Unts in a While — 14th May 2022
The one with no financial advice.
Hey, unts! It’s been “a while”, so you know what that means; it’s time for another installment of Unts in a While!
We’re just two weeks away from the May 28th Global Pub Crawl drop date and the organized chaos is well underway. Unts are winning prizes left, right, and center in Discord, our awareness campaigns are live, the whitelist is filling up, and Pixel Unt’s art machine is going brrr. Needless to say, Season Two is going to be great.
But I’m not just here to tell you what you already know. S1 and S2 Cheeky Unts NFTs will unlock a lot of doors for holders moving forward, and that’s what we’ll be getting into this update. So for you “investors” in the community, you’re going to want to read on!
Before we get into it, and this should go without saying, I want to stress that this post is far from being financial advice. That said, I’m going to discuss the things an investment in Cheeky Unts will get you. From there, it’s over to you to decide how much you value said things so you can formulate your strategy accordingly.
Oh, and we should probably address the elephant in the room that is the crypto market. Our team is going to focus on the things we can control. Does 50 cent ADA make things complicated when it comes to funding a roadmap? Of course, it does — if any project tells you otherwise, they’re dreaming! All we can do is make responsible decisions with our funding to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Cheeky Unts project. Survival is going to be the name of the game through the crypto winter, and we have the team and core community in place to win that game. We’re not just going to “keep the lights on”; this is an opportunity to build and grow in times of uncertainty. WAGMI, friends.
But I digress! Let’s get into this edition of Unts in a While that has no financial advice.
Contents
Season Two Update
Arcade Tokens
Secondary Market Royalties
Bitgem
Community Update
Season Two Update
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Roo and Koala went on a Global Pub Crawl where they made new friends, immersed themselves in the culture, and visited the most iconic sights around the world.
You, the community, have led the crawl and your input has inspired the artwork of our Season Two collection!
Mint details
Price
We don’t have an exact price to lock in yet, but we intended to be around the $50 USD mark to be consistent with our S1 mint price. The state of the market makes this unrealistic, so we’ll continue to monitor and update you accordingly.
More than 70% of our mint revenue is going directly back into delivering on our roadmap, funding things like game dev, blockchain dev, guaranteed prize pools for the arcade, and a staking system (among other things).
While charitable contributions are still a part of our mission, we need to ask ourselves if donating a stack of ADA at the current price is responsible. We won’t sacrifice the project’s sustainability, and giving less now will allow us to give more in the future.
Whitelist
We’ve updated our planned whitelist allocations so that 50-75% of the Season Two drop is set aside for whitelisted wallets. The revised allocation is as follows:
Tyrunt (32+ S1 unts): 16 mints max
Lieutenunt (16–31 S1 unts): 8 mints max
Sergunt (8–15 S1 unts): 4 mints max
Grunt (1–7 S1 unts): 2 mints max
Lucky #unts (contest/giveaway winners): 1 mint
This change allows us to ensure long-standing community members have a chance at acquiring rare unts at the mint price while keeping a degree of anti-whale measures in place. It also incentivizes S1 unt purchasing and de-listing, which is never a bad thing!
Rarity
This collection will have a similar rarity system to S1 and rarity will have implications on things like token drops and staking in the future. More on this in the Arcade Tokens section a bit later.
You’ll want to pay extra attention to the following in S2 though:
One-of-ones: There will be up to 15 unts that are 1/1’s.
Poser unts: Look out for unts with 5+ wearable traits.
Naked unts: These unts will be good for guaranteed airdrops among other perks.
Marketing
You may have seen some Cheeky Unts banners on sites like OpenCNFT.io and CNFT.tools. These will quiet down a bit over the next week, but we’re doing a final blitz starting on the 22nd. You’ll also see ads and listings start to show up on drop aggregator sites.
We’ve also locked in a couple of interviews/AMAs:
NFT Update — Week of May 16, exact date & time TBD
CNFT.tools Discord AMA — May 21 @ 8PM UTC
CNFT News — May 23 @ 7PM UTC
We’ll be spending the next 2 weeks running whitelist giveaways with other NFT communities. If you have any in mind, shoot me a message on Discord!
Contests
The fourth and final leg of Roo and Koala’s Global Pub Crawl came to an end yesterday. The community events and contests in Discord went great! Some of your submissions made us laugh, others made us… uncomfortable. Here’s a handful of your ideas that may or may not pop up in S2:
So far, unts have been awarded:
- 150k+ Unt coins
- 600+ ADA (including the poker tournament)
- 14+ S1 unts
- $180+ in merch vouchers
While the community-submitted content challenge has come to an end, we’ll keep looking for ways to give back to you for helping make S2 a success. More events and giveaways are on the way!
Sneak peeks
The community input has allowed Pixel Unt to churn out S2 artwork like nobody’s business. Here are some sneak peeks:
Arcade Tokens
The most immediate utility for core collection (S1 & S2) Cheeky Unts will be the token drop for the web3 arcade we plan to develop.
Initial offering
Our original intention was to provide details around airdrop mechanics ahead of Season Two, but we’re going to hold off on this until S2 has launched for a few reasons:
- We want to see the core collection (S1 & S2) in its entirety before making decisions. This helps us avoid issues that could come with RNG.
- Tokenomics is not a project to be taken lightly and is one we may even hire a consultant for.
- We’ll be able to dedicate our undivided attention to specific details around token calculation and delivery methods after S2 has dropped.
We’ll be putting together a whitepaper for the Cheeky Unts Arcade in June, and there’ll be an entire section dedicated to the token.
However, we can share the following for now:
- More unts = more tokens: Each unt will grant the holder a fixed amount of tokens, and tokens will be dropped multiple times over 1–2 years. The best way to accumulate tokens will be by stockpiling unts.
- Rarity matters: The reward value of each unt will be determined by rarity rank.
- Special unts: Naked Unts, Poser Unts, and 1/1 Unts will have multipliers on top of their rarity rank allocation.
- We like to play games: We want to do one-off “events” where certain unts receive multipliers. Hint: we like the “themed” unts!
While the arcade is meant to be a larger play for our team beyond the Cheeky Unts project, unt holders will receive a healthy allocation of the total tokens in circulation.
NFA: If you believe in our long-term vision for the web3 arcade, then accumulating S1 and S2 unts is your key to getting in early.
Secondary Market Royalties
Alright, let’s talk about royalties. We’re currently receiving a 3.50% royalty on secondary market sales, and these royalties are accumulating to be eventually distributed to holders of 8+ unts. Approximately 1,800 ADA has been accumulated since this holder reward was introduced. Here’s how the payouts work:
- Reward mechanic was implemented effective November 15th, 2021.
- Payouts are to be sent to holders every two (2) weeks from then.
- Holders with a minimum of eight (8) S1 Cheeky Unts are eligible.
- Payouts are calculated based on each holder’s share of the total number of unts in wallets holding 8+.
- For this to be paid out, all holders must exceed a minimum payout threshold of 2 ADA.
Payout update
No payout has been made to date, but we just ran the numbers and it looks like that could change…
The good news? With our current wallet distribution and recent secondary market volume, holders are eligible for a royalty payout. There are 140 eligible wallets.
The bad news? This payout works out to being just over 0.60 ADA per unt held, so holders of 8 unts would get about 5 ADA. Only five holders would get more than 50 ada, and only one of those would get more than 100.
Our recommendation
Given the amount of volume we’ve had, the current setup just doesn’t make sense. From an economics standpoint, the model is broken. We simply don’t have enough volume at the moment to create the market activity needed to turn this benefit into a passive income machine.
Not to say that couldn’t change at some point down the road, but for the time being, we’d like to make a change to what’s done with the royalties.
Unless unt holders are strongly opposed, we’ll be transitioning to a community wallet system in which unts grant voting power with a DAO. Royalties from S1 and S2 secondary market sales will go into this wallet.
How will it work?
In this setup, members of the community will be able to propose what to do with the community funds. Some ideas could include:
- Paying out the funds to holders
- Investing in other projects
- Sweeping the floor
- Marketing, i.e. buying ads, paying an influencer, etc.
- Charitable donations
- And more…
Other projects have found success with this setup, namely SpaceBudz. It’ll take us some time (weeks, not months) to get the tech, processes, and documentation up and running, but we believe it’s what’s best for the project and holders.
We’ll solicit feedback on this idea over the coming weeks and share more formal communication as we move forward.
NFA: If you want to influence what the Cheeky Unts community wallet is used for, you may want to hold S1 and S2 unts to build up the amount of voting power you hold.
Bitgem
You’ve probably heard the name Bitgem dropped when it comes to the Cheeky Unts project. So, what’s that all about?
Bitgem is a boutique 3D CGI studio that builds high-quality 3D models and textures for the gaming and entertainment industry. The studio was founded by King Unt and Pixel Unt ten years ago and is the driving force behind the Cheeky Unts project.
If you want to see more of Bitgem’s work, you can check us out on Sketchfab.
Entering the NFT space
The Cheeky Unts project is just the start of Bitgem’s plans in the NFT space. We see a number of opportunities to apply our game development skills, knowledge, and professional network in Cardano’s NFT ecosystem:
3D art and game dev services for existing projects
We often see NFT projects including 3D collections and/or games in their roadmap. They typically have the what but are missing the how. That’s where we come in; we can help these projects build professional, metaverse/game-ready 3D models that reflect the quality of the original 2D collection.
Bitgem NFT drops
Based on what we’ve seen in the Cardano NFT space, there would be demand for our 3D art. While Cheeky Unts is definitely keeping us busy, we’re excited to start planning a 3D project. Does this mean we’re abandoning the Cheeky Unts project? Not even close!
What does this mean for the Cheeky Unts project and holders?
The Cheeky Unts project will always have a seat at the table when it comes to Bitgem in the NFT space. This could mean things like Cheeky Unts collaborations with Bitgem’s NFT partners, lifetime OG status for unt holders in future Bitgem projects, and more games and prizes in the Cheeky Unts arcade.
You can consider Cheeky Unts NFTs to be membership tokens that grant perks in connection with just about anything Bitgem is working on!
NFA: If you like what you see from Bitgem and believe we can add value to the Cardano NFT ecosystem, hold S1 and S2 unts to get priority access in our future projects and endeavors.
Community Update
I don’t have a lot to share as far as a community update goes today. Our contests, events, and giveaways have been in connection with the Global Pub Crawl. You can expect more Hornnies races, gaming nights, and other giveaways in the next two weeks as our community grows ahead of the S2 drop. Keep an eye on the announcements channel in Discord!
New roles
We’ve reinforced our moderating and raiding efforts! Please join me in congratulating the following members on their new roles within the Cheeky Unts community:
- Binga and Spowner are now moderators in the Cheeky Unts Discord.
- Cryptoflame is now Raid Leader and will make sure our raiding forces are in full effect leading up to S2.
Unt of the Week
There’s one unt in particular who’s long overdue for this recognition. This individual is as OG as they come, and although she’s become a Boss Cat whale, she always finds time to come hang out with us unts. She’s even started to bring some friends over from other communities, which we love to see! Now that I think of it I’m wondering if she’s already won Unt of the Week…
Either way, I’m happy to name H₳PPY as our Unt of the Week!
Closing Notes
So this ended up being a longer update than I had intended. I’ll pull out the key takeaways to make sure they’re easy to find for newcomers to the community. Here’s a simple summary of all the non-financial advice I shared in this post:
- Holding S1 and/or S2 Cheeky Unts will grant you Arcade Tokens.
- Holding S1 and/or S2 Cheeky Unts will grant you voting power when it comes to deciding what is done with the funds in the community wallet.
- Holding S1 and/or S2 Cheeky Unts will grant you perks and benefits in connection with future Bitgem projects.
Hopefully this adds clarity to what we’re doing here. If you’re an unt holder, you’re early, and we’re thrilled to have you along for the ride!
See you around!
-Sonk
