Rocket Pool Token Crowdsale
After the very successful presale in September, Rocket Pool is now aiming to launch its next and final token sale starting on November 25th and running through to December 23rd. This new public crowdsale will feature a new type of token distribution system which will allow anyone to claim some RPL tokens from the sale, regardless of the amount they contribute or the time they contribute. Like the original presale, it’s built using our own token distribution platform, the Sale Agent.
Rocket Pool — Wait, what, who?
If you’re not familiar with Rocket Pool, here’s a quick run down before we get into the meat and potatoes of how the public crowdsale will work.
Rocket Pool is a next generation pool designed to work with Casper, the new consensus protocol that Ethereum will transition to in 2018. It was the first working implementation of a Proof of Stake pool and features several first to market features; such as load balancing across multiple cloud hosting providers using smart contracts, minipools, widow addresses and deposit tokens. Rocket Pool isn’t just a whitepaper, it’s actual code.
At the very essence of it, Rocket Pool will work to allow your every day user, the ability to earn interest on their ether holdings over a fixed term, whether that be for just a few months or even up to a year.
The Crowdsale Model
One of the main goals of our Rocket Pool crowdsale is to aim for a great distribution of the token. Far too often a crowdsale will get sold out very quickly, these token sale models are usually a variant of the ‘first come, first served’ model where those users who get the most tokens are users that include a very high gas amount with their transaction, ensuring miners process their transaction first and in turn, they get into the sale first and claim the most tokens. Of course this is great for reaching the crowdsale funding goal quickly, but will often leave a lot of people disappointed and also make the overall distribution of the token quite limited.
The Rocket Pool crowdsale aims to allow anyone to get tokens at any time during the sale. This is accomplished using a proportional distribution model which means no matter the amount you’re contributing into the crowdsale, you will get some tokens, even if you do it on the last day of the sale.
How does it work?
It’s a remarkably simple approach that happens in two basic steps. All users who participate will, a) contributing ether into the contract and b) collect their tokens/refund when the crowdsale completes.
The crowdsale will have one primary ether target that will determine if the sale is successful. If this target is surpassed when the crowdsale is running, then the sale is considered a success. If not, all participants can withdraw their contribution in full when the sale period ends.
By now you might be wondering how many tokens you’ll get if you participate. This is determined by the total amount of ether contributed to the contract vs the amount sent in by the user. Here’s an example scenario to show how the tokens are divided up proportionally among participants.
- The example ether target for the contract to be a success is 100.
- The example token amount assigned to the crowdsale is 1 million.
- Betty decides to participate in the crowdsale by contributing 10 ether.
- The crowdsale runs for a month and receives a total of 200 ether making it a success. The crowdsale now has 100 excess ether above its target.
- Betty’s contribution now makes up 5% of all the ether contributed.
- Betty’s contribution now gets her 5% of all tokens assigned to the sale which is 50,000 tokens (5% of 1 million).
- Betty’s contribution also gets her a 5% refund of the excess ether the contract received, which is 5 ether (5% of 100 ether excess the contract received during the sale).
As you can see the tokens are distributed proportionally based on the weight of your contribution vs the total contributions from all other participants. The refund for excess ether the contract received is also distributed proportionally in the same manner.
How to participate
You’ll be able to view a countdown to the sale beginning at the main Rocket Pool website. When the sale period begins, all participants will be able to contribute their ether in two ways.
MetaMask / Ethereum Browser
If you wish to contribute ether from a MetaMask account or Ethereum browser like Mist, you’ll be able to do so via the crowdsale page easily. Once you’ve agreed to the rules of the crowdsale, simply click on the MetaMask icon under the ‘Participate’ section.
When prompted, enter in the amount of ether you wish to contribute, then confirm the transaction in MetaMask and you’re all done! Collecting your tokens when the sale period is over is just as easy if your contributing account was originally done through MetaMask.
MyEtherWallet / Other Ethereum Wallet
If you wish to contribute ether from a MyEtherWallet or another Ethereum wallet such as Jaxx or Parity, agree to the crowdsale rules, then select the corresponding icon under the ‘Participate’ section on the crowdsale page to view the crowdsale contract address. You can then send your contribution to the contract address from your wallet using it. Be sure to add 200,000 wei for gas and do not send from any exchanges.
Important: Before sending your ether, verify the address displayed on this page with user @darcius in the Rocket Pool Slack, the crowdsale contract address will be published 3 days before the crowdsale begins in the slack. Do not trust any contract address published anywhere else or by anyone else.
View your estimated token return
Since this type of sale depends on waiting until the sale period is over before you know how many tokens you’ll receive, we’ve added in an estimator to the crowdsale page that will allow anyone with MetaMask to enter a wallet address and view the current tokens that user will receive based on the current status of the sale and how much ether that address contributed into the sale.
This is useful for getting an estimate on your token return as the sale progresses. For the most accurate estimate, view your token estimation closer to the sale end date.
Claiming your tokens and refund
When the sale is over, all participants will be able to claim their tokens and any potential refund from the excess ether the contract received. If you have contributed through MetaMask at the Rocket Pool site, you’ll easily be able to claim your tokens from here after the sale completes. If you’ve used another wallet, we’ll be providing instructions on how to claim your tokens from the crowdsale page towards the end of the sale period.
We also have the ability to send your tokens and refund from the contract to you if you’re an inexperienced user, just contact us at the website or in our slack channel with the wallet address you contributed from and we’ll make sure you receive your tokens quickly.
After you’ve claimed your tokens, you’ll be able to track them at Rocket Pools Etherscan page.
Support
If anyone has any inquiries about become participating in the Rocket Pool crowdsale or has questions about claiming and viewing their RPL tokens, please feel free to contact us anytime. You can either contact us at our website or in our slack channel, we’re happy to answer questions any time.
