#11 Monthly Newsletter, May — Redeployment, Staking and New Whitepaper!
Originally published May 2, 2023.
Recap on of the major progress over the last 2 months.
March & April Updates
Ethlizards White Paper
Why White Paper?
The Ethlizards have come a long way over the last year. With many transitions and changes, the DAO is becoming ever more resilient and well-established in the Web3 gaming space. The DAO in its current inception is a functional and robust organization that could continue to operate in the space and garner some success. However, the current DAO is limited compared to the Ethlizards full potential. Waiting for organic growth through secondary sales royalties means that we will not have the capital needed to deploy quickly enough to capitalize on the market opportunity. The DAO was lacking the structure, budget and additional talent needed to truly become a truly top class organization.
It is well known that we need to develop more products and revenue sources, but most importantly we wanted to find ways to accomplish that without diluting existing holders and at the same time bringing additional value to both holders and the DAO. It took a while to figure that part out, but we feel like we have accomplished that with the Ethlizards White Paper.
Industry Positioning
The Ethlizards are strategically positioned at the heart of innovative projects within the Web3 gaming landscape. We have the best components of VCs, Web3 gaming guilds, and Web3 infrastructure projects with just the right amount of degeneracy, culture, and memes mixed in. The white paper lays out the path, products and structures to drive the Ethlizards to the top of the Web3 gaming industry and leverage our unique value proposition.
Drafting and Release Was a Group Effort
The Ethlizards White Paper would not have been possible without the contribution from so many experienced and knowledgeable people. The drafting process began in mid February. It was a major effort to piece together a cohesive and comprehensive proposal to improve the DAO infrastructure and product offerings, while also bringing additional value to holders and the DAO. We have aligned the incentives so that as the DAO experiences success, that holders also benefit each step of the way. We made continuous efforts throughout the white paper drafting process to use best practices, robust solutions and collaborated with numerous contributors, DAO council, advisors, consultants and community members, all of which helped to bring the white paper to life.
On March 16th, we released the first draft of the Ethlizards White Paper v0.1. This new white paper included updates to the value proposition, governance structures, vision and future products of Ethlizards, with some of the highlights being revamped governance, Battle in the Beyond, a platform for unboxing Illuvitars that will be developed via an exclusive Illuvium partnership, future collections like the Elemental Lizards and Champion Lizards, as well as the upcoming $LIZ token launch.
on April 21st, after more than a month of community governance discussions, feedback analysis and edits, we released the revised version of the Ethlizards White Paper v1.0. In this new version, we have added an extensive FAQ that covers all of the major topics and questions that came up from community posts, feedback threads, and town halls/AMAs. On May 3, 2023 LIP-16: White Paper Approval was passed with overwhelming support via governance voting.
Ethlizards White Paper and FAQ.
Governance Proposal LIP-16: White Paper Approval.
Collection Redeployments & Royalty Updates
Reason to Deploy
The legacy NFT contracts are immutable and could not be upgraded. With all of the recent changes at OpenSea and Blur on royalty fees, their platforms did not allow our those contracts to collect royalties automatically; instead it is user choice and most default this to 0.5%. This means that the earnings of royalties from our collections being traded had noticeably decreased. The community asked the team to resolve this royalty issue and collection redeployment was the solution.
After extensive research, we found that the industry had yet to adopt best practices and most were waiting to see how things would play out with OpenSea and Blur. We explored various migrations and redeployment methodologies, but many weren’t relevant to the things we needed to accomplish and others had many downsides. Take for example a claiming strategy would have left the collections permanently split with unclaimed NFTs sitting dead in the water and the new collection feeling incomplete. Instead we chose an airdrop method. KPR was the only project we had found that had undergone a redeployment in this method, so we did reach out to them to ask more about their process as we were developing our own. We appreciate them for providing us with their basic process and then we set out to develop our own procedures. It wasn’t not easy, but in the end we did scope out and execute a fully successful redeployment.
Redeployment Process
Our redeployment process began on March 28th, with a 3 step process.
- We updated metadata on the old collection.
- We airdropped holders their new tokens. These tokens had transfers disabled while we worked with the major marketplaces to delist the old collections.
- Temporary use of admin transfers to make sure NFTs ended up in correct owners wallets. Whilst most users didn’t trade the old collection during this time, we had some transactions occur which we had to manually admin transfer during the migration process. We were also able to rescue some Ethlizards from the NFTfi loan contract and safely return those to their rightful holders.
As of April 1st, our redeployment process was fully completed and following LIP-15, we’ve updated Ethlizards Genesis and V2 collection royalties to be 3%. We are still working with OpenSea to restore legacy collection volume.
Later this month, we’ll have an article covering more details on how our team approached redeployment, as one of the only NFT collections to attempt this. We hope this article will help other teams in the future tackle this challenging task!
Legacy NFTs — Maybe Something Eggs
Maybe Something
It definitely is. With the redeployment, we didn’t want to leave our holders with a worthless NFT. Instead we got Illuvium and Ethlizards artist Rogier van de Beek to create this awesome egg artwork. Additionally, they WILL have a future utility.
The egg NFTs that replaced the redeployed legacy NFT artwork with “Maybe Something” will — — — — — -, have no dilution and won’t impact other collections. These NFTs will be used for a special — — — — — -.
What is going to happen when those eggs are opened?
Wait… is that a — — — — — -!?!
Staking
Staking Launch!
Staking allows a user to lock their Ethlizards Genesis V1 and V2 NFTs in exchange for rewards on the investments made via the Ethlizards investment DAO. As approved in LIP-12: Staking Implementation, the launch of staking on Ethereum Mainnet is now complete!
The much anticipated staking release was launched on April 7th. As of today, we have had over 2300 Ethlizards staked with over 600 individual stakers. In the coming weeks we’ll continue to push updates to the staking dashboard, such as a solution to easily batch transfer your locked lizards (LLZs) in the future.
Important Notes:
- Staking earlier gives you a higher weight (more rewards) than people who stake later on.
- We encourage EVERYONE to set up a cold storage wallet for staking your Ethlizards NFTs more securely. (Using Ledger, Trezor or other hardware wallet).
- The primary functionality enabled is the ability to stake your Ethlizards Genesis V1 and V2 NFTs. When staking, you will get a Locked Lizard (LLZ) NFT in return that serves as a temporary delegated token in place of your staked NFT that allows you to vote on Ethlizards governance proposals on Snapshot, verify in Discord, etc.
- This Locked Lizard (LLZ) NFT can also be recalled to the original staking wallet. It cannot be sold and is not at risk for theft since it can be recalled. Optionally you can transfer your LLZ NFTs to a hot wallet for easy governance voting, Discord verification and other ecosystem interactions.
- We will turn on the ‘Pool’ features as any potential liquidation events occur from our early stage portfolio activity. This is where rewards will be accumulated from.
Links
To learn more about staking, visit our staking documentation and how to guide.
To stake your Ethlizards Genesis V1 and V2 NFTs now, visit our Staking Dashboard
Ethlizards at NFT NYC
Strategic Attendance
Animositas attended NFT NYC on behalf of the Ethlizards. Our focus was:
- Laying the groundwork for future investment support in the seed round.
- Expanding and developing some key partnerships, including a couple of our highest-tier “strategic partners.”
- Expanding & evaluating awareness of Ethlizards brand positioning.
Partnerships, Collaborations and Spending Time with Industry Leaders
Dozens of top projects were there. We have several collaborations, partnerships, investments and even a few new community members coming out of the event. Details to come later but these photos may give you some ideas who…
Everyone Loves the Lizards
Mona and Ani met dozens of Web3 community members. Keep your eyes out for Gaming on the Block with some exclusive footage.
Over the week at the convention center and events, Ani estimates that 10% of random Web3 attendees had seen or knew about Ethlizards and about 40% of the Web3 gaming attendees knew about us. We continue to grow brand awareness organically as a project!
Ani was requested to speak at a side event with Elf of NYC during her NFT launch party and gave a well received 15-minute overview of Web3 gaming. We will continue to evaluate costs and benefits for future industry events including potential speaking opportunities as we grow our brand. We were invited to speak at 3XP and even though we won’t be sending an official representative, any community members who can go rep the project are encouraged to do so!
Portfolio Council Updates
Deal Flow
The council has seen an uptick of early stage deal flow and quality projects being presented! Alongside the various seed and pre-seed offerings, our first Series B deal was presented to us with a 50M valuation for review. Additionally we’ve been offered positions in multiple Series A with over $100M valuations. While we still may not invest in these as we prefer early stage projects, it’s great to see the expansion of deals!
The Portfolio Council approved four high-quality early stage projects and voted no to five more. Multiple other projects did not make it to the consideration stage as the council has narrowed the criteria and our investing thesis.
Four new projects in the Ethlizards Portfolio
These four projects are in due diligence phase with strong potential at the time of this writing. The average ticket size is $27k with our largest new position being $50k and our lowest being $10k, totaling $110k. As these deals finalize, the DAO will have made over $260k in early stage investments! See details on the public DAO Dashboard.
The average FDV saw a slight uptick towards 15M as we approved a project with a 25M valuation.
Existing Portfolio Updates
The Portfolio Council has recently spoken with all of the projects in our portfolio. No projects were released from their NDA at this time. Ani and Lizident visited Muse while in NFT NYC and can confirm they’re getting ready to ramp up and offer more exclusive IRL opportunities.
Halls Of Olympia is having their TGE (the first of our portfolio projects!) and have their Alpha test available, go check it out!
Project Herpetarium
There weren’t many opportunities for the community and Project Herpetarium, as most of the deals approved took place via a SAFT and didn’t allow for decentralized fundraising. We are still committed to this vision and most projects are interested in leveraging it.
Council Elections
The new council elections are coming up soon, get ready to ask questions you’d like to see from candidates! We’ll open up the candidacy period in early May. More details will follow in an announcement.
May and Beyond
- Updates on the Aelin Pre-Seed will be announced soon.
- $LIZ Pre-seed Aelin Pool launch imminent! Prepare yourself appropriately.
- Epoch 2 Council Nomination Process Starts.
- Team expansion and talent hunt continues. We’re working to onboard top talent to execute the items laid out in the white paper.
- Product, services and improvements will continue to be developed.
Closing
After successfully launching the collection redeployments and staking, preparations are now taking place to prepare for the next phases and rollouts. Governance voting for the whitepaper is under way. Things are going smooth internally and we have more major partners and advisors that we are lining up collaborations with. The DAO and contributors are primed for action.
We are ready for what comes next. Are you?
About
The Ethlizards project is positioned at the nexus of innovative projects within the Web3 gaming landscape. Ethlizards brings together an exceptional mix of avid gamers, visionary builders, and savvy investors, establishing itself as a highly esteemed partner in the GameFi ecosystem. Our unique position spans various verticals, encompassing Web3 game studios, infrastructure partners, venture capitalists, and gaming organizations. We seamlessly blend the best aspects of VCs and Web3 gaming guilds/DAOs while co-developing solutions with our partners.
Ethlizards is fostering a community that features successful investors, project founders, and a multitude of individuals actively committed to creating and contributing value. Our distinguished partners and advisors, including founders of major Web3 projects, remain actively involved at all protocol levels. At Ethlizards, we firmly believe that an exclusive focus on value extraction in Web3 is counterproductive. Through our early-stage GameFi portfolio activities, we ensure the long-term success of the DAO, while our short-term strategies prioritize gamification, product development, and extensive partnership growth. This holistic approach positions us to thrive amidst the industry’s rapid expansion in the coming years.
