Orcfax FACT Token Launch — Detailed breakdown
Dear Cardano community,
we have an additional update for you, based on our in-depth analysis of the recent Orcfax FACT token launch, which started on Sep 8, 08:00 UTC. There were many emotions surrounding the launch, which is natural, as the demand exceeded the supply twice and the UI experience was not ideal for many trying to connect, due to the infrastructure overload. Let’s stick to pure data and try to keep a broad view.
Assessing the overall number of participants, the sequence of their contributions, the amounts they contributed, and the sequence of how all unfolded, we can state the following:
- The number of total participants, if there would be no set maximum amount to raise was 604. These contributed 10M ADA.
- Number of successful participants that got into the allocation of 4,5M is 142 (141 full, 1 only partial).
How did this look in a timeline:
- The UI & application frontend was never entirely down, however, since it was being clogged (an attack investigation is still ongoing), it didn’t let an overall majority of participants through. In the first 15 min, only very few lucky ones got through (approx 26+) and very few participants used direct smart-contract transactions.
- In these initial 15 minutes of problematic UI, precisely only 1,518,160 ADA was contributed by 31 participants, which represents a little over 33% of the total token allocation for participants. Of these, only 6 wallets were above 100k ADA size commits. Of these, approximately less than 5 were direct transactions to the smart contracts (SCs), the rest went through the UI.
- Then the infrastructure was deploying its last and biggest upscaling. No commits were made between 8:15 and 8:20 neither via UI nor direct to SCs. After the upscale became effective, all participants who had previously had the UI loading problem went through and started to enter the contributions via UI.
- In the following 6 minutes, the launch was sold out by UI contributions from 111 wallets. So from the total of 142 wallets, 111 did commit between 8:20:44 — 8:26:54 in a total of 2,81M ADA, when the application frontend was already running smoothly and accommodating everyone who connected their wallet.
The overall spread of the contributions is very balanced
- Whales do not dominate, nor did they grab too much too early of the allocation:
The top 5 contributors are in sum 1,632M ADA :
1. 500k — at the time 8:26
2. 300k — at the time 8:01
3. 299k — at the time 8:06
4. 282k — at the time 8:04
5. 250k — at the time 8:25 - The 6th to 15th largest commits total at 1,137M ADA and all besides 2 of them were after 8:23, so at the time when the UI was running already smoothly. Among these 10, only 2 are before 8:23 and their times are 8:02 and 8:08. The smallest of contributions in the top 15 contributions is 60k ADA.
- It’s a healthy sign that large commits were ongoing throughout the whole duration of the launch. In fact, the biggest commit of 500,00 ADA came close to the time when the maximum total raise was reached around 8:26, just before the launch closed and the UI was running smoothly. Another among the top 5 with 250k came 8:25.
- The glitch in the colors impacted only 14 wallets that withdrew, so less than 10% of the successful participants or less than 2% of all participants.
- A table of the overall spread of wallet commitment sizes:
It would be wonderful if a project like Xerberus.io could verify the above from on-chain data, to conclude that the launch was not somehow manipulated or resulting in an abnormal distribution. We gladly provide them with our full support.
Based on the above, we can conclude and summarize, that if the infrastructure and UI were running with zero issues, the launch would have been most likely sold out 15–20 min earlier, and the outcome would have been the same. The number of participants would have been similar because there is a healthy spread throughout the whole spectrum of commitments. Most importantly, the whole smart contract heart of the launchpad did and does run exactly as designed.
Further, it can be concluded with a very high probability that a very low number of advanced users (directly sending commitments to SCs) participated in the launchpad, if any. It was dominated by participants accessing through the UI. This means that we are talking about real people and real commitments.
We have discussed the above in detail with the Orcfax team and are trying to provide our maximum support and help to them and their community.
We have a full understanding that the launch experience fell short of everyone’s expectations. However, looking strictly at the data, the launch was fair (from the technical launchpad functionality standpoint), but it was very tight due to the high demand, including a big demand for bigger tickets and the limited maximum amount to be raised. In hindsight, there might have been better decisions in the launch configuration (for example utilizing the NFT tier limiters per wallet and conditions to get that NFT from the project), but such parameters are very hard to judge upfront and involve additional work and capacity that projects do not always have.
Hope this update is helpful. Thank you for your patience and understanding.