This is the first in a series of articles in preparation for the launch of Copium Wars: Cult of the Dead Bear

Anyone in crypto for more than two weeks has come across the concept of fair launch.

Initially popularised by Yearn Finance's YFI token, this model of rapidly distributing project ownership has become mainstream.

But what is fair?

In this short article, I will focus on fair launches for NFT projects.

Over the last year and a half, I have seen a variety of fair launches, and I have also executed some of them; I have come to the following conclusion:

Fair must mean fair for both community and developers. Corollary: the distribution among community holders must be balanced.

Launching a project is a delicate balancing act, and if not all parties are correctly incentivised, the project dies.

One example of a failed fair launch is my N project. This project was a free mint without team allocation nor royalties*.

In this case, there were two main shortfalls. When launched, I didn't devise any Sybil resistance; for this reason, a few early minters accumulated an unfair amount of tokens for free and have been spoiling the project since then.

The other problem is that I effectively don't have any financial leverage or incentives to facilitate project growth. So far, I have put time, money and effort toward that goal, but this is entirely pro-bono and not sustainable.

An excellent example of a successful fair launch, on the other hand, is Smol Brains by my friend John Patten. Also, in this case, it was a free mint, but John effectively tackled Sybil attacks via community engagement. He also generates royalties for his other project (Treasure) and has kept a good amount of the distribution to incentivise growth and sustainability of the ecosystem further.

How does this apply to Copium Wars?

Considering all of the above, we have devised the following approach to secure CW long-term sustainability.

Sybil attacks are mitigated by using an engaging and fun pre-game campaign where players collect HOPE (pre-game point system) based on a set of activities. Inspired by the Raid Party system, we have linked the wallet and discord id of each player so that we can have activities on and off discord.

The HOPE system is not only used for Sybil resistance. Instead, it also determines the presale status for each player.

At minting time, the presale list will be partitioned into three groups, free mints, discounted mints and early mints.

Each player will be able to use their HOPE balance to receive one or more slots in each of the three groups. For example, one might use their balance to get one free mint, one discounted mint and two early mints if they have enough HOPE.

After the presale, tokens will be priced using an auction mechanism.

In closing, I want to touch also on the interplay between fairness and gas cost. In some cases, a free mint can be incredibly unfair if it sparks a gas war. In Copium War's case, we eliminate this problem firstly by having the minting on Arbitrum and secondly by having an off-chain reservation system.

Yours,

Tony