We thought we were ready, but we were, in fact, not ready...

If you are reading this: thank you.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for not leaving and sticking with us, even after the mess of a launch we experienced today!

As promised, here is our deep-dive and postmortem of what happened, including the steps ahead:

What happened?

1. FOMO got the best of us.

   We mass tweeted and confused people with multiple contracts and other behind-the-scenes jargon since we tried to explain our situation as best as possible while we got flooded with DMs and messages informing us about the issues at hand. This led to people who were already confused and frustrated to feel even stronger dissatisfaction, and being lost about what was happening.

2. Problems with our node

   Our node that fetched the correct gas settings for the mint transaction ended up dying on us since so many tried to Mint at once. This issue led to people seeing wrong gas estimations that would go up to the thousands!

3. Wallet collection

   We were still collecting wallets 30 minutes before launch since we kept getting last-minute wallet submissions. Originally we had planned to close wallet submission 4 hours before Mint, but we wanted everyone to be able to join us and therefore still accepted last-minute wallet submissions from our partners. This led to us not being able to double-check and vet all the wallets like we wanted, letting wallets with brackets, ens and wallets without any spaces written together through the cracks. Since we put all wallets in one giant list, many of our giveaway and pre-mint winner's wallets got corrupted by these entries, and they were, therefore, unable to Mint.

4. Proxy contract

   The proxy contract allows modularity and flexibility in smartcontracts, and we employed it on our Mint. Here is an example mint transaction that went through successfully:

   https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3b8eba6d2571937a636b00577c071fb469f12907538d51f1a310fe9b51f03806

   The Nft contract is still 0x0A2605FEC8Ebf47966430eB4E5D8e59838cd0802 but the mint was called through the 0x83d58530a84025ffb60eec12afad12de48a4862d contract leading to massive gas saving and optimizations, and most minters could mint their nft by only spending around 2-3$ on gas! The proxy contract usage is still not very commonly used, so we apologize that this was not communicated in a better way, confusing minters why we had "two" contracts. You can read more about it in the following article if you are interested to learn how it works!

   https://github.com/fravoll/solidity-patterns/blob/master/docs/proxy_delegate.md

5. Website overload

   We expected the worst, but the massive traffic load still overran us. Moreover, we deployed our second backup mint website immediately as planned, but the damage was already done. We got a combined number of refreshes and website visits of over 72k, leading to an absolute decimation of even our most vigorous preventative measures.

6. Too many backups

   We tried to prepare for everything and created three websites, all designed for Mint, this led people to get confused, and many people were confused and asked us if they were "legit" websites.

7. Visual Pricing Bug

   Due to the sheer volume and traffic our site was getting, the minting dapp got overloaded, and it showed the price for the public Mint to whitelisted users. Our backup server also had two buttons, "Public" and "WL sale" - these were meant for two different mints, but you had to choose the wl sale button for the whitelist mint manually. Choosing the public mint button would show a different option and would not let users Mint, despite having a whitelist spot, since this was meant for the public sale phase! We did not communicate this well before launch, and it got many people confused and asked if our "free mint" was just a bait tactic to get people to pay for the Mint. Our minting contract had a whitelist mint price of 0 hardcoded, so even if a paid mint was submitted, it would have been rejected, and no funds were lost or collected. We also encourage you to verify this statement by checking our contact balance and looking at the balance of it: https://etherscan.io/address/0x0a2605fec8ebf47966430eb4e5d8e59838cd0802#internaltx

Moving forward:

1. Already minted supply

   Will be getting a unique "not ready" border to commemorate this fuck up that was our Mint, and we are also looking to reward these users in other ways too, who, despite all problems, pushed through and minted, or are deciding to engage in secondary activity, even after our failed initial launch.

2. Reveal will be pushed until our Mint goes successfully

   We will not reveal the collection now; all hands are on deck to make our relaunch successful.

3. New tentative mint day

   The new tentative mint day will be voted and picked by the community, so we will be able to fit the schedule of everyone the best.

4. New contract

   A new contract that does not include a proxy function will be used so that you know what you are minting! Unfortunately, this will require a listing migration, but we will take a snapshot just before our v2 Mint, and all wallets will be airdropped with a free v2 NFT during the WL mint phase. This will be communicated well before, including a warning "open-sea" placeholder update, so traders will have nothing to worry about if they do decide to engage in secondary sales right now :)

5. Pre Launch

   We are going to be posting the new contract and open sea link many hours if not days before our launch so that there is no last-minute scramble like what happened today.

6. Support

   We got over 600+ Support tickets and DM requests, and we are working through them! We are doing our best to respond to all inquiries asap, but please be mindful that this might take some time due to their sheer volume.

7. Wallet Checker

   We are going to be launching a wallet check function for our relaunch, so you will be able to check if your wallet has successfully been whitelisted or not! This will ensure that nobody has to feel anxious, and everything can go smoothly.

8. WL = WL

   If you have a wl spot, we will not be taking it away! Thank you to everyone who voted and made us see the errors in our ways, the community is everything to us, and we are grateful that you voiced your opinions and concerns! We were considering a public mint since we were so excited about our launch and did not want to lose our momentum, but robbing people of their whitelist spot is not the way. If you had a wl spot before, you will still have it in our relaunch, and there is nothing further you will need to do.

In hindsight, we had a plethora of issues that could have been avoided with better preparation, and we cannot emphasise enough how remorseful we are for this disarray and for squandering your time.

We hope you can forgive us and that you will still join us in our v2 relaunch, despite all the problems that transpired today.

Thank you for your understanding and support! 🧙‍♀️