The Waifusion Solution
Many in the cryptocurrency space are familiar with the recent drop of Hashmasks, a digital art project from Suum Cuique Labs. Upon randomly purchasing a Hashmask, a user receives a non-fungible token (NFT), a claim to one of the 16,000 artistic works, with the chance of uncovering valuable rarity upon uncovering what NFT has been assigned.
Another recent project incorporates similar elements of rarity in the art along with an integral bonding curve, wherein as token supply (amount of NFT’s remaining to purchase) decreases, price increases. For example, Hashmasks offered the first 3,000 NFT’s at 0.1 ETH each, all the way up to the final 3 NFT’s at 100 ETH each.
In came Waifusion.
With a similar style of figures of various features randomly chosen upon each purchase, the incentive of surprise remains in this project as well. However, there is an added novelty and playfulness in the Waifusion project given that the artistic focus are waifus.
Each waifu purchase also comes with WET, or the Waifu Enhancement Token, which can be used to intentionally name each waifu (provided someone else has not already claimed that name). For each waifu purchased, 10 WET are accumulated per day. You can also send and receive WET to and from other wallets.
The anime-inspired art project dropped on March 1st for users to purchase waifus with either ETH or BNB (“baifus”). Each waifu was to be unveiled either when all supply was bought, or fourteen days expired, depending on whichever occurred first.
However, at near 9,000 waifus purchased, there were still over 6,000 remaining to hit the 16,384 mark and uncover all NFT’s to see what potential rarity each purchaser ended up obtaining. It became clear that the bonding curve would not entirely sell out as it was positioned to remain. Due to the robust secondhand market on OpenSea, reselling began to outshine minting new waifus.
It was at this point that CryptoCobain offered a potential solution via Twitter.
The idea involved using the existing ETH from the sale to buy out the rest of the contract, placing the unsold waifus in the “dungeon”, and allowing the owners of purchased waifus to see what they received with the potential of trading into the dungeon for a rarity gamble.
Thus ensued a Discord drama unlike any other, with the waifu community in dynamic discussion (a highly inflammatory discussion, at that) around whether or not this solution was feasible, whether or not CryptoCobain (“Cobie”) was bullying the development team into making a decision, and, most importantly, what to name the dungeon if not being kept as the “dungeon”.
Sanity appeared to return amidst a large Voice Chat where developers and other participating community members collaborated towards a practicable solution to salvage the dear waifus.
What emerged was a variation of Cobie’s initial solution, despite its initial polarizing effects. The dungeon (which is still open to being renamed at this point) was to live another day.
At this point of writing, on March 5th, 2021, the plan is as follows:
- Use the existing ETH from the sale to slowly buy the rest of the contract.
- Have the developers hold the unsold waifus in the dungeon.
- Lock waifus in the dungeon until development is complete and public launch is ready.
- Reveal waifus and analyze rarity.
- Build a dungeon smart contract in the meantime while the trading and discovery takes place.
- Launch the dungeon with the option to let people trade in waifus to burn and receive a new NFT.
More details include:
- A flat 0.7 ETH cost to mint a waifu in the dungeon.
- A flat 5490 WET (native token) cost to burn an existing waifu in order to swap out a pre-existing revealed waifu into the dungeon. The goal here is to burn common NFT’s for the chance to obtain a rarer waifu.
Right now, precise naming of this limbo space for unclaimed waifus and exact timeframes for development are not set.
However, this entire saga demonstrates quite a journey from initial launch excitement, to Discord uproar, to a community-wide solution effort that was, at least for me, both entertaining and heartwarming to witness.
As a personal holder of quite a few waifu NFT’s at the moment, I am impatiently waiting for the moment when I can analyze if I am to send my waifus to the dungeon or not.
