals.

While it may be true that it benefits all of us to grow our audience, I do not share in the idea that forcing/manipulating the market’s supply and demand can ever yield the right results.

For better or worse, we have had people transacting for over 3 months and establishing baseline values for gotchi and wearables that many deem overpriced. The request to force prices lower, be it via restrictive mechanisms or flooding the market, would not be an utopia. For every “happy” new user that we acquire through debasing portal value down to 100GHST, we will have an upset early backer due to the crashing value of their NFTs. Once the first buyers are burned, confidence in the system is destroyed. Supporters of 100GHST portals may find that you can easily force values to plummet, but you cannot make them go back up once the market has lost faith in the spigots of supply.

So again, while it is a noble endeavor to wish for cheap portals for everybody, this shouldn’t be subsidized via value destruction for H1 buyers.

Since all arguments for affordable portals usually fail to admit a certain desire to strike big luck (5 figure gotchi) from a cheap portal, and instead double-down on affordability arguments for the base gotchi experience, I propose we launch two different type of portals for H2: traditional portals and single-gotchi portals.

If you think about it, the issue with current portals is that they are a packaged deal. You are forced to buy 10 gotchi randomizations per portal. These are 10 lottery tickets to what could be a previously unseen, enormously valuable 580-600 BRS gotchi. This is the reason why selling portals at 100GHSTis very difficult, the potential/lotto value within them is way larger than 100GHST.

I feel that if the segments of the community that demand 100GHST portals are sincere when they claim all they want is an affordable entry experience , they would not object to single-gotchi portals.

Instead of forcing the buyer to purchase 10 randomizations, we could allow them to purchase a single one via a second type of portal. If H1 portals have transacted mostly within a range of 700-1000 GHST , we could expect single-gotchi portals to sell for 70-100GHST in the bazaar.

A single gotchi portal doesn’t completely and entirely eliminate the possibility for the buyer to land the greatest gotchi yet, it simply does it in a way commensurate to their investment level.

Looking forward to your thoughts and comments.

• One type of portal - Same as H1
• Two portal types

[Kokusho]

100 ghst portals, as much as I want them, we have GBM auctions coming. Why don’t we see where we are with the upcoming wearables sale and how that works out first?

[ArtCore]

Two types portals sounds good
+
Two types of pricing

Claassic T Portal 80-95% of haaunt.
Baasic T Portal (red, brown, blue, or whatever purple, not black) One per address + portals non transferable, can’t sell + we can flatter the curve for gotchi inside, making 600 gotchi to be a chance like 1 in 50m. Or max will be 560 or sth. Dunno.

CTP - aauction
BTP - via account cabinet.

Baasic summoned gotchi will have a badge. Baasic badge

[JG1]

Yeah, interesting ideas fren!

Not sure about making them non transferrable. I think single-gotchi portals would make great gifts, promotional airdrops, etc. And even for us H1 old-timers, sometimes you want to indulge on a portal but don’t have a full 1000GHST to spare. It would be nice to buy a cheap single-gotchi portal to open as a distraction every once in a while.

[notorious_BTC]

I think trying to match a price for new haunts based on the price appreciation of the H1 portals doesn’t make sense. Pokemon doesn’t look back at their red version collectible and price new games off the appreciation. The whole purpose of buying something early is to benefit from price appreciation in the future. You’re taking a risk that the game will be a success.

Someone had mentioned long ago the idea of lil gotchis, basically extremely limited NFT’s that could be minted in the 100’s of thousands and given away as promos, gifts etc.

Your idea of having a non-transferable gotchi springs forth many ideas in my brain that could be explored. In World of Warcraft, there were items that were bind on pickup, on equip, on account etc. We’re still really early in the development, but some items like that in the future would be really cool. We already have badges that are essentially “bind on pickup” but what if we also had seasonal rewards that had stat boosts etc but couldn’t be transferred. It would raise the value of the gotchi without actually adding inventory to the bazaar. Woo I love it!

[JG1]

Yeah! Absolutely… not sure what happened with the lil gotchis idea. Perhaps it is a complicated implementation. Mostly I want to highlight there’s other options to making gotchis accesible to wider audience without crashing the value of regular portals.

[kenymccornick]

TL;DR
As much as I’d like for this to be a solution, I think the problem at hand is not that simple…

As you know, I don’t intend to buy any more portals, so try to keep an open mind while you read this and stop believing that everyone who defends a lower entry price does so because they want to buy a cheap portal. In fact there are some whales heavily invested that are also concerned about entry price and user adoption. Worrying about price changes short term is just a very narrow view of the whole thing, cause long term the only thing that will make those H1 portals valuable is user adoption.

One thing I want to point out is that part of why Aavegotchi was attractive to many at the very beginning is precisely the vision the team had for portals (and they marketed it like that), a kind of lottery ticket that could land you a great gotchi for a very affordable price. The odds are small though. The statements and expectations you are seeing are the results of Aavegotchi’s vision from the very beginning.

Personally I believe in free markets, and I think the auction is an interesting experiment, so I see no reason not to try that. Whatever the entry price ends up being, we probably will learn a lot of things after that and it will help improve distribution, whether it fails or succeeds in increasing the number of users (this is what I mentioned in discord that you all took so bad, I wasn’t talking about the project’s failure, but the failure to create user growth). When I say that unless the price is something around 100 GHST we won’t see much adoption, I’m not defending what I want, I’m just giving my analysis of what i see in the market. I highly doubt that we see masses paying 1000 GHST or even half of that for a tiny chance to get a great gotchi or a basic gotchi to play with. And this is what the market is telling you, otherwise you’d get lots of new users everyday.

Now, you offer them a low end gotchi without the chance for a great one or a portal that gives them an even lower chance for 100 GHST? Good luck with that. I think Aavegotchi’s original price and idea of portals was spot on, and the fact that so many people were there during the sale proves it.

The thing about small unregulated markets is that they can be manipulated. In a free market, pixelcraft would release a product at a price, and if people don’t buy it, they should take the hint and understand that they don’t have enough demand at that price, so either they reduce costs and lower the price or they’ll lose millions. Plus, their growth would stagnate and their product would die off slowly. However, right now pixelcraft’s growth is in the hands of the secondary market entirely, which is not in a hurry to sell (especially since there is no primary market for portals until more are released). So, imagine if we were saying that car makers shouldn’t make new cars cause that would devaluate previous buyer’s cars, and it’d force them to offer a competitive price if they resell.

As you hopefully can see, the current situation is not a free market, especially with people lobbying against new releases. Precisely having more portals and more gotchis released would make this a free market, cause right now there is almost no new demand at those prices and no supply at prices most people are willing to pay. Yeah, you are right, some of us have been paying those prices, but it’s been mostly collectors or passionate supporters, so we can’t use those prices for reference if we want user growth beyond that niche.

I was hesitating whether to reply or not, cause I think sometimes in a discussion you just hit a wall and it’s time to say “well, let’s agree to disagree”. From what I’ve seen you post time and time again, we might have reached that point, you have very strong convinctions and so do I, but here it is anyway in case it helps someone get a broader view of this matter. Then let’s agree to disagree!

Edit: After the Litepaper release, I want to congratulate the team for such an elegant solution. Instead of cheap crappy gotchis/portals they have created a new more affordable character in the gotchiverse, the liquidators. Let’s see how it plays out, but definitely the best potential solution I’ve seen so far.

[marklar]

my entrant concerns are largely mitigated by the role of liquidators and the tokenomics of the gotchiverse, as discussed earlier and continuing to be discussed now. therefore, i support 1 portal type.

[JG1]

That is great to hear fren! I know you were among those looking for more affordable options.
I am also bullish on the revelations of the whitepaper, and hope that it satisfies all of our affordability champions.
I actually do prefer just one portal type+GBM auctions, but suggested the other type of portal for those laser-focused on affordability as the path to success for the platform.

[FlameViper]

From how much I know Little Aavegotchis passed quorum and there was no more buzz or report back from the devs.
I remember like one time reading a rumour that H2 will only have like 5 gotchis or even 3 gotchis, but it ended up being just a rumour(and I’m still not sure about that).
Uhhh right now yeah we need even more ways to fractionalize a gotchi, a gotchi has a lot of parts to it, but they’re hard to rip apart/fractionalize, we don’t have a gotchi with just 1-2 traits out of its 6 traits, those could be the little aavegotchis. We don’t have a way to rip their type collateral and give it to someone else, I don’t have any YFI gotchis. We don’t have dogtags to store our names in an alternative wearable so we don’t have to pay 500$ just for the name. Not sure how to fractionalize badges if they’re meant to stay stuck to the gotchi, same for the background slot.

Maybe I want/need a gotchi with 50-200 BRS, a 50 BRS gotchi with 49 SPK, a 100 BRS gotchi with 0 SPK or 49 SPK+49 NRG or a gotchi with 170 BRS meaning 0 SPK, 30 NRG

Also we’ve had a few threads about F2P/unlimited edition gotchis which got forgotten.

[actaeon]

One downside to offering single-gotchi portals is that it would greatly inflate the supply of gotchis.

Normal portal=1000 GHST +10-100GHST spiritforce, produces 1 gotchi
10 x miniportal=1000 GHST +100-1000 spiritforce produces 10 gotchis

With this in mind, I’m against this specific proposal (although I like much of the idea and agree on the philosophy outlined).

[JG1]

Fractional ownership is yet another idea I like better than different portals.
Single portal gotchi just seems super easy/possible to implement before H2, but I am hoping calls for increased affordability cease now with the concept of the Liquidators in the realm.

[JG1]

Yup, as H1 gotchi owner, I fully share this concern, but since H2 would be voted in with a max number of portals, it would be a way to drive up adoption only as far as the voted number of portals.

Nonetheless, I hope cheaper or otherwise different kinds of portals won’t be as clamored by the community now with news of the Liquidator role.

[kenymccornick]

Just FYI, the biggest whales and the team itself are also “affordability champions”, as they basically share our views and have always known that without affordability there won’t be mass adoption. You can hear it from their own mouth in today’s LADZ podcast. We are not some kind of communist cult, you know , just realistic.

[JG1]

My apologies fren if the term “affordability champion” is enough to offend your sensibilities.
I consider it as respectful a term as possible. To each their own, I suppose.

I’d wear the title of “value champion” or “free markets champion” or “H1 champion” with pride =)

[Pebbles]

I think scarcity drive value more than anything. If we sold only 10 portals for 1 ghst, I don’t think the price of existing portals would be affect. Conversely, if we sell 30,000 portals for 500 ghst each, I could easy see that tank the market for existing gotchis and portals.

Separately I don’t think anybody invested in haaunt one gotchis thinking the price of portals would go up at the next haant. If anything the community has been up front about growing user base significantly and seemingly implied lower prices.

Regardless, I think limiting the number of portals per person is the way to go as this ensures the widest distribution while limiting risk of flooding the market. I like the idea of 10,000-15,000 portals w/ a cap of 3-5 portals per person.

[notorious_BTC]

Another idea that could be fun would to allow for gotchis to be rented. That is, if you wanted to play in the realm with a gotchi and not a liquidator, you could choose from player’s gotchis they’ve put into the rental dashboard. For a small fee in GHST, they could play as your gotchi and earn whatever alchemical etc that they collect while playing. The loaner gets GHST and the user gets to play and also maybe harvest other resources.

[JG1]

This would indeed be amazing, imagine outfitting your gotchi so that it is a major yield generating asset via rentals , on top of RF rewards!

I’m guessing the rental mechanism would need to impart some limits on the renter, such as they can’t sell the gotchi, change wearables or raid the pocket.

It is probably a difficult but worthwhile implementation

[notorious_BTC]

I don’t know how the backend would work but I imagine the gotchi would never actually leave the owner’s wallet or the owner would stake the gotchi in a protected pool. The renter would then just basically be using a generated copy of the gotchi in the realm without actually possessing it.

[Jujy]

This is a very cool idea, and reminds me of Axie scholarships. I don’t know the exact mechanics of how they work, but my impression is that it’s handled by third parties like Yield Guild (I’m sure there are at least a few people in the gotchi community who are also heavily involved in Axie Infinity, maybe they can share their knowledge).

Now that you’ve brought it up, I’m a little surprised we haven’t already had discussions in this vein (or if we have, they’ve escaped my notice). In the case of Axie, it seems to be a huge part of the community culture, as it gives lots of youth (especially Filipino) the ability to help financially support their families without having to spend several hundred dollars to get started.

Maybe this is something that would be best implemented later on once we have a functioning metaverse, but implementing some sort of rental/scholarship system is a powerful idea IMO, and I’d be all for it.