Samurai Starter — $SAM Token Guide UPDATE

Launchpad Tiers, $SAM Tokenomics, Samurai Ventures and more — Updated January 10, 2024

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Samurai Starter

6 min readNov 6, 2023

Recently, we introduced the engine that will power the Samurai Starter ecosystem, the SamNFT. Now, it is time to introduce the fuel that will make that engine purrrrr, Samurai Starter’s $SAM token.

$SAM — an introduction

Samurai Starter aims to REWARD its community and prospective launchpad participants through the $SAM token. Samurai Starter will be the FIRST launchpad in the crypto space to offer cashback rewards (through $SAM) to our community of SamNFT holders for participating in token offerings.

The more you participate, the higher you climb the SAM Ladder, the more $SAM rewards you earn.

When we first began planning out Samurai V2, we wanted the platform to be driven by SamNFT with it being the access pass necessary to enter token offerings on the launchpad. We were/are planning on having the SamNFT available for rent to people who wished to enter specific token offerings. That is still on the table, but we are waiting on Base integration from our NFT rental partners before implementing it. SamNFT still offers the tremendous benefit of guaranteed whitelisting in token offerings, cashback rewards for participating, and airdrops and other promotions from our launchpad and accelerator partners.

But our goal was always to make entering IDOs as easy as possible.

And with that in mind, we have decided to also offer the option to stake $SAM or provide SAM/WETH liquidity in order to participate in token offerings with LP being favored over single-sided staking.

Samurai Starter Launchpad Tiers

We will institute single-sided staking tiers and LP tiers in order to provide greater flexibility and ease for new community members to join us at Samurai.

Given our focus on incentivizing liquidity, it will be 40% cheaper to enter the launchpad by providing DEX liquidity than by entering through single-sided staking. Given the higher value-add to the platform for LP, it makes sense to incentivize liquidity. Liquidity Providers will also still earn great ve(3,3) farming rewards. Learn more about our ve(3,3) strategies here.

The allocation per wallet is based on the above multipliers. If, for example, the Gokenin tier is eligible to invest $100 in a project, then Shogun will be eligible to invest $800 in it. If Gokenin can invest $200, then Shogun can invest $1,600 etc. SamNFT holders can always invest, with a guaranteed whitelist spot, at the Shogun level.

Note: The amount of LP values shown are based on the listing price of $SAM. The actual number of LP Tokens needed will provided closer to TGE.

$SAM — cashback rewards

To receive the $SAM cashback rewards, you must be a SamNFT holder. If you are unfamiliar with SamNFT, you can read up on it here.

In a nutshell, holding a SamNFT gives you access to token offerings on Samurai Starter. By participating in token offerings, you receive between 0.5% to 5% of your investment back in the form of vested $SAM with linear unlock over a six month period. If you want to claim all your $SAM rewards before the end of the vesting period, you may do so, but your rewards will be slashed by 20%.

The cashback rewards available for each tier in each token offering is dependent on a number of variables including negotiations between Samurai Starter and the launching project, the amount of funds raised for the project launching on Samurai Starter, and the costs incurred by Samurai Starter to conduct the token offering.

Given the variables involved, we will not announce the cashback percentages for each tier until AFTER the token offering is closed.

SAM Ladder

The SAM Ladder represents the historical total of $SAM earned by SamNFT holders on Samurai Starter. Your position on The Ladder represents your ranking compared to your peers and determines your tier and the amount of vested $SAM rewards you are eligible to receive upon participating in token offerings on Samurai.

What about token inflation?

All $SAM cashback rewards come from real platform yield. That means that the $SAM that is distributed as cashback rewards is bought from the market from platform revenues and then distributed to participants.

Zero inflation.

$SAM — additional utilities

In addition to providing cashback rewards and incentivizing liquidity, $SAM will be the currency of choice for our upcoming Samurai Sanka community interaction platform. Partner quests, Prediction Markets, Lotteries and more will all require $SAM to participate. These features are all planned for early 2024 and we will continue to explore adding new platform features and products that add utility to and drive demand for $SAM.

$SAM Tokenomics

$SAM will have a total/max supply of 130m tokens with a TGE listing price of $0.0075.

Due to the progress of the SamNFT mint and some liquidity measures put in place (as well as regulations surrounding the whitelisting of $SAM on Aerodrome Finance) we have had to adjust some of the vesting figures and the amount of tokens that are unlocked at TGE.

Here are the updated key figures:

It is important to note that the percentage of the supply going to SamNFT minters is now locked in and everyone who mints a SamNFT will receive a bigger piece of the pie than initially planned regardless of what happens over the final weeks of the SamNFT mint.

If you want to get in on the great deal that is the SamNFT, the public round is still open at samuraistarter.com/nft.

If you are/were a CFI holder, please confirm that your wallet and CFI holdings are accurate in the following spreadsheet. If you have CFI in multiple locations, your wallet should appear in multiple locations as well:

$SAM Airdrop Master https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pI0VUbvZ6TqNwZ4tMdzspckyNh9nbJwbTYjbVnLU_GY/edit#gid=0

$SAM liquidity

Liquidity is king in crypto and we will always aim to incentivize $SAM earners to provide liquidity for the token. The first step in this process will be a successful SamNFT mint.

The majority of funds raised through the SamNFT public mint will go to the following areas:

$SAM initial liquidity
Samurai Starter $AERO holdings
Samurai Starter treasury

Securing a strong $AERO position and max locking it into veAERO will provide us with significant voting power and allow us to direct more emissions and higher APR in $AERO rewards to our $SAM LP providers.

100% of all $SAM returned to Samurai Starter via early claim penalties will be put towards incentivizing liquidity on Aerodrome via bribes.

Samurai Ventures

Samurai Ventures allows $SAM stakers and LPs to invest alongside the most-respected VCs in the crypto space. This will be a closed, deal flow sharing group similar to the “Emperor Tier” of the old platform in which community members can invest in seed rounds of highly promising projects.

There will be plenty more information to follow on the formation of Samurai Ventures, but to give you a current estimate, we expect the stake requirement to be 500,000 $SAM or an equivalent in LP in order to participate in some of the most exciting investment deals in the space.

Stay Tuned

$SAM is an experimental token and we plan to do just that — experiment with plenty of new features and utilities. Let’s get ready to take this crypto journey together as we get ready for the return of the market hype. LFG!