Pavia- the Cardano virtual world

So, let’s talk about Cardano. For several reasons, Cardano seems to be one of the more polarizing topics in Web3. Many people have strong opinions one way or the other about the Cardano chain and its native token, ADA. I am going to make no effort in this article to try and change you mind, so if you hate Cardano before reading this, i’m sure you’ll still hate it. My overall crypto strategy is chain agnostic. If I like the project, odds are I can find a way to bridge crypto over to the native blockchain and invest in the project.

While many block chains have used the ready-fire- aim as a go to market strategy, Cardano has taken the cautious academic approach of measure 172 times then maybe think about cutting. Lots of thinking, pondering, hypothesizing and testing. The consequence of this approach is the development on the Cardano chain has taken far longer than many people anticipated. The ADA token does however have a market cap of $35B with the vast majority of it staked on chain, so they have clearly done a few things right along the way. With the Alonzo update at the end of September, the Cardano block chain was finally able to start using smart contracts.

Not long after the Alonzo update, Pavia began laying out its roadmap for a virtual world to be built on the Cardano network following in the footsteps of major metaverses such as the Sandbox and Decentraland which are both build on the Ethereum chain. As I laid out in my piece on my overall investment strategy, the Sandbox was one of my first investments in the crypto space. My investments were quite lucrative, but some of the lessons I learned were quite expensive (especially as it relates to gas fees on the Ethereum network). To say I am bullish on metaverse plays in general would be an understatement, I think they have a big future.

The best investment returns are had when you can get into a project early (also the highest risk). I began to keep my eyes open for other early stage Metaverses that I could invest in, and if one were on a chain without high gas fees, that would be even better. This search, led me to Pavia. So what exactly is Pavia? You can view their website here.

“In September 1501 Pavia Italy was the birthplace of Gerolamo (Jerome) Cardano, whom the Cardano blockchain project was named after. 2021 sees the launch of Pavia.io which is a metaverse being built on Cardano.”

The metaverse itself is made up of 100,00 land parcels, and each of which exists as an NFT on the Cardano blockchain. The first 60,000 were sold in two public land sales in 2021 and the final 40,000 will go on public sale as early as Feb 2022. The metaverse itself will have its own governance token $Pavia and you can find its tokenomics here. This is the same structure of the Sandbox and their $Sand token. The first 25% of the $Pavia supply was issued as an airdrop to land holders in December 2021. Read the tokenomics if you wish to see how the remaining supply will be issued.

So, what have I done with Pavia? In early December I purchased my first 2 land parcels, at floor price (328 ADA & 329 ADA). I was early, not too much was know about the project yet, but now that I had invested I wanted to learn more. When it was later announced that the $Pavia token was going to be airdropped to land holders, the price of land began to rise, but I purchased 2 more parcels (428 ADA & 426 ADA). The details were then finalized, for each parcel of land you owned, you would be airdropped 8,333 $Pavia. This meant that my 4 land netted me an airdrop of 33,332 $Pavia (which had no liquidity at the time). I had a sneaking suspicion, which proved to be correct, that the price of land would temporarily correct after the airdrop had taken place. I kept my eye out for this, and bought the dip and picked up 3 more parcels each for 300 ADA.

Pavia began to get good press, as more people found out about the project, and the airdrop, the price started to rise. I mentioned above, getting in early to a project makes the profit potential higher, but also raises the risk levels. So I was closely following the market to look to begin to de-risk my investment. I listed one parcel and it quickly sold for 919 ADA (thus recouping the cost of my dip by with 2 land parcels remaining from that buy). I then listed a second parcel at a price of 1555 (set to cover the remainder of my initial investment as well as all associated transaction fees). This second one has not yet sold, but the price continues to inch up. If this were to sell, I would be left with 5 land parcels and 33,332 $Pavia tokens free and clear (to ride to the moon). At current prices this is about $8750 USD ($850 per land and $4,500 for the $Pavia).

Now, I mentioned above Cardano is just getting smart contract DApps, and this time last week, the first major Decentralized Exchange, Sundae Swap went live on Cardano. I view this as an additional opportunity. I took 9,000 of my $Pavia tokens and added them to the liquidity pool (LP) on Sundae Swap which earns me a share of the fees when the token is traded. So why only 9,000 tokens? Well, as Sundae swap is so new, I wanted to test the waters and see how it will perform. I was hopeful they would offer farming for LP tokens in the $Pavia pool, but as of the time I am writing this, they have yet to do that. The farming rewards are really what makes LPs quite lucrative. I am sure I will write more about this in the future.

So, lets summarize why I like Pavia and what I was looking for:

1. Early phase project means I am buying in cheaper
2. The governance token had not been issued so I was able to take advantage of an airdrop (my 33,332 $Pavia tokens are currently worth about $4,500 USD)
3. Metaverse land has utility and future potential revenue streams
4. Being on the Cardano blockchain it will not suffer from high gas fees like its Ethereum based competitors
5. I acquired multiple parcels (7 in this case) so I could sell a couple to recoup my initial investment relatively early (de-risk)
6. Potential for farming rewards in the future (Sandbox ones were lucrative)

Is Pavia going to make it? Is Cardano going to make it? I have no idea. I see potential but always look to mitigate my risks in any play like this. Others will come along, hopefully with the thought process laid out above you can create your own scorecard of what you may want to be on the lookout for. One other project I am keep my eye on that does its first land sale on January 31st, 2022 is Harmony World on the Harmony block chain (DYOR).

I think that is all for tonight so remember, as Red Green likes to say, keep your stick on the ice.