Introducing Melon Olympiad

A series of blockchain-based asset management competitions incentivizing user testing and software adoption

As planned over a year ago, Melonport AG has yet to issue the remaining 500,000 Melon tokens to the public. The issuance of those remaining tokens to the public will not happen through a traditional token sale; it will happen through the Melon Olympiad.

We are building Melon, a public infrastructure to manage assets in a decentralized way, so we naturally want to make it as robust as possible. We believe software robustness is achieved through intense testing (among other things). Therefore, we want to incentivize people to contribute their time and efforts into testing Melon and allowing us to improve and enhance it as much as possible. The remaining Melon tokens constitute a pool of resources that we want to dedicate to user testing and software adoption.

Enter the Melon Olympiad

Melon ([méllō], μέλλω; Greek for “destined to be”) is blockchain software that seeks to enable participants to set up, manage and invest in technology regulated investment funds in a way that reduces barriers to entry, while minimizing the requirements for trust.

An Olympiad ([əˈlɪmpɪad], Ὀλυμπιάς) is a period of four years associated with the Olympic Games of the Ancient Greeks. During the Hellenistic period, beginning with Ephorus, it was used as a calendar epoch.

The Melon Olympiad is a series of blockchain-based asset management competitions composed of several rounds. Each of the five rounds will set a clear goal for participants, and will issue a defined number of Melon tokens. At the end of the Melon Olympiad, all remaining Melon tokens shall have been issued to the public.

Melonport AG is excited to announce that the first round of the Melon Olympiad will start shortly, and that the registration for that round is opening. This blog aims at explaining the concept of the first challenge , providing participants with clear instructions as well as communicating the terms and conditions.

Melon Olympiad, first round: Paros

Each round of the Melon Olympiad will be named after Greek islands. The first round of the Melon Olympiad is referred to as Paros.

Participants who wish to engage in testing and help us improve the software will receive discounted MLN tokens for this effort. Participants will have to create a fund on this website and contribute ether to the Olympiad contract. In return, the Paros Olympiad contract will transfer (via the “requestInvestment” function) the equivalent amount in MLN (+ a bonus) into the participant’s fund. The participant will have to manage their fund for a defined period of time (2 weeks) with the goal of capital appreciation. At the end of the defined management period, the participant will be able to trigger the redemption of the fund’s assets, thus receiving the fund’s AUM as a reward for efforts incurred.

For the Paros round, the participant compensation is as follows: for each ether contributed, the participant will receive 20 Melon tokens (subject to change prior the start of the Paros Olympiad in the event of token price volatility). The conversion rate of ether to Melon will be fixed at the contract level.

How to participate?

Go to olympiad.melon.fund and make sure you read the full instructions and adhere to the terms and conditions (second contribution terms and Paros Olympiad terms).

Melonport AG is required to issue tokens via a regulated financial intermediary which is subject to KYC/AML procedures. To perform the KYC/AML processes, our chosen partner is Bitcoin Suisse. Each individual willing to participate will have to register with Bitcoin Suisse.

Step 1 — Generate a wallet on olympiad.melon.fund. Make sure you write down the mnemonic, and store it in a safe (and accessible) place. Make sure you remember the password you use to encrypt the wallet. If you forget your password and you loose access to the mnemonic phrase, you won’t be able to participate in the challenge. Make sure you download your wallet as a JSON file and store it in a safe place. Save the wallet address as you will need to provide this address to Bitcoin Suisse in step 3. In order to guarantee the compatibility of your mnemonic phrase, it is extremely important that you generate your wallet on olympiad.melon.fund.

Step 2 — KYC with Bitcoin Suisse: create an account with Bitcoin Suisse. Follow the steps on the Bitcoin Suisse platform to get the KYC clearance. Make sure you upload all required documents.

Bitcoin Suisse will inform you with an email once your KYC is approved. Once it is approved, you can move on to Step 3.

Step 3 — Apply for the Melon Olympiad Whitelist on the Bitcoin Suisse platform. You will need to provide an Ethereum address (the one created in Step 1) and the amount with which you wish to contribute. It is of utmost importance that you provide an Ethereum address that was generated on olympiad.melon.fund.

Bitcoin Suisse will inform you once your address is whitelisted. They will also inform you of the maximum amount with which you can contribute.

Step 4 — Get ready before the start of the competition. Fund your wallet (generated in Step 1) with the amount of Ether you would like to contribute.

After this point, you need to wait until the official beginning of the challenge which will be announced shortly.

Step 5 — Official start of the Melon Olympiad, Paros. Date to be announced in June.

Step 6 — Go back to olympiad.melon.fund. Create your fund.

Step 7 — After creating your fund, you will be asked to enter the amount you wish to contribute. Once you confirm that transaction, the amount of Ether will be transferred from your wallet to the Paros smart contract. In return, the Paros smart contract will invest the equivalent amount in MLN including a bonus into your fund.

Step 8 — Congratulations. You made it here. Now its time to prove your asset management skills. You have 2 weeks to manage your fund and grow your capital.

Step 9 —At the end of the round, and only at the end, you will have the option to cash out. This will trigger the transfer of the shares owned by the Paros contract into your fund to you, and therefore give you the ability to retrieve your assets by redeeming the shares using the wallet you generated in step 1.

The terms and conditions must be read by all participants. Click here to read the terms and conditions for the second contribution period. Click here to read the terms and conditions for the Paros Olympiad (first capsule). Please make sure you carefully read both documents. When you will create a fund, you will be prompted to cryptographically sign those terms and conditions to show your understanding and agreement.

The registration with Bitcoin Suisse opens today and shall remain open until June 18th. If you wish to participate, go create your account there and once your KYC checks are approved, apply for the Melon Olympiad whitelist.

The Melon team hopes to see many of you participating and helping us make Melon as good as it should be.

Melon Team

This blog post is subject to change as the research & development phase is ongoing. Melonport will aim to update blog-posts regularly to represent our latest thinking on a best-efforts basis but there may occasionally be time-lags between latest thinking and updated documentation. With this in mind, the author of this blog assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this blog.