2022: We Came, We Built, We Shipped

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Charged Particles

13 min readJan 6, 2023

2022 was our most dynamic year, and we didn’t let the bear market stop our progress.

In fact, with a significant number of product launches including our open-source SDK, a growing list of viable use-cases across a multitude of industries, dozens of strategic partnerships, large scale event activations, and more, this year has been one of our best yet. But before we get too deep, let’s start by highlighting some of the most impactful moments from 2022…

Top 7 Achievements in the Particleverse during 2022

1. The SDK

Charged JS-SDK Public Release: Many hard working developer hours went into perfecting this long awaited package. The SDK allows anyone to integrate the Charged Particles protocol into their existing Dapp with a few lines of code. With the JS SDK you can access all of the features of the Solidity Contracts through a convenient and familiar Javascript interface.

2. ERC72i

Erc721i: With (ERC721i) we re-defined the rules of cost effective mass minting. We pre-minted 1 Million NFTs for <$2 USD. This new token standard eliminates the need for Lazy-Minting fees. No more High Transfer fees. No more Minting fees period! You can Pre-Mint them all for half the cost of minting a single NFT. See the Github here.

What does the “i” stand for? Infinite!

3. Protocol Version 2 (V2)

V2: We launched Version 2 of Charged Particles. This incorporated major updates at the Smart Contract level and minor updates to the user interface. The main V2 updates included: additional support for whitelisted ERC-721 NFTs, support for depositing ERC-1155 tokens, the ability to claim an airdrop on behalf of a Particle, ability to redirect creator annuities, a new Proton contract and sample Non-fungible implementation of the ERC-1155.

4. The DeFi NFT Explorer

NFTView.io- the DeFi NFT Explorer: The core feature of NFT View that’s unique among other explorers is the ability to see what’s inside your NFT. You can browse the wallet of any address and view the NFTs held within. NFT View allows you to customize your wallet to highlight the NFTs you want to display, add your favorite NFTs, and share your wallet address with friends and family.

5. Hydra at ETHDenver

Hydra: ETHDenver’s Official opening party was a night that will live on in our hearts for years to come. With world-class music such as headliner Tycho, insightful panels by thought leaders within the Web 3.0 space, exceptional artists of the avant-garde and experimental fashion showcasing their art and installations, LITERAL AIRDROPS FROM AN ACTUAL BLIMP, massive raffle prizes, and a ton of fun with new friends. See the video recap here.

6. Allowlisted Contracts

Allowlisting/governance with IONX: We started conducting weekly allowlist votes that allow community members holding IONX to weigh in on which external contracts we should be allowlisting and adding into the Charged Particles UI. Allowlisted contracts are able to utilize the full capabilities of the Charged Particles Protocol retroactively. We have allowlisted Voxels, SuperRare, Nouns, Peaceful Groupies, Mona Metaverse, Sandbox, Bored Ape, Mutant Ape, Otherdeeds, Fluf World, Fluf World Burrows, Makersplace V2, Max Jackson Art, Celmates, BasinDAO, Cortex, and more projects via weekly allowlist voting.

7. Expanded IONX Utility

Our governance token, IONX–which allows community members to participate in the shaping of the Charged Particles Protocol, is a key component of our ongoing belief in and development towards decentralization. For the last year, community members have used it to vote on new contract integrations, artist spotlights, the addition of protocol fees, and more. And now, we’re proud to announce that its utility has expanded to include use cases for external projects looking to integrate our technology. You can now use IONX to join our Early Adopters Program for our SDK as well as fast-laning the process of Allowlisting Smart Contracts for full protocol functionality. This means if you want your project to be enabled with the capacity to hold other tokens inside, you can do it faster than ever through these integration pathways — and IONX is your key to doing so.

8 Great Applications of Charged Particles in 2022

1. 100k USDC Earning Interest in a Phygital NFT for Charity

Memphis mural: one of the most novel use cases of our technology. The mural on the side of Memphis Merchants Exchange building contains $100k of Aave USDC, powered by Charged Particles, with interest generated inside going to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital via The Giving Block. As a lossless charitable mechanism, this is truly a gift that keeps giving. The mural was originally an illustration done by local Memphis artist Michael “Birdcap” Roy and was purchased online as an NFT, by Sardor Umarov, owner of the Exchange Building.

2. .Ape Domains with Cortex

Cortex: Cortex was one of our first SDK early adopters and partners. With this partnership they received an early adopter NFT from Charged Particles which endows them with unique benefits, ongoing support, and lifetime inclusion in SDK product upgrades and developments. Below is an infographic that details how they are utilizing our functionality.

3. 100% Free Music Distribution Using DeFi NFTs

Unchained music: Built on the Charged Particles protocol and the pilot project of our music guild, Unchained Music uses DeFi NFTs in a novel accounting structure that enables them to distribute music to all the major streaming platforms (Web 2.0 and Web 3.0) for free.

4. Decentralized Sustainability Models

Basin DAO: Is using Charged Particles as part of a new model of sustainability practices that aims to support local river basins around the world. Each Basin has it’s own NFT that acts as a DAO-controlled account, helping to support regenerative ecology and other actions that positively impact the waterway and surrounding ecosystems. Nesting tokens inside these Basin NFTs helps to keep track of value that has accrued within that ecosystem.

Grandmother grove: The flagship project out of our Ecology Guild is Planting Trees at Scale with DeFi NFTs. Grandmother Grove uses DeFi and NFTs to turn charitable donations into both immediate impact as well as an engine for long-term impact in the world of reforestation. To date, they have planted approximately 13k trees worldwide, with more being planted all the time.

5. Vesting Capsules

Vesting Capsules: A Vesting Capsule is an NFT with tokens nested inside and time-locked for a pre-determined vesting period. While the Vesting Capsule can be traded, the internal assets (nested tokens) are locked until the end of the chosen vesting period. Teams and investors now can have complete sovereignty over their own token allocations from day 1, without relying on another party to send in the future. Below is a list of three different scenarios where companies utilized this use case.

Fraktal: When Fraktal.io launched their $FRAK token, they nested 10% of the total supply inside Charged Particles Vesting Capsules. 9% of 10% total team tokens are vested in Capsules, with 1 and 2 year unlocks, and 1% of the 5% of the launch partner airdrop is also vested with 1 and 1.5 year time-locks scheduled.
Paragons DAO: When Paragons DAO launched $PDT tokens they locked their team tokens inside vesting capsules. They minted 17 vesting capsules one for each of the ParagonsDAO founders. A total of 16.8 million $PDT have been vested inside these Vesting Capsules, for a Total Value Locked of $25.2 million
Bluechips: The core team behind Dip DAO and the preeminent Blue Chip NFT have used Charged Particles protocol to lock team tokens inside NFTs. These Vesting Capsules have a lock period of 1 year

6. We Sent a Fluf NFT Into Space!

Fluf in space: 2021 for SpaceX and 2022 for SpaceFluf! FLUF #7189 — owned by David Rodman, was launched into space (safely inside in a USB device) aboard the SpaceX Sarh-I Falcon 4 rocket, on her maiden voyage. Following the flight, we energized the FLUF #7189 with a Certificate of Space Voyage.

7. “Generizable” PFPs

Particlon: Particlon is a generative collection of 10,069 PFPs and these are the first generative NFT collection that is Energizable — meaning each Particlon NFT can contain assets within it. Upon mint, Particlon’s were endowed with Particlon Utility Tokens, ($PUT) — that will be used to acquire additional in-game assets and may be used in additional ways in the ecosystem.

8. 1 Trillion $State Tokens Nested!

NWO State: NWO STATE (Φ) energized a whopping 1 trillion of their ERC-20 Governance Tokens inside a singular NFT using our tech and the NFT was up for sale for a staggering 66.6 ETH

Community: Gaming, Guilds, and Education

Bringing Composability to Gaming

Gaming and the Metaverse are two avenues that we see huge potential in the coming years. As people begin to spend more and more time in virtual spaces, we see composability as a critical component of forming a robust digital identity as well as weaving together the many layers of value within the digital landscape. This year, we’ve seen a number of projects start to experiment with the application of our tech into gaming contexts. All sorts of things such as achievements and accomplishments, governance participations, qualifications and skillsets, in-game assets, and more can all be tokenized and nested inside NFTs that represent characters, wearables, profiles, programs, domains, and more.

Our Gaming ecosystem partners: Polygon, ExceedMe, Decentral Games, AnRkey, DeFi Gaming Coalition, Metabolic, Lepricon, DeRace, Lovelace, Trooper, Book of Alchemy, Polygorn, Trash Panda, Rogues and Ronin’s, Exo Jump.

Metaverse-as-a-Service Partnership

Lovelace: Is one we are excited about our partnership with them, they are a Metaverse as a Service platform, that gives NFT projects the tools they need to create and deliver the next generation of GameFi solutions. With this partnership we aim to expand & strengthen our communities and integrate the platforms in the future.

Book of Alchemy

Book of Alchemy: Charged Particles Gaming Guild’s flagship project, Book of Alchemy, has succeeded in pushing the boundaries of composability and story-telling. Book of Alchemy dives deeper into a world of magic, clans, lore, and culture and woven into it’s architecture is a myriad of fascinating DeFi NFT use-cases.

Polygorn

Polygorn: A blockchain-born NFT battle monster with unlock-able attack powers and two levels of potential evolution. Players can unlock the monster’s attack powers, and battle with the NFT’s. Also, the monsters are cute. Organized in Charged Particles’ Gaming Guild (Discord). First Battle Arena here.

Rogues and Ronins

Rogues and ronins: A free-to-play game built on Charged Particles. Rogues & Ronin was structured in a bracket much like teams in a sports league and a single winner was crowned. The winner received a prize pool of $IONX and NFT

Ultimate Trash Panda

Trashpanda: In the month of April, our community member and Gaming Guild founder Cybertooth Kat lead a five day NFT strategy game called Ultimate Trash Panda — a game of strategy, cunning, and a modest helping of deceit! Eleven players were dealt three Polygon NFT playing cards with varying point values and instructions. The rest of the deck was available for sale for .1 MATIC each. We were each assigned a quadrant representing each suit of the deck, and for five days we conspired to get as many points as we could.

In the end, we used Charged Particles technology to nest these NFTs inside one another to get even more points, and the winner received prizes including 500 IONX tokens, rare art, and more! The real kicker was the “Enforcer” card. If you held this joker at the end of the game, you’d lose regardless of how many points you had.

Educational Content

This year we also released some fresh and up-to-date video content that goes over some of the basic functionalities and demonstrates how to get the most out of your NFTs. In this series you can learn how to nest tokens inside your NFTs, time-lock them, earn interest on tokens that are enabled through Aave, and more. You can watch those videos here.

Events

Charged Particles loves conducting events and meeting its community members in IRL. We started the year with a big bang party “Hydra” at ETH Denver and continued organizing online and offline events.

Charged Labs Hackathon

Charged Labs: We hosted our first hybrid internal/external hackathon in the month of October challenging teams to build novel products on top of both the Charged Particles protocol as well as hackathon sponsor NFT Perp

Coinbase “Buidl The Future”

We joined up with Coinbase for the “Buidl The Future” Hackathon. Many hackers from all around the world came together to innovate new technology across several different blockchains and we can’t wait to see what they build. Coming to a close January 9th. Bounties for building on Polygon include calls for DeFi and Gaming innovation — perfect for our tool set.

Learn more about the Buidl The Future Hackathon! And thanks to the teams at Hacker Earth, Coinbase and Polygon as well as everyone participating.

Let’s look at a few amazing hackathon projects that have come to life:

Testudo, Personalized and Semi-Automated Indices for Retail Investors. Using the Charged Particles protocol, Testudo developed a tool for creating personalized token indices with sliding scales for risk tolerance.

Massv, Bulk Token Energizer Built by Santiago & team, Massv is a tool that leverages our protocol to do large scale ‘batch energizing.’ This means you can deposit tokens inside a huge number of NFTs in a single transaction by utilizing a csv sheet

Phoenix, Innovative NFT Drop developed by Rob Secord, Maddy Fries, and yours truly (Steve Neigut), Phoenix NFT created a number of interesting new tools in the domains of token burning, staking, and community onboarding.

90s Forever

90s superbundle: 90s Forever was the theme of the NFT NYC Afterparty, held at Nebula, NYC, and powered by Unstoppable Domains, 90’s Babes, and Polygon Studios. In classic Charged Particles style, we bundled up a pack with partners, to showcase our tech, and limelight their art. This Super Bundle Bonanza has been won by 1 lucky winner from the 90s Forever Afterparty.

Return to Green

Return to green: Our ecology guild and friends conducted a metaverse event in Cryptovoxels focused on bringing together the arts, music, and ReFi. By making environmentalism fun and providing an insightful and rewarding experience, the goal was to inspire, encourage and incentivize individuals and platforms to find innovative methods to create real environmental change.

Blockdown

Swag bags at blockdown: We created NFT Swag Bags at the Blockdown conference Croatia. The Swag Bags were powered by Charged Particles tech and packed with NFTs and tokens from sponsoring projects — Ejthek, asianjunkies & Party Degenerates NFT

Charging into the New Year

While there was obviously a lot that happened this past year, 2023 looks set for a supernova! Our Q1 roadmap alone includes powerful new features for individual creators, as well as an NFT business product that is already garnering attention and offers from top-tier crypto companies. Charged Particles continues to expand the DeFi NFT Toolkit.

2023 may not be the year of the bull, but it will be year of the Charge!

About Charged Particles

Charged Particles is a protocol that allows users to deposit ERC-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155 tokens into NFTs. A scarce NFT (e.g. Art, Collectible, Virtual Real Estate, In-Game Item, etc.) can now be transformed into a basket holding a number of other tokens. The Principal amount can be time-locked inside the NFT, and through integration with Aave’s aTokens, the programmable yield from these DeFi yield-generating assets is just a few clicks away.

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