The Big Bang is the Ethereum of NFT

The Big Bang Economic White Paper

1. Background

Currently, BTC accounts for around 40% of the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies, while ETH accounts for around 20%.

Currently, BTC accounts for about 40% of the market cap in cryptocurrencies, while ETH accounts for about 20%. CryptoPunks, on the other hand, currently accounts for about 20% of the market cap in the NFT space, while Art Blocks, which is in second place, accounts for about 17%. Art Blocks is an algorithmically generated NFT project that is growing rapidly, with a 5x increase in market cap in less than a month. A month ago, when Art Blocks was still growing rapidly, CryptoPunks accounted for more than 40% of the market cap in the NFT space and it is no exaggeration to say that CryptoPunks is the BTC of the NFT space. Although CryptoPunks is currently being challenged by the market cap of new projects, with its historical position in the NFT space and the holders being the most well-known KOLs in the blockchain industry, CryptoPunks will remain the most BTC-like existence in NFT for the foreseeable future.

But CryptoPunks have similar limitations to BTC, with little scalability. The most popular application scenario for CryptoPunks now is to use it as a social product avatar, just like the biggest application scenario for BTC that has always been payments and deposits.

On August 27th, 2021, an NFT project called “Loot” emerged. Loot has led to thoughts of a paradigm revolution in NFT and Gamefi. But Loot is imperfect and has a lot of design flaws, some of which can be improved in the future, and some of which are already difficult to improve.

Related article:

How Loot is Leading the Paradigm Revolution Experiment in NFT/Gamefi

https://www.chainnews.com/articles/845737059143.htm

2. The Limitations of Loot

On Loot’s official website (https://www.lootproject.com/), the project description is very simple: Loot is randomized adventurer gear generated and stored on chain.

Stats, images, and other functionality are intentionally omitted for others to interpret.

Feel free to use Loot in any way you want.

Each loot bag contains 8 items, so there are 8 lines of characters, each representing one item. To generate random rarity, the contract assigns a token ID to the owner, and each Loot bag can be added a prefix or suffix based on the hash of your “token” ID, with a 42% chance of a suffix and an 8.7% chance of a prefix.

Weapons

Chest Armor

Head Armor

Waist Armor

Foot Armor

Hand Armor

Necklaces

Rings

A prefix could be “Spirit Song” and a suffix could be “of Protection” — combined with the “Titanium Ring/Titanium Ring” item to create: “Spirit Song’ Titanium Ring of Protection” (which would be a very rare item). A complete Loot bag might look like this:

2.1. A possible new paradigm revolution

2.1.1. Bottom-up

Typical NFT projects have the project owner set the characteristics of the NFT, assign a value to it, and then transfer it to the collector. In Loot’s ruleset, all NFT attributes are created and assigned by the collector (although the process is not completely customized by the collector, but automatically by the smart contract).

The significance of this thing is similar to a Project Ara modular phone solution once launched by Google’s Motorola’s ATAP (Advanced Technology and Planning) division. In its vision, Project Ara splits a smartphone into multiple independent modules, and users can buy the corresponding modules according to their needs and then compose the smartphone they want. If a part is damaged, the corresponding module can be replaced to achieve the repair.

In other words, Project Ara allows users to “assemble” or “create” their own phones, while Loot also allows users to “create” their own NFTs within certain rules.

2.1.2.Combinability

Defi Lego blocks have brought to light the power of “combinability”, the integration of different layers of defi protocols, which both strengthens and extends the boundaries as well as heights of the defi world but also introduces the risk of a “ship with iron ropes” type of crisis. In general, “composability” must be one of the most powerful weapons in the defi world.

At the moment, the NFT field is still in largely a single-player stage. Occasionally, there are big hits that trigger developers to enrich the ecosystem, such as CryptoKitties and now Axie Infinity, but such extensions are more like icing on the cake and can hardly affect or change the “world view” of the underlying protocols.

Loot embodies the self-cultivation of the “underlying NFT object protocol” in the form of a “meta-worldview”. Based on Loot, other NFT and gamefi projects can build an infinite number of completely different worldviews.

Traditional defi Lego blocks are “possessing combinations”, meaning you have to own a block in order to use it to build a superstructure. For example, in typical liquidity mining, participants must own and stake some kind of liquidity token before they can participate in mining.

Loot can provide not only this “possessing combination” of Lego blocks but also a new paradigm of “ citation-based combination”. A “citation-based combination” is similar to citing academic literature. In other words, if you want to do research on a scientific topic, do you need to completely start from zero? That’s unnecessary and meaningless because you can simply view someone elses work that has already been studying that particular subject. You can cite other people’s literature or research results and come up with your own new solution. Although you do not own the literature you cite, your “superstructure” (the new solution) can still be freely assembled based on the “underlying protocol” (the cited literature). Currently, Loot NFTs can be invoked by other contracts through LootComponents.sol to render a particular Loot at will.

Loot now has only 8000 Bag combinations, if it continues to enrich and improve its “underlying NFT item protocol”, Loot will have a function library or encyclopedia-like role. For other NFT and gamefi projects that involve item properties, if you don’t want to start from scratch, you can cite the properties and rarity of all or some of the items in the Loot bag, and then do secondary processing to fit your project’s worldview.

Users of upper-level NFTs and gamefi projects do not need to own a Loot at all; their NFT assets only need to cite the Loot’s “metadata” information instead of possessing the Loot, then the owner of the Loot will naturally enjoy the increased value of its “metadata” when it is highly cited.

The reason for mentioning the concept of “ citation-based combination” is that there are only more than 2400 holders of Loot, and if the Loot ecosystem is based on the play of “possessing combinations”, the projects in the Loot ecosystem will be limited to this extremely limited user group forever, and then it will not be very different from other existing NFT projects.

Based on the “ combinability” of Loot as the “underlying NFT object protocol”, there are more and more ecological projects around Loot.

2.2. Flaw 1: Lack of decentralized community governance

Loot is an exciting project, it’s unique and groundbreaking, but it has too many flaws.

The first major flaw is Loot’s lack of effective decentralized community governance. A community without effective DAO governance is soulless.

Dom Hofmann, the founder of the Loot project, tweeted on September 4 that he was launching More Loot (MLOOT), a new project with dynamic provisioning. Dom Hofmann said that he prefers synthetic Loot, with MLOOT numbers starting at 8001, with a dynamic output of 1/10th of the block rate of Ethereum, adding about 250,000 per year.

Although Loot and More Loot are not the same smart contract, they share the exact same NFT feature information and generation rules, the only difference is the size of the token id. Also, the MLOOT numbering starts from 8001, so basically, More Loot can be considered as an official extension of Loot.

But all decisions are made by Dom Hofmann alone. There was no community governance proposal, nor is there any vote. Maybe the decision to release More Loot was a decision to get more people to hold the Loot extension, but it was too centralized. All Loot holders had no effective voice in the evolution of the project.

Before More Loot was released, a project called Adventure Gold airdropped 10,000 AGLD tokens to every Ethereum address that held a Loot bag. The token’s originator, Will Papper, claims to have given it the role of a Loot governance token (and may subsequently assume some of the functional roles). Because of the popularity of Loot, AGLD quickly went live on centralized exchanges such as Huobi, OKEx, and FTX. After the initial offering, 10,000 AGLD tokens could be exchanged for 11 ETH (about $42,000) on Uniswap.

But all subsequent developments have shown that the Loot project is not in the hands of Loot holders, and certainly not in the hands of AGLD holders, but within a centralized environment

2.3. Flaw 2: Lack of a greater vision

More Loot expands the number of Loots, which seems a bit centralized in its creation, but one might not think that’s a big deal — after all, an early-stage project needs a more efficient centralized process.

But More Loot lacks a larger vision. Since More Loot can be seen as an official extension of Loot, it can be argued that Loot also lacks a larger vision, which is another big flaw of Loot.

In “A Possible New Paradigm Revolution”, we introduced the concept of “Citation-based combination”. Because we believe that Loot does not qualify as an “underlying NFT protocol” only if every user has a Loot bag. Similar to the widely adopted academic citation system, this happens based on “the value of the underlying protocol itself” rather than “the ownership of the underlying protocol is decentralized enough”. More Loot only extends the user base of Loot without extending its own value, which is disappointing because it lacks a larger vision.

The new paradigm of “Citation-based combination” tells us that it is unnecessary and pointless to start from scratch over and over again. Taking already done work to come up with new solutions is a more appropriated option for the cost-effectiveness of upper-level agreements.

Based on the requirement of “Combinability”, the “underlying NFT protocol” needs to be generic enough, rich enough, and support continuous maintenance. It is a series of “sub-protocol” networks, rather than a vertical extension of a single item “sub-protocol” (that is, Loot), and not a “sub-protocol” of the direct assets of the extension of the number of users (that is, More Loot), We should focus more on the “ cited value “ and “ cited number “ of the “ sub-protocol “, which are the core values of the “ underlying NFT protocol “.

2.4. Flaw 3: Lack of incentives

To be precise, the “underlying NFT protocol” should be a “protocol library”, not just a separate “sub-protocol” of a certain dimension. As mentioned above, the core value of the “underlying NFT protocol” lies in the “ cited value “and “ cited number” when all its “sub-protocols” are cited by the upper-layer protocols.

But Loot does not provide any incentives to the upper layer protocols. This is the biggest challenge and flaw Loot faces.

We know that IPFS is a great decentralized storage network, but it still needs Filecoin as its incentive, otherwise, IPFS will not be able to build a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. Right now, the Loot ecosystem is driven entirely by Loot’s own buzz. People think Loot is cool, so they buy it and even create more projects based on it. But the development of blockchain tells us that all the hype will soon pass unless it has sustainable incentives.

Since the “underlying NFT protocol” needs to be mutually beneficial with the upper-layer protocol, the former saves the latter from the useless work of repeatedly starting from scratch, while the ladder can help expand its usage scenarios and user scalability. Then the economic model of the “underlying NFT protocol” should be designed with the upper-layer protocol as an indispensable ecological role in mind.

A Loot bag without incentives is just a Loot bag, too simple and therefore too fragile.

3. What is the Big Bang

Ethereum, which supports smart contracts, has sparked a paradigm revolution in the blockchain. Loot inspired the paradigm revolution of NFTs and Gamefi, but Loot’s design flaws prevented it from taking on a role similar to that of Ethereum for blockchains. We designed The Big Bang based what we think about the “underlying NFT protocol” and expect it to eventually lead the paradigm revolution of NFT and Gamefi.

The Big Bang is an “underlying NFT protocol network”, consisting of a series of “underlying NFT sub-protocols”. Different “underlying NFT sub-protocols” take on different roles and provide “metadata” for different domains, such as spatial sub-protocols, item sub-protocols, person sub-protocols, action sub-protocols, and so on.

The Big Bang is a network of protocols with incentives, because we put more emphasis on the core value of the “underlying NFT protocols”, i.e., “citation value” and “citation quantity”.

The Big Bang incentivizes upper-layer protocols that reference the underlying “metadata” and also incentivizes holders that hold the underlying “metadata”, while the upper-layer protocols can continue to incentivize regular users who use their products.

The Big Bang also incentivizes developers to help extend and optimize the network of protocols. Only a network that continues to optimize and iterate is a network that has a strong life.

4. Economic models

4.1.Distribution mechanism

The Big Bang has a continuously scalable “metadata” NFT (Meta NFT for short).

Meta NFTs have no total cap, no fixed incremental rules, and are decentralized and governed by the community.

The first batch of Meta NFTs will be created with the Genesis sub-protocol, with a total of 10,000, and will be claimed by the community for free, by paying the gas fee of the Ethereum network. 555 Meta NFTs will be reserved by The Big Bang development team. Considering the limited number of Meta NFTs in the first batch, a certain whitelist rule will be set. The mechanism to join the whitelist is a user-initiated application.

The Big Bang will also issue a governance token, BANG, with a cap of 21 million BANGs, with community governance, protocol incentives, functionality, and other usage scenarios. All 21 million BANGs will also be issued through a fair launch party.

The rules for issuing the governance token BANG are as follows.

• The Big Bang’s Genesis sub-protocol will generate 10,000 Meta NFTs, and each Meta NFT holder can receive 1000 BANGs for free.
• The unclaimed BANGs will be subsequently governed by the community DAO and used to stimulate The Big Bang ecosystem.
• Since there are some consumption scenarios for BANG, the BANGs that are burned out will be re-Minted after a certain time interval, and the total number of BANGs is guaranteed to be capped at 21 million. The re-Minted BANGs are governed by the community DAO and used to stimulate The Big Bang ecosystem.

4.2. Community Governance

BANG holders can participate in The Big Bang’s decentralized community governance.

4.3. Protocol incentives

The unclaimed BANG is distributed to the participants of The Big Bang ecosystem, namely the upper layer protocols, Meta NFT holders and developers, by way of protocol incentives.

4.3.1.Upper Layer Protocols

Since upper-layer protocols can use Meta NFTs in The Big Bang through “ citation-based combination”, to motivate more products to use The Big Bang, we will evaluate the value of the contribution of upper-layer protocols and Meta NFT in the protocol network by referring to the citation model of academic results in the scientific community.

The evaluation of value will be based on “citation value” and “citation quantity”. The “citation quantity”, as the name suggests, indicates the number of times an upper-layer protocol has cited a Meta NFT. The “citation value” indicates how a Meta NFT is cited by an upper-layer protocol, whether it is cited as a normal NFT or as a scarce NFT. The “citation value” is also related to the value of the upper-layer protocol itself, e.g., the value of a citation of a startup early-stage project is much smaller than the value of a citation of a popular mature project.

Since the “”citation quantity”” and “citation value” may be somewhat mutually exclusive, for example, an ordinary Meta NFT may have a low single “citation value” but its “”citation quantity”” will be large, while a scarce Meta NFT may have a high single “citation value” but its “”citation quantity”” may be relatively small. On the whole, most of the Meta NFTs in the whole network will generate a balanced value.

The evaluation of ‘citation quantity’ and ‘citation value’ will be more complex and will require more time to develop a robust and flexible system. In the early stages of The Big Bang’s development, decisions about how to explicitly and specifically incentivize a behavior will likely be made more through DAO.

4.3.2. Meta NFT Holders

The fact that a Meta NFT is referenced means that it has generated value in The Big Bang. Therefore, its holder should also get some incentive.

This also means that if you own a rare or interesting Meta NFT, keep it and don’t give it up easily. If you give it up, you also give up the potential benefits it can generate in The Big Bang.

The incentive strategy for Meta NFT holders is similar to the incentive strategy for upper-level protocols, and is determined by the “citation quantity” and the “value of citations”. The more “ citations “ you get, the higher the “ citation value “ each time, the higher the value generated by the Meta NFT, and the more incentives the holder can get. And vice versa.

4.3.3.Developers

The Big Bang relies on developers to continue to scale and optimize, so developers who drive the evolution of The Big Bang will also be rewarded with generous protocol incentives.

Since it is difficult to quantify developer contributions, the incentive strategy will likely be determined primarily through DAOs.

4.4.Functionality

BANG also has many scenario-specific functional roles, either given by The Big Bang itself or by the upper-layer protocol.

The Big Bang itself gives many functional roles to BANG. One of the most basic features is that it supports Meta NFT holders that consume BANG to customize the name of the Meta NFT, similar to the NCT (name change token) feature in Hashmask.

Meta NFT names are unique and cannot be repeated. The named NFT name can be cited by higher-level protocols as part of the Meta NFT feature.

However, unlike Hashmask, Meta NFT names in The Big Bang are time-sensitive and not permanent. So if you name something very interesting and want to keep it, you need to keep the name by consuming BANG at certain intervals.

The rules for the number of BANGs to be consumed for initial naming, the number of BANGs to be consumed to keep the name, and the expiration date of the name will be open to the community to govern.

In addition to the functionality given by The Big Bang itself, upper-layer protocols are free to define how BANGs can be used in their products.

5.Genesis Sub-Protocol — 「Underlying NFT Spatial Protocol」 Land

While Loot provides an example of an “underlying NFT object protocol”, The Big Bang believes that spatial information is also important. So The Big Bang’s Genesis sub-protocol will be an “underlying NFT spatial protocol”, where the Meta NFT is Land. The numbering rule is “Land # 0001”, where “0001” is the token id of the Meta NFT.

The first batch of Meta NFT Land is 10,000, which will be claimed by community users for free, paying the gas fee of the Ethereum network. 555 first Meta NFTs will be reserved by The Big Bang development team. Considering the limited number of Meta NFTs in the first batch, a certain whitelist rule will be set. The mechanism to join the whitelist is user-initiated application.

Each Land has 8 dimensions of characteristics, which are

Geography

Climate

Natural Resources

Population

Economy

Military

Education

History

Land is set in an alternate parallel universe, not in the real world. So you have the opportunity to own a piece of rare land on another planet in a parallel universe and subsequently name it yourself.

6.Conclusion

The metaverse is not far away from flourishing, but its construction requires various basic raw materials that do not need to be repeatedly manufactured by each builder, thus requiring the emergence of generic “underlying NFT protocols”.

The Big Bang, as an “underlying NFT protocol network”, provides a generic, rich, and continuously scalable optimized Meta NFT for upper layer protocols/products, while providing incentives to continuously stimulate the ecological prosperity. The Big Bang expects to actually lead this new paradigm revolution and become the Ethereum of the NFT space.