Toshi Migration, the WorkLock, and more

We want to preface this wall of text by stating that the entire team that is currently working on Toshi was not in a place of ownership or leadership when the project began.

The original founder of Toshi decided to take 100E from the marketing wallet and trading fees for himself right after v2 relaunch, leaving Toshi on fumes. By this point, around 150–200 Ethereum was already used for buybacks and adding to LP by our developer who is not the founder. The initial core group had agreed that the founder should be paid, what we were not aware of was just how much he intended to pay himself and that he was going to do it immediately, all in a moment. Because he had access to the marketing wallet, he decided that he couldn’t watch any more money flow back into the chart and that he needed to secure enough for himself for about a week of half assed work. The efforts that made Toshi rise didn’t even come from his side, it was largely the team that took over post v2 launch.

There are multiple trustworthy dexes that run on a Uniswap v2 model today, but directly after leet exploit there was only one trustworthy dex, and it was sushi v3. Because of this, we lost all of our revenue generation via taxes, and as many on Toshi v1 can attest we used it largely to support chart, add to LP, and pay for things. It is super important to note once again that EVERYONE on the team today has done so on a volunteer basis. Currently, every single person working to move Toshi forward is doing this without any pay or compensation and is doing so because we believe in Toshi and its potential. To assert that the current team has profited somehow in a major way since taking over is utterly ludicrous and provably false.

All of this has led to a series of changes we believe Toshi has to go through for us to succeed and THRIVE long term on base chain. Below we are detailing why we came up with certain plans, why it has taken longer than expected. Without its community Toshi is nothing, so we are looking for your honest feedback on the plan. Anyone that wants to help Toshi can contact core team members to tell us how you’d like to help Toshi.

1. Moving liquidity from V3 to V2.

Since the week of August 14th, we have been looking at how to move Toshi forward. As a project with no war chest, we needed to find solutions to fund growth of the team, marketing, and many other things. Usually, a zero-tax token can do this by allocating portions of token supply early on for partnerships, OTC deals, and such. We didn’t have any of that when we (the current team) started getting involved with helping Toshi move forward.

For tax tokens, the high-volume period, and thus high tax period, is usually what funds the project for a long time, including through times of low volume. Toshi was a tax token before the relaunch on Sushi, but due to Sushi being V3, it automatically becomes a 0 tax token. This was no issue as there was a decently sized war chest, until the original founder decided to take all the available money.

In the week of August 14th, we decided that it would be best to move back to a (low) tax token. This would allow us to generate project funds. These funds would go to a market maker to work in our and the chart’s favor, future exchange listings, growth hacking and useful marketing, and growing the team.

We would leave a whitelisting option in the contract for CEXes and the market makers, so they would be exempt from taxes, leaving us the widest array of partners possible. We would always have the option of turning taxes back down to 0 if certain CEXes were open to listing Toshi, as a 0 tax token.

While we were all in agreement that this was the best path forward, we were approached by a few large investors in Toshi, both reached out individually and didn’t know one another. One had invested around 1 million dollars; another had invested over 200k. Both stated they were looking to get in touch with the team, and both stated they were interested in supporting the team.

Where the investor that had put 1 million dollars into Toshi offered us 50k for short term marketing efforts, the other investor offered us a longer-term vision.

The short term paid marketing efforts would definitely give us a visibility boost, but without a good follow up, it would lead to green candles, followed by red candles, leaving the chart in a worse place. This offer also came with a strong opposition to our migration idea, which has delayed our decision-making process quite a bit. We wanted to move forward with a migration, but we didn’t want that announcement to go paired with 8% of supply getting sold because of that announcement. The initial relaunch would have begun just prior to the NFT launch, bundled up in that wave of good news. Instead, we delayed as to keep peace with the 8% wallet holder. But, as of today that whale has fully exited.

The other 200k investor was not opposed to the migraiton and saw a unique opportunity. This investor is part of a larger fund that has invested in multiple high level crypto assets, such as AVAX and Ocean. The offer they made us was also much more beneficial long term to Toshi and its holders. As things go, these conversations take quite a bit of time, as we aren’t talking about 100$ investments.

Before we move to part two, it is important to understand that we are almost done with the conversations regarding the migration and everything that comes with it with both the team and certain investors. We just wanted to give an update to the community and receive feedback on this overall vision. Just to be clear, token holders will not have to do anything for the migration.

TL;DR We are proposing a migration with 3/3 taxes either way, allowing us to whitelist a market maker, CEX wallets, and an option to set taxes back to 0% at a later stage for listings on certain CEXes. Token holders will not have to do anything to their holdings through this process.

2. What do we need funds for?

At the risk of repeating ourselves, we don’t have any funds as a project, we have paid over 50k out of our own pockets to acquire the project from the original founder, and to pay for certain things ourselves (NFTs, art, moderators).

A project like Toshi deserves a war chest for both growth through marketing (paid marketing and growth hacking) as well as organic growth through the onboarding of more team members.

• To onboard a good market maker, we will need around 50–60k to cover both our DEX and all CEX listings.
• For that, we will need a legal opinion which will run us around 10k. This is also needed for most CEX listings.
• This is just 1 aspect, that will already cost around 70k to set it up.
• For a market maker to be effective, we need to list on a high volume CEX. This will run us another 60K, bringing our total to around 120–130kUS already.
• In total, ideally, we would raise around 180k (low end) to 250–300k (high end).
• This plan will detail how we are planning on doing that, and why we are confident we will achieve that goal.

3. Introducing the Toshi WorkLock. A unique plan, a unique opportunity.

This part will be divided into a few sections:

— 3.1 What is the Toshi WorkLock, and how does it work?
— 3.2 Who can invest in the Toshi WorkLock?
— 3.3 What does this work lock give the investor on Toshi? (MM selling)
— 3.4 How will this work lock allow us to build Toshi more efficiently?
— 3.5 What have investors pledged towards this work lock so far?

Google form for showing interest in the WorkLock: https://forms.gle/V8AcznJWUpTD2iBb8

3.1 What is the Toshi WorkLock, and how does it work?

We want to start to explain the WorkLock by thanking EnigmaFund for sharing his unique idea with us. Aside from sharing the idea for the WorkLock with us, they have been a very helpful contributor in the conversations that led to this plan.

The Toshi WorkLock is a fundraising opportunity for Toshi that gives the investors a stake in all things Toshi towards the future, whilst they recoup their original investment in another way.

First, the original investment allows us to onboard the best market maker in the world as suggested from the large fund working with us. Their work will improve our chart, make sure that we benefit from arbitrage opportunities as opposed to other CEXes that have put their own market maker on the chart.

This MM makes a profit for Toshi in a combination of both ETH and tokens, for this profit in ETH, they will charge us a fixed percentage, after which the money goes to Toshi.

From this money, 50% will go to the investors in the WorkLock until they are made whole, after which 100% of the profits go into the Toshi war chest.

Once the WorkLock is fully made honored, those who contribute will retain a fixed percentage in all forms of revenue Toshi generates, including from taxes. We are currently considering a percentage between 10–15% all in perpetuity.

This is all in ETH, this gives any investor a stake in Toshi, no matter its market cap, allowing you to profit from Toshi without ever having to sell your tokens to see a profit. This suggestion from the fund in our opinion is genius, we have not seen this method used ANYWHERE throughout crypto.

3.2 Who can invest in the Toshi WorkLock?

Simply said, anyone that can bring value to Toshi, and any Toshi holder.

We are raising a maximum of 200 ETH (although we are happy if we raise around 120E).

- We have an investor — the aforementioned fund — that will invest and buy a large share of the WorkLock. They would like smart money to be surrounded by more smart money and motivated money.

- We have been approached by over 5 interested community members stating that they are looking to invest in Toshi.

- We have been speaking to influential people in the crypto space. People with call channels, people with private groups, and people with useful connections. They are interested in what we are offering.

- Our community members holding Toshi tokens and/or NFTs. There will be a minimum contribution per person, but we will keep that fairly low to allow all community members to buy into Toshi’s future.

We have a few more conversations with the fund and certain other investors to go to decide on the maximum contributions per group.

3.3 What does this WorkLock give the investor on Toshi?

It is important to know that the WorkLock investment comes with certain hard agreements with those that invest a larger sum.

1. No selling on the chart with any negative impact. Any tokens you wish to sell can be sold through the market maker. If an investor into the Toshi WorkLock does decide to sell tokens with impact on the chart themselves, they lose any rights to future revenue from the WorkLock.

2. You either are a Toshi holder, or you bring actual value to Toshi and its community.

As stated in point 1, we allow any investor in the WorkLock to scale out their tokens through the market maker, without impacting the chart in a negative way. This allows for a clean(er) chart, doesn’t put fear into potential investors and holders of Toshi.

10–15% of all future Toshi product revenue.

This revenue can come from:

- Taxes

- Utilities (lockers, multisender, Toshi Swap)

- Anything revenue generating product we build in the future

With it, you become a contributor to Toshi and not only a token holder but involved with Toshi’s future. We will create a separate chat for those who invest into the WorkLock where they get access to planned information before we release it, both to get feedback, as well as logical early access to communication with our investors.

3.4 How will this work lock allow us to build Toshi more efficiently?

With the combination of a starting war chest that funds all the necessary things for Toshi, and future tax revenue, we believe that the initial raise will function as a flywheel for Toshi.

By growing our volume, onboarding more team members, improving our chart, and onboarding new investors and community members, we believe that the initial raise will be the catalyst to a bright future.

Volume in crypto is down, prices are down, volume on BASE is down. This will all pick back up, and when it does, we will ensure that Toshi is in a prime position to profit from those conditions. The market maker will improve our chart and help us pay back investors their initial investment. It will also allow us to keep a healthy chart, allowing investors to sell their tokens without hurting the chart.

3.5 What have investors pledged towards this work lock so far?

So far, we have commitments for around 50+ Ethereum pledged, through a combination of investors. Some investors have stated that they are looking to support the chart at migration, so potentially part of what they want to commit will be split among the WorkLock and buying tokens.

4. What’s next?

We will pair this announcement with an X spaces, and a TG voice chat. You will be able to read through this document, give us feedback, and to ask any questions you may have.

In the coming days we will finalize commitments to the fund, speak with multiple investors, maybe improve certain things through feedback.

For our migraiton, we have a 7 day trigger on the LP. This was put in place to ensure investor safety. This means that once we trigger the LP unlock to move it to a V2 DEX allowing for taxes, there is a 7 day period before we can touch that LP.

In closing, these measures we are going through often take place prior to a token ever launching. We just ask for continued patience as we’ve hopefully explained clearly that the team in place had to come together to save this project, we are not the original people running it. Nor did we have the benefit of setting this stuff up before Toshi ever launched.

We are extremely proud of all that we’ve accomplished, from being the ONLY memecoin featured in OnChain Summer, being at one point the largest token on Base Chain, and even having the man Jesse himself join us on a spaces. We want to honor his belief in us, and really take Toshi back to the top of the mountain for everyone who’s stuck with us.

This document is subject to changes based on continuing conversations with our fellow community members. Thank you guys.

~ Toshi team