Moon Monster: or The Modern Prometheus; a new crypto proposal.

Note: this is a work in progress, expect changes to this document.

Years of experience and observation have led to the design of Moon Monster

Introduction

Having invested some years, some work, and some capital into DeFi I’ve witnessed thousands of projects come and go and have noticed more than a few common flaws which are begging for elegant solutions. I believe that a token of the design described below should address most of them effectively. This proposal is intended to gauge interest and assemble a team of like minded individuals who might volunteer along with me to help bring this concept to reality.

The proposed tokenomic design aims to offer a simple user interface which won’t confuse buyers and integrate it with a robust and versatile economic engine which can thrive under any market conditions, bound by some simple exit rules which will eliminate the threat of large sellers dumping their entire bag irresponsibly into the liquidity pool, while keeping their investment liquid.

Essentially, this is a tokenomic system with a deflationary backing asset which provides generous vested rewards, coupled with a derivative whose value in terms of the backing asset only increases, where every buy of either the backing asset or the derivative pumps the price of both. Despite this interconnection of value, sells only negatively impact the price of the sold asset, while delivering extra value to holders of the opposing asset, leaving those holding the opposing asset — whose price has not changed as a result of the sell — in a wealthier position. In addition, holders can freely convert the backing asset to the derivative or vice-versa, enabling arbitrage opportunities.

We can successfully share buying pressure while isolating and redirecting sell pressure.

The derivative is designed to be highly volatile, within a price range defined by arbitrage opportunities; the backing asset is designed to experience smoother price movements, supported by deep liquidity and strict but fair withdraw rules. Despite this, the backing asset is capable of being converted to the derivative if a quick exit is needed, without affecting the price of the backing asset.

Value is captured, shared and redirected on every transaction.

Either the backing asset or the derivative is suitable for long term holdings, the derivative is simply more volatile and is designed to entice short term trading over price stability. The entire system is designed to transfer value generated from the shortest term traders upward to more committed holders, with long term MM holders receiving the lion’s share of wealth after they are fully vested.

Let’s dig into the blueprints to bring this concept to reality!

Table of Contents

1. Identify common challenges
2. Moon Monster tokenomics: how the value flows
3. Token launch
4. Post-launch growth
5. Tokenomic theory
6. My background and what I can contribute
7. Team positions available — can you help?
8. Questions and considerations
9. Closing thoughts

Let’s design a system that works for everyone, whales and minnows alike.

Identify Common Challenges

There are a number of rather common challenges faced by crypto token buyers; most of these can be overcome through careful strategy to ensure that all participants behave in a way that is beneficial to the project as a whole.

1. Whales —much like a casino, when a whale enters the picture everyone is thrilled except those wondering how much damage they’ll do on their way out. Efforts to handle this situation have typically been limited to rather self-defeating buy limits or, more elegantly, building up an in house treasury via a contract which serves as the largest whale of all. While the latter approach has merit and can work well, it still hinges upon a critical mass of early whales to hold strong until token redistribution can be handled adequately. This poses a great risk to early investors and requires a very special community with a great deal of patience and faith in the project.
2. Explosive growth leads to explosive debt obligations and/or a big loss of enthusiasm after the initial marketing push. This is a very common problem and often coincides with or leads to one of the whales mentioned above leaving the project, which typically inspires more to do the same, leading to a price crash while smaller investors are begged to “hodl” and keep (undeserved) faith. While little can be done to control the rate of influx of funds to a project, the tokenomics should be designed in such a way that debt obligations react sensibly and holders are incentivized to remain even as others sell. Furthermore, the promotion of the project should be a long term affair with marketing reach growing proportionately as the project grows; an unsustainable initial growth rate will only lead to disappointment if the marketing can’t keep up the pace over the following months.
3. Responsible profit taking; most of us understand what that means, yet we enter contracts which are zero-sum games that inherently incentivize the opposite behavior. This is a rather simple one to address, as will be explained below. In brief, we will enter contracts that define how and when we may take potential profits, while providing an emergency exit for those who desperately want to leave the system.
4. External revenue and/or demand is an often overlooked, yet critical component. Without it we usually rely solely upon new investors who want to hold the bag after earlier investors take their profits; unless the new funds (new holders) outpace the debt obligations and early sellers, the price will inevitably crash. Efforts to provide external revenue via consumer spending are typically quite misguided and their implementation would almost always be better served by more traditional methods. Who wants to learn DeFi, create a wallet, buy native chain tokens, swap them for some other obscure token, then spend them just to play a video game? While there may be some valid blockchain applications for gaming, the route typically taken appeals only to those already in DeFi, it does nothing to draw from the larger market; it’s just a gimmick that preaches to the choir and accomplishes nothing in the long term. A much better — and well proven — method is to utilize trading fees to generate external revenue. By pitting the investment horizons of multiple buyer types against one another, short term day traders and arbitragers can be used to pay for rewards enjoyed by more long term holders, while long term investors who DCA can provide steady upward price momentum, incentivized by the rewards their short term colleagues pay for.
5. Complexity; unfortunately some of the most clever ideas in crypto demand that the end user participate in a Rube Goldberg type economic mechanism that few have the ambition or capability to understand. Adding to this problem is a tendency for developers to attempt to get cute and gimmicky with terminology unique to their project, and new users often find themselves lost. Telling new users to read an exceptionally lengthy whitepaper or demand that they watch long videos just to get to get a vague idea of what it is that they are buying, is not conducive to widespread adoption. Of course an educated buyer is the ideal holder, however the solvency of the protocol shouldn’t depend upon everyone knowing everything and voluntarily acting against their own immediate self-interests; yet too often, that is what is asked, and the educated faithful end up being used as exit liquidity.

Study the tokenomics and you will learn that this is a monster unlike anything seen before.

Moon Monster tokenomics: how the value flows

This portion will get a little more complex; I am still working on the most effective way to present the information. This document is not intended to be a simple public whitepaper, but rather has very detailed information which should be helpful to the founding team. Please keep in mind that the typical buyer will be able to simply buy, hold, and sell without needing to know very much about any of this other than his sell limits and how to bypass them if need be. More experienced DeFi users will, at their own discretion, find ample opportunities for more sophisticated maneuvers.

Simplicity of user experience is a key goal; the complex mechanics supporting the protocol need not be understood to be effective. They should just work in a simple and predictable manner for the buyer.

A key goal is to keep this easy and simple for the end user

I’ll step through the flow of value point by point from the perspective of a new buyer; for brevity, we’ll skip over the initial offering for now — a liquidity drive would likely be the most sensible approach to get the project off the ground.

A new buyer purchases some Moon Monster (MM) tokens from a MM/BNB LP through PanCakeSwap (PCS). 10% of the BNB he uses is collected as a buyer’s fee; half of this BNB (5% of the purchase price) is to be paired with an appropriate amount of native tokens to deepen liquidity, while the other half of the BNB (5%) goes to the BNB Treasury which is used for gradual MM buybacks to feed the Moon Treasury, tightening the circulating supply.

Click to enlarge. Buys feed the treasury (tightening supply), build liquidity, and pump a derivative.

When a seller sells some MM tokens into the MM/BNB LP, he pays a similar 10% sell fee, but now the tokens he is paying with are MM, not BNB. Half of this fee (5%) is split; 30% goes toward the MM LP fund, while 70% is used to mint and burn LS tokens.

The MM LP fund will be paired with BNB from the BNB LP fund mentioned earlier, serving to deepen liquidity in both of the liquidity pools.

Minting and burning LS tokens serves to increase the backing supply of MM in LS without increasing the circulating supply of LS tokens, thus increasing their intrinsic value over time.

The other half (5%) of the fee goes toward Reflections, which distributes MM to qualified, vested holders and stores shares for those not yet vested in a Pending Treasury. Wallets which violate the terms of the vesting (sell during the vesting period, or sell more than 1% of their peak holdings during a 24 hour span after being vested) will have their vesting period reset and forfeit any MM in the Pending Treasury to the Forfeit Treasury, where it is slowly dripped out to those who remain vested in good standing, providing an additional incentive to hold for the long term.

Transfers from one wallet to another should be treated exactly like sells described above in regards to fees collected.

From a developer standpoint the bulk of the code should have reference material readily available. Now let’s get into the finer details which might require more some more unique Solidity skills.

The Moon Monster token contract will require:

1. Holders must not sell *any* amount of MM for 180 days in order to be fully vested and qualified to receive MM reflections. Once vested, holders may sell up to 1% of their peak holdings per day without resetting the vesting period. Peak holdings are defined as the highest MM token count ever held by a wallet. If someone buys 100 MM, after 180 days they could sell 1 MM per day without resetting the vesting period; if their balance drops below 100, they are still able to sell 1 MM per day. If their balance should increase to 120 MM, the sell limit would increase to 1.2 MM per day.
2. Holders may sell up to 10% of their peak holdings per day, however anything over 1% will reset their vesting period. This allows emergency access to a larger portion of funds, with the deterrent/penalty being the vesting period gets reset so they will become ineligible for reflections until 180 days after their last sale greater than 1% of peak holdings.
3. Holders may not sell more than 10% of their peak holdings in any 24 hour period under any circumstances, however we will provide an emergency exit path as will be described in detail later. Basically, they’ll have the opportunity to pay a small fee to convert their MM tokens into “Only Up” Liquid Staking (LS) tokens, which can be sold into a separate LS/BNB LP of significantly lower liquidity. In this way, if someone really needs to exit and is willing to pay a penalty, they may do so without affecting the price of the MM/BNB pool, while simultaneously providing a discounted entry point for astute MM buyers via LS tokens from the LS/BNB pool. In effect, this becomes a sort of a sell buffer, keeping large sells off of the MM/BNB LP without simply locking up holders funds entirely.
4. Any sale or transfer of an LS token resets the MM vesting period. This prevents the emergency exit from being abused to evade the 1% rule.

By limiting sells to the MM/BNB pool of no more than 10% peak holdings per day, this highly incentivizes sellers — including whales — to be mindful of the price impact of their sells. If a whale were in a position to initiate a sell off by dumping 10% of his holdings, he would hurt the remaining 90% of his bag. This should be effective at greatly reducing market manipulation, pump and dumps, and intentional crashes. All of the biggest threats of unfriendly whale behavior are contractually prevented; this will give smaller buyers and long term buyers much greater confidence. The trade off of asking 10 days to fully close a position will likely prove worth it to buyers seeking tokens with a potential for greater stability than they are accustomed to in the DeFi space. Simply consider it a DCA exit for anyone selling to the MM/BNB LP.

The vesting period will serve multiple purposes; firstly, it will encourage buyers to hold and not sell for a critical period of time, giving us more green candles on the price chart and helping to ensure upward momentum of the price. Secondly, it will give the Reflections the ability to accumulate value from short term day traders, arbitragers and the like who forfeit their own contributions during the vesting period. Anyone using MM for short term gains will help to fund the reflections of long term holders.

Now I’ll describe all of the in between bits that handle the funds between the initial buy and the sell.

BNB LP fund

4.5% of the BNB from a MM buy is paired with an appropriate amount of MM from the MM LP Fund (if available) to create MM/BNB LP tokens and deepen the liquidity. If MM tokens in the fund are insufficient (as would be expected at the start and during a bull run when there are many more buys than sells) then a proportionate amount of the BNB is used to purchase MM from the MM/BNB LP.

Another 0.5% of the BNB from a MM buy is paired with LS (Liquid Staking, “Only Up”) tokens and placed into the LS/BNB LP. The LS tokens will first need to be created from MM obtained from the MM LP Fund if available, or otherwise purchased from the MM/BNB LP. If there are to be more than one LS token contracts, the liquidity should be divided among them. Note the proportions here; 9x as much BNB is going into the MM/BNB LP as the LS/BNB LP(s). This will lead to much greater volatility in the LS/BNB LP, which the system will take advantage of.

BNB Treasury

The remaining 5% BNB from a MM buy is stored in the BNB Treasury, which will be used for MM buybacks. The BNB Treasury pays out 30% of the balance per day with the remaining 70% held over. This should allow rapid growth of the treasury during bullish days, while retaining a large reserve to make buys throughout bearish days as well. By spending 30% daily, it would take about a week of pure draws with no deposits for the balance to drop below 10% of the starting amount.

MM buybacks will use BNB to purchase MM from the MM/BNB LP and store the MM in the Moon Treasury, which is simply a store of value for the protocol. At this time there are no plans to make use of these funds, its purpose is simply to reduce the circulating supply of MM, increasing scarcity and thus helping to raise the price of MM. In the future, this treasury could be tapped for other purposes, so we don’t want to simply burn these tokens. The Moon Treasury must not receive reflections.

MM LP fund

When a holder sells, he receives BNB for 90% of the MM tokens sold, with 3.5% being used to mint and burn LS tokens, and 1.5% going to the MM LP fund. This is simply a temporary storage wallet which will be used by the BNB LP fund to match the MM with BNB, or if required to mint LS tokens for the LS/BNB LP. After large sells this wallet may contain an excess of MM tokens; it seems best to simply leave them in the wallet until needed, as selling them for BNB (to create LP tokens) would cause a price drop.

Reflection Process

The remaining 5% of the MM tokens collected from a sale are to be immediately dispersed via reflections to vested wallets. MM for those not yet vested will be stored in a Pending Treasury. Reflections will be divvied up proportionately according to the wallets holdings of MM divided by the circulating supply minus the token counts of the various treasuries, funds, backing supplies, and LPs. Excluded accounts are not to receive reflections.

There will also exist a Forfeit Treasury which will contain MM that is forfeited by accounts which violate the terms of vesting, namely selling within 180 days or selling more than 1% of their peak holdings at any time after that. The Forfeit Treasury will slowly drip out MM, once per day, proportionately to vested wallets. It does this at a rate of 1/180 of the treasury per day since it will have 180 days of forfeits saved before it has anyone to pay out to. These funds only go to fully vested wallets, none of it goes toward the Pending Treasury.

This will allow us to create an interesting mechanism which should help to effectively entice long term holders, and provide them with greater incentive to remain even as their fellow holders sell. The way that is accomplished is by splitting the proceeds accumulated by a forfeiting seller among the remaining vested accounts. So if someone has accumulated, for instance, 100 days worth of pending reflections, if he should sell and restart his vesting period, then all that he is owed will instead be forfeited to the treasury to be split among remaining eligible recipients. In this way even as sells occur which might negatively impact the price, those remaining will get a bigger slice of the pie. This could be an extremely substantial reward. I believe that this will prove an effective means of motivating buyers, especially early buyers, to simply buy and hold for years; users could be encouraged to use multiple wallets so that if they need to sell some portion of their holdings, they do not disqualify all of their holdings from the long term rewards available.

“Only Up” Liquid Staking

Lastly, we have the “Only Up” Liquid Staking contract(s). We may want more than one, I’ll explain why.

This sort of contract is appealing in its own right due to the nature of the token price only moving up, never down, in relation to the underlying asset. Moon Monster will make a very special use of these tokens which should greatly help to keep the MM/BNB chart looking good.

For those unfamiliar with an “Only Up” contract, the basic premise is that you would pay a small fee (perhaps 5%) when you deposit MM tokens into the “Only Up” Liquid Staking (LS) contract; the excess MM tokens go into the contract pool, shared with everyone else who owns LS tokens. When you later turn in your LS tokens to obtain MM tokens, you leave behind another 5% for the remaining LS holders. The idea being, you swap your MM for LS, hold for some time until the backing supply increases, then turn in your LS for MM when each LS token represents more MM tokens than when you bought in.

This minting and redemption is done without a PCS LP being used at all. However by pairing our LS tokens with BNB in a PCS liquidity pool, we can provide a pathway for MM holders to exit the system to BNB without ever having to sell their MM tokens into the MM/BNB LP.

This serves multiple purposes:

1. It allows holders to evade the 10% peak holding maximum sell limit by creating LS tokens from MM, then selling the LS tokens. In so doing, they pay an additional fee to create the LS tokens.
2. Because these large sells are not going into the MM/BNB LP, the price charts for MM will be devoid of any red candles they may have caused.
3. Because the liquidity of the LS/BNB pool is significantly less than that of the MM/BNB pool, sells there will cause greater price movement than they would on the main chart; this may offer buyers a significant discount by purchasing LS tokens at below the market cost of the equivalent MM tokens which they represent. Conversely during bull runs, it is possible that a lack of sells combined with purchases from the BNB LP Fund might push the price in excess of market value for the equivalent quantity of MM tokens.
4. If the price gets too far under the equivalent MM price, it may provide arbitrage opportunities for those who wish to purchase LS, turn it into MM (paying an exit fee into the LS contract), then sell MM into the MM/BNB LP, paying the standard exit fee there as well.

As mentioned above in the section describing the BNB LP Fund, 0.5% of the BNB from every buy order is to be used for the purpose of deepening liquidity in the LS/BNB pool. The creation of the LS tokens required for this will help to feed the LS contract via the 5% entry tax, simultaneously deepening liquidity of the LP as well as improving the LS per MM price for all existing LS holders.

This does have the potential to undermine the intent of the sell limits to an extent; however due to the lower liquidity of the LS/BNB LP vs the MM/BNB LP, if the price differential becomes too great then users will naturally hesitate to use this pathway and pay the additional fees, hoping instead to cash out more slowly at 10% per day into the MM/BNB LP. Bargain hunters will flock to the LS pool for a discount or for arbitrage, pushing the price up once again.

Sellers exiting via MM > LS > BNB get to avoid the 10% MM exit fee; we don’t want this to become an incentive, so we will implement a 10% buy and 10% sell fee on the LS tokens when interacting with the LS/BNB LP. On LS buys, 10% of the BNB goes to the BNB Treasury; on sells, 10% of the LS is redeemed into MM, and these MM all go to the Reflection Process. So buys and sells of LS serve to fund MM buybacks and MM reflections.

LS tokens do not receive MM reflections.

The lower liquidity of the LS/BNB LP vs the MM/BNB LP should lead to much greater price volatility, and many opportunities for buyers with different investment horizons to: 1) buy, hold, and sell LS tokens 2) buy LS, redeem it for MM, then hold and collect reflections, and/or sell into the MM/BNB LP 3) buy/hold MM and then pay the LS mint fee and hold or sell to the LS/BNB LP.

Price movement of LS is designed to trade generally within a range and benefit long term MM and LS holders by capturing value for the benefit of the entire system. Volatility should increase as the volume increases.

Token launch

My knowledge in this area is very limited; I have no experience with this other than participating as a buyer in some launches on pinksale.finance. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The token count is an arbitrary choice however many like to compare all crypto to Bitcoin, so perhaps a multiple of 21 million would make doing so more convenient; 2.1 billion seems like a good starting point.

My thinking is that it would be best to hold a liquidity drive to collect BNB and split it in the following way:

1. *81% BNB paired with 945 million MoonMonster in a MM/BNB LP
2. *9% BNB paired with 105 million MM (converted to LS) in a LS/BNB LP
3. *10% BNB to the BNB Treasury, which will drip out 30% of the remaining balance per day to purchase MM to be placed into the Moon Treasury. This will help ensure that the critical post launch days should be full of strong buys on the charts, while rapidly growing the Moon Treasury to tighten supply. After 7 days over 90% of the initial BNB funds should be injected into the MM/BNB LP; if there were no other buying/selling activity then this would result in approximately 1.23x the launch price, with nearly 10% of the tokens in the LP’s locked into the Moon Treasury. Actual buying and selling activity will cause those numbers to fluctuate in unpredictable ways, but the trend should generally follow the theory. We must not dedicate more to this initial pump else risk buyers buying at launch only to wait for this rise to negate their trading fees using it as exit liquidity.
4. Some reasonable amount of MM set aside for operating expenses and promotion; this is for project expenses only, not a founder’s draw.
5. The remaining of the 1.05 billion MM to be distributed proportionately among the liquidity donors.

*These numbers may require adjustment.

We will also need some funds to pay for audits and advertising to get us off the ground pre-launch.

The ratio of the MM/BNB LP to LS/BNB LP in terms of BNB should be approximately 9:1 to start, which will mimic the ratio of BNB allotted for liquidity deepening. If we alter or remove the funds dedicated to the BNB Treasury, make sure those funds are split to maintain the 9:1 ratio.

Post launch growth

Moon Monster has the potential to grow to be a big friendly giant to lift and protect our wealth

As with any project, post launch growth will be critical to ensure an ongoing success. That said, this system should be able to handle adverse macro environments relatively well, so I’m not too concerned about trying to time the launch in regards to the larger market. We also need not be quite as concerned about early profit taking as other projects, since it is not possible for anyone to sell more than 10% of their peak holdings into the MM/BNB LP in any 24 hour period, so panic selling seems unlikely.

To better visualize this, think of individual accounts as people making entry and exit decisions rather than just the dollar value of the tokens involved. Imagine if you will, 100 accounts, all depositing similar amounts, and another 100 holders wishing to exit, also with holdings of a similar size as those making deposits. In a typical system, this would be a net zero change, or perhaps a slight gain if trading fees are included in the calculation.

In Moon Monster, since those exiting can only sell 10% at a time, the net effect in terms of value change would be 100 new — 10 exiting (i.e. 10% of the 100) = 90 net deposits. In order for the MM/BNB LP to record a net loss, exit totals would need to outnumber buys by a rate of greater than 10:1. This should give us more than adequate breathing room to attract new accounts at a sustainable rate. A chart which reflects such growth and upward stability is likely to attract many newcomers.

Now think about how that same chart will look on more bullish days. With incoming value outpacing outgoing by such tremendous numbers, rapid growth is all but assured and the FOMO will be phenomenal.

On the other side of the platform we have the LS tokens. The price action of LS tokens is designed to be much more volatile, within a range defined by the levels of profitable arbitration; that is, when LS gets too cheap, it makes sense to buy LS, pay the entry fee, pay the redemption fee, then pay the exit fee to the MM/BNB LP. Conversely, when it becomes too expensive, people might pay the entrance fee to buy MM, pay the mint fee to convert it to LS, then pay the exit fee to sell to the LS/BNB LP. That represents about 25% fees in either direction, which would indicate that the LS token should have roughly 50% price movement between levels of profitable arbitration. In reality that price movement might be somewhat less, as some who already hold LS or MM may choose to cash out without needing to buy the tokens and pay the entrance fee. Others may wish to acquire tokens at a discount, not intending to immediately arb them into the opposing token. Adding to the volatility, we also have the possibility of large sells coming from MM > LS “emergency exits” which would push down the LS price, as well as a rising price floor when either MM rises in price or LS gains value in terms of the MM backing supply. Finally, we have the matter of an intentional disparity between the liquidity of the backing and derivative tokens which should further increase volatility in LS.

It is worth noting that arbitraging from LS to MM will still require sellers to exit out at no more than 10% of their peak holdings per day, so that direction is no guarantee of instant risk free profits, rather it entails a minimum 10 day exit period during which time the price will likely fluctuate. So the LS > MM route will probably primarily be taken advantage of by long term MM holders looking to DCA in at a discount; they may choose to simply keep the tokens in LS form and collect value there, or redeem them to MM so that they can collect reflections.

During periods of rapid growth of the MM token we are unlikely to see very much MM > LS liquidation pressure to push the LS price down, however as the intrinsic value of the LS tokens rises due to MM becoming more valuable and the MM represented by each LS token only going up, the arbitration ceiling level will keep getting pushed up along with the intrinsic value of the LS token.

The LS token should appeal mainly to more seasoned DeFi buyers who have a better understanding of trading, while MM is really intended as a more stable, long term buy where people just wait for their vesting period to mature, collect reflections, and sell small amounts as needed.

It is important that we attract buyers to both markets, MM and LS, however MM should lead the way as it will generate the value, volatility and slow upward trend that will make LS appealing to traders. In turn, a properly seasoned LS market with an active trading community will provide ongoing revenue generation to the MM token, which causes the floor of LS to rise, causing the cycle to repeat.

In summary, during the early growth stage we should lean more heavily toward acquiring long term MM buyers, while nudging those looking for more short term positions toward LS and educating them about the soft price limits which arbitration opportunities will impose. The system will still work as intended if we get an overabundance of either MM or LS holders; we simply need a minimum critical mass of both for it to work optimally. So, we will welcome all, and not discourage those looking for short term plays.

Tokenomic theory

Think of all the interconnected flows of value as strands of a web; motion anywhere is felt everywhere.

If you will indulge in a bit of analogy, I would like you to imagine all of those interconnected lines in the flowcharts above as individual strands connected together to form a giant web. Applying or releasing (buying or selling) pressure from any one point in the web will cause a slight imbalance in every other point in the web, changing the dynamics of the entire web every time any action is taken; the slightest movement will cause a ripple felt by every other component.

Given a sufficient user base, the combined effect will be a pronounced and unending imbalance providing continuous opportunities for buys, exits, and arbitrage. The BNB treasury, once adequately funded, assures that there will be continuous pressure on the MM price which will keep the whole system moving forward.

During the early post-launch days of the protocol when the userbase is still relatively small, like any other project, it will benefit greatly from long term buyers who seek to simply buy and hold and wait for the project to mature; hopefully the vesting period, generous rewards after vesting, and some rises in value will incentivize them to stay. However, this protocol will also respond well to short term traders attempting to make scalping trades with the volatile LS tokens, as well as traders of any other duration. This system absolutely does not need to be a sell-shaming hodl-cult to succeed. Indeed, trading activity is vital to the success of value capture and should be highly encouraged in the LS sector. Although what we’re creating from the user perspective may simply be two or three tokens, the way that they interact with each other turns this into a de facto trading platform, with long term holders collecting the trading fees.

My background and what I can contribute

Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage

I have plenty of programming experience, but I don’t know Solidity very well. My coding background begins with Commodore Basic (anyone old enough to remember the VIC-20?), a long lull in programming, then PHP, SQL, and Python. I’ve never worked as a professional programmer however I’ve written hundreds of thousands of lines of code for my own online ventures, some of it rather sophisticated and extremely complex. At one point I was tracking every single transaction on the BSC in real time using my homebrew analysis software (python) on a PC specifically built to handle the massive databases which were required to do so, and running the data through my own custom indicators.

In short, I know enough to know what I don’t know regarding programming. If I were to continue learning Solidity, it would probably be at least 6 months to a year before I was proficient enough to begin to make a dent in this sort of project, and this is hardly the sort of endeavor appropriate for a noob. It would probably be another year before I had the confidence to handle other people’s crypto securely. Quite simply, I am not the man for this task at this time. This project needs a competent Solidity programmer, not me trying to learn what I’m doing while building something of this scope.

That said, I’ve been self employed for over 25 years now and fully understand the commitments required to bring a project to completion. Prior to my various online ventures I used to design automation equipment for Ford Motor Company, I did some mechanical design work for NASA, and similar work for a number of smaller businesses. Designing tokenomic systems, program architecture, or mechanical devices with many complex moving parts, all sort of comes from the same mindset; I have no formal education in any of this. I’m just a guy who was taking things apart and putting them back together again since I could hold a screwdriver, built stuff with Legos, took to computers like a fish to water, and has an active imagination.

I do have this relatively new medium channel with its small audience. I’m very well versed in internet marketing, HTML and CSS. I’ve run web servers for a long time now. I could probably handle some of the front end UI work, although I’m simply not very familiar with React — never learned it because I built my own PHP/Javascript based framework years prior to React’s debut. As far as public relations, I do have a business background and can maintain a level of professionalism while keeping the mood fun.

Team positions available — can you help?

Assembling the right team is crucial for the success of this project

The most immediate concerns for getting this project off the ground would seem to be as follows:

1. An experienced Solidity programmer. This isn’t going anywhere without one.
2. Someone familiar with USA financial regulations; both during the design phase to help advise us on tokenomic features which might prove troublesome, as well as ongoing concerns pertaining to launch, marketing, management, etc. I’ve learned a few things from my time in this field and I don’t see any glaring problems with what I’ve suggested, however the regulatory field is evolving in unpredictable ways and some of the existing regulations seem to defy common sense. We need someone who knows what they’re doing, not someone who’s merely gleaned info from Telegram groups.

After we get the ball rolling and a launch date is within sight, we’ll need to expand the team.

1. Someone who has experience launching a token. The project will benefit from someone who has done this before and has knowledge to draw upon. As mentioned above, I am leaning toward a liquidity drive.
2. Promoters — YouTubers, TG channels, TikTok etc. Anybody to help get the word out.
3. Legal advisor. We’ll need someone to help keep the project out of legal jeopardy; if we’re fortunate, perhaps we’ll find an attorney willing to invest and throw some pro-bono minutes/hours our way.

Questions and considerations

As random thoughts occur, I will place them here in no particular order.

1. We may be best off registering a domain and hosting the website in the name of someone from a nation other than the USA. The bizarre and at times hostile crypto regulatory approach in the USA being what it is, we simply don’t know what they’re going to attack us with next. It’s legal home base will probably be safer in a more crypto friendly nation.
2. Ultimately it would probably make the most sense to set up some type of not for profit or holding organization to deal with ongoing promotion, which would be the recipient of the marketing wallet.
3. If possible, the dApp should be capable of being downloaded and run locally; there should exist a backup site hosted on a webserver in a physically different location; we should provide instructions for those who wish to directly interact with the contract using bscscan, in case someday the websites go offline.
4. The long vesting periods should serve as motivation for holders to think of this as a long term buy, and that message should be emphasized in the marketing. This isn’t intended as a get rich quick meme coin play.
5. Holders should be able to view their pending and/or estimated reflections awaiting the vesting period (?)
6. Should this have an expense fund or simply a donation address for marketing & expenses? Or perhaps just set aside some small % of MM to an expense wallet at launch?
7. Step through every conceivable scenario of price movement to analyze for exploitable situations.
8. BNB Treasury should budget itself sensibly to have frequent buys without spending too much on transaction fees; daily at a minimum up to every 15 minutes maximum
9. Somewhere address potential concerns of adoption; namely sell limits and people being unfamiliar with them, the possibility of sites false flagging MM as a honeypot which will require education of those flagging it as such, don’t expect them all to cooperate. Also since all of these tokens need to remain only on DeFi to collect fees there is no chance of them ever being listed on a CEX; at some point in the future we may want to incorporate a fixed supply token with no fees for the purpose of listing on a CEX, perhaps it could be used as a utility token in a deflationary mechanism which would capture value from it somehow.
10. could add something to detect LS price vs theoretical LS equivalent price to MM, adjusted for MM per LS, then if price approaches -25% arbitrage floor begin using some % of BNB Treasury buys to nudge price back toward median. perhaps buy & burn LS tokens, increasing backing supply. could do something similar in the opposite direction if LS approaches +25% price ceiling, perhaps mint LS from MM fund, sell to LS/BNB LP, then take profits back to BNB Treasury. do all of this without entry/exit fees; purpose is to prevent loss of funds to arbitragers. make sure this doesn’t run afoul of securities regulations, being automated moves based on price.
11. perhaps alter LS token with smaller entry/exit fees but higher mint/redeem fees. would encourage higher trading volume with the lower entry/exit, faster MM value gains with the higher mint/redeem. make sure fees total 15%.

Closing thoughts

With a sufficient critical mass of users, the Moon Monster ecosystem will become a trading and arbitrage platform in its own right. Buyers and sellers of different investment horizons will always find opportunities due to the designed state of perpetual imbalance. Any buying or selling activity which takes advantage of a value imbalance will simply create another, different value imbalance elsewhere in the system, generating a new opportunity. When done en masse with sufficient volume, this will become self perpetuating.

Modestly, this is a once in a decade type of opportunity, perhaps even once in a generation. Less modestly; this is Prometheus snatching fire from the gods. You’ve just read the spark, now help me build the flame.

If you build it, they will come.