Anthony In Announcements, Blockzero Blog, Flash

The Path to Flash v3 | Perpetual Liquidity + FlashBurn + Layer 2

Article Breakdown

Flashstake v3 Overview
Five Primary Upgrades
v3 Token Allocation
$150,000 KPI Unlock
Roles, Phases, and Budget
Flash Council Transition
Apply for Position

Note: As Flashstake is permissionless, the v2 iteration of the protocol will continue to exist and live on Ethereum for as long as people want to use it.

TLDR

Blockzero Labs is pushing forward to build Flashstake v3 — an upgrade to the current Flashstake protocol. V3 will include five primary updates:

Perpetual Liquidity Locks
Layer 2 Gas Optimization
FlashBurn Trading Fees
Flexible Token Governance
Partnership Integrations

July 31st

A single snapshot will be taken on July 31st at 18:00 UTC. This is not the token distribution date — simply the date of the snapshot.

Current $FLASH (both v1 and v2) holders will be airdropped $FLASH v3 at a 1:1 ratio based on their holdings. This includes v1 and v2 tokens that are held in a wallet, staked, or providing liquidity on the Dapp/Uniswap.

V3 tokens will be fully unlocked. No migration needed.

Additionally, 1M $FLASH v3 owned by the Blockzero Vortex will be given to $XIO holders and earned over the course of three months. The start date to begin earning $FLASH v3 as an $XIO holder is set for July 31st.

In total, this proposal is being subsidized by a $175,000 grant from Blockzero. If the Flashstake v3 protocol is able to hit certain predetermined KPIs by March 31st, 2022 — Blockzero would offer an additional $150,000 grant to be used for the continuous development and growth of the project.

Flashstake v3 Overview

Flashstake v3 will be a time-based DeFi protocol that allows anyone to earn an instant upfront yield on their crypto. Users can do this by:

Converting ERC tokens into flashTokens
Staking the flashToken for a predetermined amount of time
Receiving instant upfront yield on the stake paid out in $FLASH

User Flashstaking Flow

Here is an example of the proposed Flashstaking experience for v3 users.

User converts LINK to flashLINK — an LP token with 50% LINK and 50% FLASH
FlashLINK is an ERC token with inherent flashstaking abilities
User stakes flashLINK for 100 days and immediately receives 50 $FLASH

The user then has the option to either:

Swap the 50 $FLASH for any other asset they want (ETH, DAI, LINK, etc)
Pair the 50 $FLASH with another asset and Flashstake again (flashETH, flashDAI, flashLINK, etc)
Hold the 50 $FLASH in their wallet

At any point, the user can unstake their flashLINK. If a user unstakes their flashLINK before their entire stake duration is completed, a portion of their flashLINK will be retained by the protocol as a fee.

The usage of this fee will be decided by governance over time. A few examples of what could be done with these fees include:

Keep it in Vortex
Burn the underlying FLASH
Sell the LINK for FLASH

The above flow is the protocol process, however, additional ways to customize and optimize the user experience can be made over time.

Five Primary Upgrades

There are five primary upgrades Flashstake v3 would offer.

1) Perpetual Liquidity Locks

In v2, it has been an uphill battle to increase and retain liquidity.

While various liquidity mining campaigns have been proposed and performed, these issues have created a revolving door of refilling liquidity and inflating the $FLASH token in the process.

There are two primary reasons we have run into these issues:

Split Liquidity Focus: In the current token model, liquidity is separated into two different protocols: Flashstake v2 and Uniswap. This creates a constant battle between the two protocols competing over liquidity.
Inverse Economic Incentives: When individuals stake in v2, arbitrageurs are incentivized to buy $FLASH through the Flashstake protocol & sell it on Uniswap. This means, with each stake, Uniswap liquidity (relative to USD) decreases. This has created an unfortunate inverse relationship between stake volume & liquidity.

In v3, these issues are resolved in two primary ways:

Concentrated Liquidity: Flashstake will have its own internal AMM (FlashSwap) and will no longer be dependent on Uniswap. Stakers will now be able to fully buy and sell $FLASH directly through the protocol using an internal FlashSwap system.
Guaranteed Liquidity: All participating Flashstakers will simultaneously be liquidity providers. This means flashstaking is not possible without a proportional amount of additional liquidity added to the protocol.

In short, this means $FLASH tokens cannot be inflated or minted unless there is an even greater amount of liquidity provided to the protocol. As long as there are people flashstaking, the amount of locked liquidity in the protocol is perpetually increasing.

Note: Another traditional benefit of increased liquidity is better price stability as it takes much larger buys/sells to move the price.

2) Layer-2 Gas Optimization

In v2, gas fees of $50 to $500 aren’t uncommon when trying to perform a flashstake. If you also consider the amount of gas it takes to acquire $FLASH, approve the token, and unstake the original tokens — this has made it nearly impossible for many flashstakers to justify participation.

In v3, we are proposing to launch the Flashstake v3 protocol natively and exclusively on a Layer 2 or sidechain. This means, 100% of Flashstaking activity will happen without having to pay the normal amount of L1 fees.

The two current top options for this are Arbitrum and Polygon. Some estimates include 100x savings on gas fees using these scaling solutions.

3) FlashBurn Trading Fees

In v2, the only time $FLASH tokens are burned is when individuals unstake early by removing the tokens before their pre-committed stake time has completed.

In v3, as the protocol has a built-in AMM to both buy and sell tokens, $FLASH tokens are burned each and every time someone makes a swap.

For example, if the FlashBurn fee is set to 1% and a user wanted to swap their newly acquired ETH for DAI, the transaction would look like this:

$100,000 of ETH is swapped for $100,000 of FLASH (FLASH/ETH)
$1000 of FLASH would be burned
$99,000 FLASH would be swapped for $99,000 DAI (FLASH/DAI)
$990 of FLASH would be burned

To find out if Flashstake v3 will be a deflationary or inflationary currency, the formula is simple:

If the trading fees on the Flashstake v3 protocol are greater than the amount of flashstaking rewards, the protocol will be deflationary. The opposite is also true.

In this model, Flashstake v3 no longer relies on inflationary rewards to generate yield for users. The Flashstake v3 protocol generates yield the same way Uniswap does: trading fees.

The two major differences between the Flashstake v3 AMM and current AMMs are:

Upfront Fixed Yield: Flashstake v3 LPs get guaranteed upfront yield with a pre-determined APY and don’t have to guess or estimate their potential fees.
Loyal Liquidity: Since liquidity is locked in Flashstake v3 unlike traditional AMMs, the Flashstake v3 protocol has a natural defense mechanism to vampire attacks or unloyal LPs.

4) Flexible Token Governance

When we originally created v2, our goal was to be as algorithmically set as possible. This means formulas are set solely by the activity of the protocol.

While this has offered some decentralization to the protocol, it has at times handcuffed our ability to adjust the interest rates as needed to fit the changing demands and needs of the project.

One analogy to understanding the advantages of flexible protocol governance over algorithmically set governance is understanding MakerDAO.

MakerDAO has a stability fee that is controlled by MKR holders. When they want to encourage borrowing, they decrease the stability fee.

In v3, we are proposing two parameters of the protocol to be controlled by flexible token governance: FPY + FBF

Flash Percentage Yield (FPY)

The current v2 FPY (Flash Percentage Yield) dictates how many $FLASH tokens are minted. It is determined by a formula that decreases/increases as more/fewer tokens are staked.

One current problem with this is, if we want to decrease inflation or increase activity, we are unable to do so.

If we allow the FPY to be adjusted by $FLASH token governance, we would have more flexibility and freedom to adjust as needed while providing more control to $FLASH token holders.

For example, if we wanted to increase liquidity in certain pairs (i.e. FLASH/ETH), we could vote to increase the FPY for that specific LP. For example:

flashETH = 15% APY
flashLINK = 10% APY
flashUNI = 7.5% APY

Note: It would be easier for v3 to exist on multiple chains if the FPY was controlled by governance instead of needing an oracle to provide total supply vs staked across all chains.

FlashBurn Fee (FBF)

In addition to the FPY, another parameter we are proposing to be controlled by flexible token governance is the newly implemented FlashBurn Fee — similar to Uniswap’s 0.3% fee.

The FlashBurn Fee is what percentage of $FLASH tokens are burned when a user swaps tokens in both directions.

If token holders believe Flashstake v3 inflation is too high, they can vote to increase the FlashBurn Fee, thus increasing the amount of $FLASH burned per swap.

If token holders want to increase the activity of the protocol, they can vote to decrease the FlashBurn Fee, thus increasing the motivation to flashstake or to swap.

Note: Control for this will start through the Blockzero Council Multisig wallet with an intention to transition to more distributed governance over time. Any changes to the FPY or FPF would have to go through a cool-down phase where all Flashstronauts can see changes many days before they are implemented.

5) Partnership Integrations

The original idea to increase the number of potential partners integrating and utilizing the Flashstake protocol was through the use of UFOs (Upfront Flashstake Offerings).

With UFOs, projects can add liquidity to the protocol, get introduced to our Flashstaking community, and earn some nice LP fees in the process.

While UFOs are still a viable way to grow the Flashstake v2 protocol, the number of human resources and communication it has taken to facilitate these partnerships has been much higher than anticipated.

In v3, the value proposition of partner integrations moves away from fundraising and focuses on providing projects with more utility and locked liquidity for their native tokens.

With Flashstake v3, projects can give their token magical flashstaking abilities if their holders pair it with $FLASH. For example:

Pair $ABC + $FLASH = flashABC
User can Flashstake flashABC

Rather than having to get the approval and support of project founders to perform a UFO, we can now go directly to token holders to drive demand for Flashstake integrations.

Token Allocations

When we transitioned from v1 to v2, we require everyone to manually migrate their tokens. The intended purpose of this was to protect LPs who still had active liquidity positions in the protocol from IL.

However, for v3, we are proposing a simple 1:1 airdrop of tokens to all v1 and v2 holders, with $XIO holders also earning 1M $FLASH.

v1 + v2 Holders

A snapshot will be taken on July 31st at 18:00 UTC, 2021 of all v1 and v2 holders, LPs, and stakers. For example:

User A has 15,000 v1 tokens staked at the time of a snapshot. They would be airdropped 15,000 v3 tokens.
User B has 20,000 v2 tokens staked and 20,000 tokens in their wallet. They would be airdropped 40,000 v3 tokens
User C has 10,000 FLASH paired with 1 ETH in Uniswap. They would be airdropped 10,000 v3 tokens.

This snapshot would give LPs a full month and a half to remove their liquidity and receive 100% of the potential v3 with zero chance for impermanent loss.

$XIO Holders

Since Blockzero holds $FLASH v2 in our Vortex, we will also be receiving a proportional amount of $FLASH v3 tokens.

To include Blockzero Citizens in this process, we will be allocating 1M of our $FLASH v3 tokens to $XIO holders. The remaining tokens will stay in the Vortex.

To participate, hold $XIO from July 31st to October 31st. There will be daily snapshots taken and $FLASH v3 will be given proportionally to $XIO holders.

For Example:

User A holds 100 $XIO for 15 Days = 1500 Points
User B holds 200 $XIO for 20 Days = 4000 Points
User C holds 50 $XIO for 50 Days = 2500 Points

User Points / Total Points = User Percentage

User A = 18.75% = 187,500 $FLASH v3
User B = 50% = 500,000 $FLASH v3
User C = 31.25% = 312,500 $FLASH v3

XLP Multiplier

Users who have XIO in the XLP will receive a 4x multiplier on their holdings.

User A holds 1 ETH/1000 XIO for 10 days = 40,000 Points

Flashstake v3 KPIs Unlocks

From the beginning, we have stated the goal of Blockzero Labs is to build as many cool and experimental protocols as possible. Then, based on the success or failure of these creations, we would add additional resources as needed.

The obstacle this model has created is the extremely subjective and unclear nature of what “success” looks like, what resources Blockzero is capable of providing, and how long after a protocol is launched can we continue to subsidize its development.

To set proper expectations, Blockzero is setting the following KPI Unlocks in place. If the Flashstake community and Blockzero Citizens are able to rally together and hit these goals, more resources will be provided by Blockzero over time.

Primary KPI: Total Vortex Fees

The entire business model of Blockzero revolves around how much yield we generate through the Vortex. If we are creating protocols that don’t generate yield, Blockzero is simply not sustainable.

To align both sides and offer the Flashstake project the opportunity for continued long-term growth, Blockzero is offering an additional $150,000 in liquid tokens (from the Vortex) to the Flashstake project if the protocol is able to generate $250,000 in total liquid Vortex Fees for Blockzero before March 31st, 2022.

A formula to estimate Vortex Fees:

Average Stake Duration * Average Stake Quantity * Total Number of Stakes * Price of $FLASH * FPY * FPY Match

Depending on the FPY Match we set and the price of $FLASH, here are a few examples of what various protocol activities could look like.

Example One: $256,849

15% FPY Match
25% FPY
2500 Stakes
Average Stake Duration: 100 Days
Average Stake Quantity: 10,000
Flash Price: $1
Total Vortex Fees: $256,849

Example Two: $642,123

5% FPY Match
25% FPY
10,000 Stakes
Average Stake Duration: 150 Days
Average Stake Quantity: 25,000
Flash Price: $0.5
Total Vortex Fees: $642,123

Example Three: $1,926,369

10% FPY Match
25% FPY
250 Stakes
Average Stake Duration: 300 Days
Average Stake Quantity: 50,000
Flash Price: $7.50
Total Vortex Fees: $1,926,369

Roles, Phases, and Budget

With each new era of Blockzero, we are consistently trying to bring more transparency and efficiency to our development process. Below are the primary roles we are looking to fill along with a breakdown of a $175,000 go-to-market budget.

To ensure the project has the proper resources to succeed, the development will not start until all roles are filled.

$25k for Project Lead

Responsible for all participants and processes involved in the v3 development from beginning to end.

Recruitment/organization of v3 Leads and participants
Leads weekly Group Meetings
Leads weekly one-on-ones with each lead
Weekly updates to the community

$25k for Solidity Lead

v3 Token Contract
v3 Protocol Contract
v3 Layer 2 Deployment
Manage the end-to-end audit process
Two meetings/week (min)
Deliver all smart contracts related to making v3 a reality

$25k for Security Audit

It is difficult to estimate how much the security audit will cost. Any budget not used here will be returned to the Vortex.

$15k for Front-end Lead

v3 Dapp Integrations
v3 L2 Integration
Updated Flashstats site
Two meetings per week (minimum)
Deliver working front-end with all associated smart contracts for v3

$15k for Marketing Lead

Go-to-market strategy
Content creation
Growth campaigns

$15k for Ad + Video Explainer Budget

A $15k budget will be allocated for ad spend on social advertising and/or explainer videos.

$10k for 10 Explorers

A group of 10 individuals are eligible to earn $1000 to be active v3 ambassadors with a primary role to support project leads and consistently offer marketing/growth assistance as needed.

Mandatory 1 group meeting a week

$10k for Designer

Flashstake designs are already completed and would need updating rather than start from scratch.

Update website
Provide Dapp UI/UX
Two meetings/week (minimum)

$5k for Partnership

Recruit list of v3 “Launch Partners”
Manage Partner communication and relationships
Two meetings/week (minimum)
Responsible for all listings including CMC, coingecko, DefiPulse, etc

$25k for Reserves

Things come up. We want to be prepared. Any funds not used here will be returned to the Blockzero Vortex at the end of the development.

Budget Summary

In total, there are $170,000 funds allocated in the following three buckets + reserve:

Operations: $35,000 (Project Lead + Explorers)
Development: $75,000 (Solidity + Front-end + Designer + Security)
Marketing: $35,000 (Marketing + AdSpend + Partnerships)
Reserves: $25,000

Flash Payment Schedule

To align participants with the development timeline, the above individuals will receive 50% of their compensation on a bi-monthly basis and 50% based on the completion of four primary phases.

Phase One (12.5%): Functional Frontend UI/UX
Phase Two (12.5%): Testnet Competition
Phase Three (12.5%): Launch to Mainnet
Phase Four (12.5%): Flash Council Transition

Flash Options

As an additional incentive for those who help build Flashstake v3, we are offering the following 1.5M Flash Options from the Vortex as bonuses.

750k $FLASH to all participants, proportional to their budget earnings, if we hit mainnet before September 30th, 2021. Every week after the project misses this deadline will see a 187,500 $FLASH reduction in potential bonuses.
750k $FLASH to all participants, proportional to their budget earnings, if the project reaches 100M TVL in 2021.

Flash Council Transition

If there was one thing we could go back in time and change about the last six months would be reiterating the expectations of Blockzero’s long-term involvement with clear, binary, and objective expectations.

To this point, Flashstake has been 100% subsidized by Blockzero for over a year now. This means every single expense and resource provided has been 100% covered by the work of Blockzero.

Although we have high expectations and excitement for Flashstake, for Blockzero to be a sustainable project itself, we must set clear boundaries of how much we are going to support each project, what resources we are willing to subsidize, and how long we plan to do this.

If any existing Blockzero Council members wish to join the Flash Council after this point in time, they will have to be voted in like anybody else and prove that they are committed to ensuring Flash’s long-term growth and success as a protocol.

To ensure a smooth transition, the following three steps will be made:

1) Nominations

Blockzero will look for and nominate standout individuals to nominate to the Flash Council. At this time, the two nominated Flash Council individuals representing the project are Pedrox.ETH and David Baker.

2) Treasury

The Flash Council will receive v3 treasury tokens and has full discretion on how these assets are utilized.

3) Funding

If the Flashstake protocol is able to hit our Primary KPIs by March 31st, 2022, an additional $150,000 in liquid tokens from the Vortex will be released for continuous development and growth.

To provide clear expectations: Blockzero’s funding, resources, subsidies, and grants will stop after the transition to the Flash Council and will only continue if the project hits the Primary KPIs. For now, this Primary KPI is set at $250,000 in liquid Vortex Fees.

While it is our goal with the above expectations to create the foundation for a long-term sustainable protocol, we would like to mention that this transition does not deny Blockzero from participating and supporting the project through our own free will.

If community members of the Flashstake protocol would like the long-term and continuous support of Blockzero, the first step is creating a culture that we all actually want to work in.

Positivity, respect, and appreciation can go a long way.

We will soon be releasing the Blockzero Codex — a code of ethics and moral expectations that all Citizens and Flashtronauts must acknowledge to participate in our social communities. The refusal to follow these expectations will result in a removal from the chats.

Flash Forward

We learned a lot with v2. We are sure to learn a lot with v3.

Each time we build, we learn a little more along the way. Blockzero and the protocols we create will always be in a constant state of exploration and experimentation.

Blockzero will continue to follow our curiosity for the creation and challenging ourselves to build better protocols.

While it has been a wild ride to this point in time, we are extremely excited to continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the future of the decentralized world.

Since building V3 is utilizing Blockzero funds, voting for this proposal will open up on June 25th through our official Governance page.

Apply for Position

As soon as we fill up all the positions, we will be off to the races with the above development process. If you believe you may be a good fit for one of these positions or would like to follow along for the ride, please fill out this form and join our discord channel.

Anthony In Announcements, Blockzero Blog

The 100k ETH Experiment

Can we turn 786 ETH into 100,000 ETH by the year 2022? There is only one way to find out.

Article Breakdown

TLDR: A quick breakdown of this experiment.
Nominations: Alist of nominated individuals and communities.
Valuations: A breakdown of how much everyone is eligible to receive and the current valuation, go here.
Involvement: How to get involved and help us reach our 100k ETH goal, go here.
Claims: If you have been nominated and are looking to claim your tokens, DM Zachary Dash on Twitter for verification.
Growth Hacking: Our views on growth marketing and how we’ve used this to structure the experiment, go here.
Updates: Follow along on this 100k ETH growth experiment, join our Discord here and/or text ‘100k’ to +18444864400 for updates.

To set the experiment in motion, a proposal will be made to Blockzero Citizens. Voting will take place from June 17th to June 24th on our governance page.

TLDR;Blockzero Labs has nominated a total of 125 communities, builders, and content creators across the decentralized world. These individuals and groups are eligible to claim 1 XIO Option token.
There are only 100 XIO Option tokens in existence. These tokens will be redeemed on a first-come-first-serve basis.
The XIO Option tokens are convertible up to 10M XIO tokens based on our primary KPI. Our primary KPI is the Total Liquid Value (TLV) inside the Blockzero Vortex — a decentralized venture fund.
These Options will be 100% convertible once the Vortex reaches a Total Liquid Value (TLV) of 100,000 ETH. At this time, one Option is worth 0.069168 ETH ($172.92).
If the market cap of XIO becomes equal to the TLV of the Vortex at the time we hit our primary KPI, one Option would currently be worth 250 ETH ($625,000).

What is Blockzero?

Here is how to understand the Blockzero project in one tweet.

https://twitter.com/blockzerolabs

The Blockzero project has been surfing along the waves of Web 3.0 for a year and a half now with one vision in mind:

Build, launch, and scale ideas into the decentralized world.

While never raising capital, Blockzero has been 100% bootstrapped through the pure passion and curiosity of our community of Citizens.

Experiment. Learn. Adapt. Repeat.

At the core of Blockzero is a desire for experimentation.

Sometimes these experiments flat out fail like the time we thought it was a good idea to pay 12% for individuals who join our “SMS Insider”.

Sometimes in these experiments, we stumble across really cool ideas like Flashstaking and decide to turn it into an instant upfront yield protocol.

Sometimes in these experiments, we start building tools for ourselves and end up open-sourcing them to the world like Dropzero — a universal token distribution Dapp that allows you to send to 1M+ wallets with one Ethereum gas transaction.

Sometimes, when luck meets opportunity, these experiments allow us to get ahead of industry trends like the XLP program we started in 2019 before “liquidity mining” was a thing.

Through the ups and the downs, we have documented our journey out in the open. This unapologetically transparent style has offered insight and empowerment to those who want to want to jump in and help us navigate the muddy waters at such an early stage.
No matter the thesis, the one constant in all our experiments is the consistent desire to learn, adapt and relentlessly pursue our curiosities.
Today, we are following our biggest curiosity yet by launching the 100k ETH Experiment.

What is the 100k ETH Experiment?

ex•per•i•ment

A test, trial, or tentative procedure; an operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown

Our unknown in this experiment is simple — can we increase the Blockzero Vortex to 100k ETH in TLV through a mass-scale KPI option event?

The plan of attack:

Identify a group of individuals & communities we believe add extreme value to the decentralized world
Incentivize them with the proper long-term ownership, opportunity, and upside in Blockzero
Involve them in our project and invite them to add value

1) Identify

To identify who we believed could help us push the project forward, we nominated individuals and projects based on the three divisions of Blockzero:

Thinkers: DAOs + communities using governance, discussion, and ideas to impact change
Creators: The developers and founders helping shape the decentralized world we all live in
Growers: The content creators and publications who help onboard people into the world of crypto

Thinker Nominations | DAOs + Communities

One thing all great projects have is a great community behind them. Without the thoughts and energy behind these communities, most projects would fail.

Below is a list of DAOs and communities that have inspired us with their massively organized community engagement and involvement.

MakerDAO, Aragon, MetaCartel Ventures, MolochDAO, Colony, Bankless DAO, Gitcoin, Syndicate DAO, 1Hive, YAM Finance, FWB DAO, BadgerDAO, Aave, Compound, Polygon, Yearn Finance, Curve, Uniswap, Sushi, Synthetix, Balancer, Index Coop, Indexed Finance, UMA Protocol, Liquity, Harvest, r/ETHDev, Solana, Avalanche, PolkaDot, Cosmos, THORchain, Alpha Finance Lab, InstaDapp, Tornado.cash, Alchemix, BarnBridge, Reflexer Labs, mStable, 1inch

These communities can hold onto their Option token or distribute it to their community members as desired.

Creator Nominations | Builders + Catalyst

The reason the world of Web 3.0 exists as we now know it is because there are individuals who pushed this reality into existence.

The following individuals were nominated for their continuous efforts to shape the industry through their thoughts, capital, or execution.

Kain.eth, Taylor Monahan, Fernando Martinelli, Joseph Lubin, Chris Burniske, Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss, Chamath Palihapitiya, Rune Christensen, Stani.eth, Garry Tan, Sacha, Jack Du Rose, Tim Beiko, SBF, Billy Luedtke, Balajis, Spencer Noon, Vance Spencer, Hayden Adams, Andreas Antonopoulos, Julien Bouteloup, Erik Voorhees, Brian Armstrong, Vitalik Buterin, Adam Cochran, Rob Paone, Ashleigh Schap, Emin Gün Sirer, Zhu Su, Anthony Sassano, Eric.eth, antiprosynthesis.eth, Naval, samczsun, Nick Sawinyh, DCinvestor, Andre Cronje, Spencer Bogart, Tom Schmidt, Mike Demarais, Mike Novogratz, Joseph Delong, Tyler Reynolds, Matt Huang, Ryan Berckmans, Robert Leshner, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jesse Walden, Nodar, Hudson Jameson, Linda Xie, Ari Paul, Arthur, Alex Svanevik, Jack Lipstone, Brian Flynn, banteg, Priyanka Desai, Amanda.eth, Anatoly Yakovenko, Gavin Wood, Ethan Buchman, Paul Razvan Berg, Austin Griffith, Ryan S Adams, David Hoffman

Grower Nominations | Content Creators + Publications

While the industry will always need builders, the magicians who relay our visions into the minds of the mainstream audiences are the content creators and media outlets of the world.

The following individuals and websites have been nominated for their efforts to continue to spread the gospel of cryptocurrency to the masses.

Finematics, Cointelegraph, CoinDesk, Laura Shin, Blockchain Brad, Sari Azout, Hashoshi, The Defiant, DeFi Dad, Benjamin Cowen, Dapp University, Girl Gone Crypto, Jason Choi, Today in Defi, Alex Saunders, Blockchain Chick, Super Massive, Bankless

2) IncentivizeThe individuals and communities we have identified have likely seen every trick and airdrop strategy under the sun to try and get them involved in other projects.
While we must acknowledge that no amount of incentives or capital can make certain people care about what we are doing, we want to structure our incentives in a way that gives those individuals who do care enough with adequate opportunity and ownership to hopefully get involved.

Distribution Structure

Utilizing the power of KPI Options from UMA, 10M XIO tokens will be locked in the UMA protocol and 100 XIO Options will be minted.

With 100 XIO Options in total, the nominated individuals & communities are eligible to claim 1 Option each. As there are more nominations than tokens available, these tokens will be redeemed on a first-come-first-serve basis.

DAOs + Communities (40)
Builders + Catalysts (67)
Content Creators (18)

Key Performance Actions

For Communities and DAOs, the Option token is fully unlocked. For everyone else, half the token remains locked until certain Key Performance Actions (KPAs) are met.

To unlock the second half of their token, nominations can offer five hours to the Blockzero Advisory Board or propose alternative methods of agreement. The focus of these meetings is to help us grow the project and tackle some of the biggest obstacles/challenges we face at Blockzero.

Option Valuations

Every 1 XIO Option is worth up to 100,000 XIO.

The percentage of those XIO tokens that are redeemable is equal to the percentage of how close our Vortex TLV reaches the goal of 100k ETH. For example:

30% of TLV = 30,000 XIO tokens that are convertible per 1 Option

The percentage of TLV = (Current Vortex TLV / 100,000 ETH)

At the time of writing this, one XIO Option token is worth roughly $172.92. If the market cap of XIO becomes equal to the TLV of the Vortex at the time we hit our primary KPI, one Option would be worth 250 ETH ($625,000).

Options Expiration

While the Option tokens can be converted to XIO at any time, the Options expiration date is set for January 1, 2022.

3) Involve

If our north star and KPI for this experiment is 100k ETH, how do we get there? It is one thing to have a goal, it is another to have a plan.

Below are six primary mining campaigns any individual reading this can join in on with Advisory Mining reserved for nominations only.

Advisory Mining
Liquidity Mining
Mental Mining
Recruitment Mining
Talent Mining
Explorer Mining

Advisor Mining

Advisor Mining is one of the two newest programs we have at Blockzero. In short, individuals who are nominated can trade their time to advise our project in various ways unlock their full XIO Option token.

Advisors can unlock their remaining XIO Options token through a course of five Advisory Hour meetings with the Blockzero Council.

Some of the various topics we are currently seeking advice for are:

How do we properly structure our DAO to operate in a more efficient manner?
What is the line between centralization and decentralization?
Are we currently overpaying for certain mining programs? If so, how should we restructure?
What is a good indicator we may need VC capital to scale?
Where is the best place to find and attract new developers into our ecosystem?

If you would like to set up your Advisory Hours, direct message Zachary Dash on Twitter.

Liquidity Mining

Liquidity Mining is our longest-standing mining program dating back to 2019. Participants in our XIO Liquidity Program (XLP) can earn up to 90% APY by following these instructions.

Note, the XLP will likely be transitioning into a more automated system in the coming months as participants will stake liquidity directly into the Vortex.

Mental Mining

Mental Mining can also be thought of as governance mining. On a weekly basis, sometimes 2–3 times per week, we host #XIOfeedback campaigns.

When you see this hashtag, if you dive into the discussion and provide some mental effort on the topic at hand, you can earn up to $1500 a month in the form of XIO tokens.

To learn more, go here.

Recruitment Mining

Recruitment Mining is another program that is new to Blockzero. In short, if you help recruit certain projects or talented individuals to the project, you can get compensated for your efforts.

For example, if you refer a project who gets accepted into the Blockzero Accelerator, you can earn $2000 in XIO tokens.

A more formal article with other Recruitment Mining opportunities will be made public in the weeks to follow.

Talent Mining

Talent Mining is the process of offering your skills, talents, or abilities to join the Blockzero Core in exchange for XIO tokens.

These skills can range from operations and development, to support and marketing. If you would like to apply to join the Blockzero Core, join our Discord and follow the instructions.

Explorer Mining

While these are some of the ways to get involved, Blockzero is truly a create your own adventure book.

If you are not sure of what value you can offer Blockzero, but you still want to get involved, we have created a Blockzero Explorers program — a 30-day opportunity to earn $1000 and explore what it’s like to work at Blockzero.

If you are interested in the Blockzero Explorers program — email John or Telegram @ johnvelasco.

Behind the ExperimentWhile this is an experiment, it is not without research. Below is a little insight on the historical evolution of crypto “growth hacking” — the good, bad, and ugly — and what items from this we have chosen to incorporate.
The Evolution of Crypto Growth HackingMarketing your project is hard.
Doing it with a limited budget, in a crazy noisy crypto industry, all while trying to withhold some semblance of a moral compass?
Damn near impossible.
From running CMO for a crypto marketing agency in 2018 to building three projects in the space since then, the creator of Blockzero has seen every “growth hack” trick in the book.
Here are three of the most commonly used tactics and potentially negative side-effects that follow.

Influence and Shill
Influencer marketing is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Find someone with influence and get them to talk about your project.
However, there is a large spectrum of ethical and unethical ways we have seen these campaigns in action.
From influencers charging $100k to tweet about the project and dumping tokens on their own audiences, to simply not disclosing the relationship they have with the projects, these types of campaigns have formed a large spectrum of ethical and unethical behaviors.
Unless a project is able to find a high integrity influencer who truly believes in their project, many times these campaigns can have long-term negative implications.
If a shady influencer gets hold of your project, projects are likely to see a community overtaken by “gem chasers” and token hoppers. The faster they flock, the faster they jump ship.
This process gives an initial bump of energy, followed by the long-term realization that this noise has infiltrated your culture.
Not all influence is created equal.
2) Drop it Like it’s Hot
Starting to gain popularity in 2017 and beyond, airdrops were all the rage. The premise is simple: given away tokens and hopefully, some of those people will learn about your project.
Airdrops are not something new created by crypto. People and companies have been giving away products and services for as long as capitalism has existed.
At the bottom of the bear market of 2019, we did an airdrop our own by giving away the world’s first self-destructing currency. However, instead of holding an ICO and giving away a small portion of tokens for marketing purposes, we gave away 80% of our tokens on day one.
While this strategy definitely helped us get off the ground and attract the attention of many individuals from around the space, there are many negative implications of this strategy.
First, you must accept that your token is going to get diluted to people who may have offered little to no value to your project.
A majority of the people will dump their tokens immediately.
Some will hold onto it and feel entitled to the decisions to make as a project.
If you’re lucky, a small subset of people will appreciate the drop, look into your project and get more deeply involved with what you’re doing.
The airdrop marketing strategy saw a newfound surge in 2021 with many top projects dropping their native governance tokens to the world for free.
$UNI may be the most impressive of the bunch with an average value of over $17,000 at peak prices.
3) Howdy, Partner.
Partnerships can be a great catalyst to grow a project. Even if they aren’t real, unfortunately.
Over the last year, we have seen a rise in the market for faux partnerships where two companies swap logos and make big “announcements” with their communities.
While this has been shown to trick many audiences and retail investors into thinking something big is happening, there are many times no actual increase of fundamental value for the projects involved.

Although there may be a time and place for the three above examples, we must also acknowledge that these “growth hacks” are often trading long-term value for short-term rushes of speculators, hopium, and artificial value.

The 100k ETH Experiment we have structured is our attempt to grow Blockzero while removing the downsides but retaining the ethical and aligned side of growth marketing.

Follow the Experiment

This wouldn’t be a true growth marketing experiment without the proper testing, observation, and reporting.

If you want to follow this growth marketing journey, we will begin making updates of the experiment directly here on medium. We will report on:

Increase or decrease of TLV
Nominations who have joined and their contributions to the project
Wins, losses, and learnings along the way

If you would like to stay updated, text ‘100k’ to +18444864400.

FAQ

This is a live and evolving list of questions. If you have questions yourself, feel free to join our Discord.

What is the Vortex?

The Vortex is a decentralized venture fund.

Currently, in the second stage of development, the Vortex currently holds roughly $15M at the time of writing this.

Why did we choose the Vortex TLV as our KPI?

The vision of Blockzero is to build, launch, and scale ideas into the decentralized world. Our best metric to see how well we are doing this is the TLV of our Vortex.

The Vortex is a collection of all the projects we have created or accelerated. If the TLV increases, it likely means we are helping these projects have greater impacts on the world.

While we were originally wanting to use TVL (Total Value Locked) for our primary KPI, we ended up using a less commonly used term — TLV (Total Liquid Value).

The TLV is simply the amount of ETH we could acquire if we liquidated all our positions.

We chose TLV for two primary reasons.

TVL (Total Value Locked) can be gamified if a bad actor were to pump the price of a low liquid coin in our Vortex.
TLV (Total Liquid Value) incentivizes participants in the experiment to increase the liquidity of our assets under management.

Total Liquid Value Breakdown

A widely used metric to compare different DeFi protocols is Total Value Locked (TVL). For our 100K ETH experiment, we chose a different, more pragmatic metric representing the actual utility of the assets locked in the Vortex: TLV or Total Liquid Value.

Total Liquid Value is determined by simulating the market selling all Vortex’s assets to ETH.

How do we increase the TLV?

There are three primary ways we can increase the TLV:

We create projects in the Blockzero Studio and deposit their native tokens into the Vortex as we did with Flashstake
We accelerate projects in the Blockzero Accelerator and deposit their native tokens into the Vortex as we did with the UMA protocol.
We increase the liquidity or value of the assets currently in the Vortex.

Vote

To set this experiment in motion, a vote will need to be passed by the Blockzero Citizens. This vote will take place from June 17th to June 24th on our governance page.

Livestream

A live stream hosted by Zachary Dash to discuss this proposal will start at 5pm UTC on Friday, June 11th.

Anthony In Announcements, Blockzero Blog, DeFi Accelerator

DeFi-ing Gravity — UMA DeFi Accelerator Ready for Liftoff!

TLDR: One month of UMA education and onboarding campaigns in collaboration with Blockzero Labs. Incentivized with $50,000 worth of XIO + 2,000 of UMA’s uTVL KPI Options and $5,000 worth of UMA Call Options. Launches April 1st. This is not a joke!

Last month, we proudly announced that UMA would be the first project to join Blockzero’s new Defi Accelerator, a program that seeks to educate, incentivize, and onboard the next 1,000,000 users into the world of decentralized finance.

Today, we can finally reveal the details of this “Gravity DeFi-ing” mission, kicking off on April 1st. And to make sure we’ve got your attention, there will be $50,000 worth of Blockzero’s $XIO tokens, 2,000 of UMA’s KPI Options (uTVL) worth between $5k-$100k, as well as $5k worth of UMA Call Options up for grabs! Rewards will be distributed at the end of the Accelerator via the Blockzero Claims dapp.

What are KPI Options? “KPI options are synthetic tokens that will pay out more rewards as the core KPI of the protocol grows.” Essentially, it’s a way to incentivize users to help grow the UMA protocol, as the value of the KPI options are directly tied to the growth of UMA’s TVL.

For clarity, UMA’s KPI options will be referred to as uTVL from here on out.

Beginning on April 1st and running for 30 days, Blockzero will launch three unique campaigns designed to drive education, engagement and adoption of UMA’s various protocols and dapps. With each campaign, there will be an increasing amount of $XIO available to be earned by participants, as well as a set amount of UMA’s uTVL Options + Call Options.

Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for our weekly Medium articles which will outline exactly what you can do to participate in each initiative.

In order to participate and receive rewards throughout the entirety of the campaign, you must do the following:

JOIN UMA'S DISCORD JOIN UMA'S DISCOURSE FORUM WHITELIST YOUR ETH ADDRESS + DISCORD/DISCOURSE USERNAMES

Phase 1: Education — $10,000 XIO + 400 uTVL Options (April 1st — April 8th)

In Phase 1, we’ll be releasing an interview with UMA’s co-founder Hart Lambur on our Around the Block podcast, hosted by Lea Thompson (aka Girl Gone Crypto). In this interview, you will learn all about the story behind UMA, the bigger picture of the project, and gain a fundamental understanding of synthetic tokens.

Zachary Dash, the founder of Blockzero Labs, will also be creating a deep-dive macro-level explainer video of the UMA protocol.

So, where do you come in?

$10,000 worth of XIO + 400 uTVL Options will be up for grabs in a Walk-Through Bounty Campaign. We’re calling on the combined UMA and Blockzero communities to create unique walk-through articles, video guides, or even in-depth explainer Twitter threads to help newcomers learn about UMA’s Dapps, or the UMA protocol itself. It’s really up to you how you want to help educate the world on UMA.

Each participant will submit their “Walk-Through” links on the UMA Discourse forum for entry. More details will come next week on where to officially post your entries on the forum.

For clarity, we highly encourage you to post your content on whatever native platforms you choose — be it Youtube, Twitter, Medium, Facebook, Reddit, or all of the above — just be sure to share your original link on the Discourse forum thread to enter.

Two winners will be selected from each of the following Dapps/Protocols, derived from following two categories (so in total, 10 winners will be selected):

1. Walk-Through Guides — Creative, in-depth video or written article outlining in a step-by-step manner how to use the given dapp.

2. General Overviews — A more broad explainer of what the dapp /protocol does. This could take the form of a well-written twitter thread, Youtube video, blog, or explainer graphic.

Each category winner will receive $1000 XIO + 40 KPI Options.

uStonks(1 walk-through winner/1 overview winner)
UMA Bills(1 walk-through winner/1 overview winner)
Domination Finance(1 walk-through winner/1 overview winner)
Wildcard — Choose any of the other UMA dapps/projects…surprise us! (1 walk-through winner/1 overview winner)
Mystery Box — Literally anything at all. Could be an infographic, short-film, GIF, animation, NFT idea, a song about UMA… Surprise us with your skills. Unlock a hidden surprise bounty (two winners from this section as well)!

Voting will begin on April 8th at 2:00 p.m. uTC via a poll on UMA’s Discourse Forum, and will remain open for 24 hours. The winners will be announced via Discord/Discourse on April 9th.

Here’s a few existing guides to help you get started, and feel free to reach out to them on Discord! Each of these dapps has their own sub-channels on UMA’s Discord:

uStonks Guide, UMA Bills overview, Domination Finance guide

Phase 2: Engagement — $5,000 XIO + 200 uTVL Options (April 8th — April 15th)

Goal: Increase the understanding of the potential for synthetic assets through an incentivized and engaging synthetic token ideas tournament, as well as a KPI Option open debate.

XIO Option Open Debate

Zachary Dash, the founder Blockzero Labs, will hold an open debate to discuss all things related to KPI options on a Youtube livestream on Friday, April 9th (time is TBD). The goal of this discussion is to really expand the communities perception of what KPI options and synthetics are, and to fully wrap your head around the ground-breaking implications of them. For more info on their uTVL Options, check out their one-pager.

Synthetic Token Competition

Do you have what it takes to think of the next viral Synthetic token idea? By the time Phase 2 rolls around, you’ll have a better understanding of what a synthetic token is, and how there’s a seemingly limitless amount of ways they can be utilized and created. If you’d like further clarity, check out UMA’s insightful interview on Bankless.

We are giving away $5,000 $XIO + 200 uTVL Options to Blockzero Citizens and Super UMAns who can come up with unique, innovative, and unorthodox synthetic token ideas that would theoretically drive the most TVL for UMA. Who knows, the winning idea might even have a chance to get built.

Each participant will submit their “Token Idea” entry to the UMA Discourse Forum by April 14th, 3 p.m UTC.

After submitting, the top four ideas as voted on internally by the UMA/Blockzero teams will go into a final round.

On April 15th-16th, we will hold a community vote to determine the final top 3 winners on UMA’s Discourse Forum.

1st place will receive $3000 XIO + 120 uTVL options

2nd place will receive $1500 XIO + 60 uTVL options

3rd place will receive $500 XIO + 20 uTVL options

Phase 3: Adoption — $35,000 XIO + 1,400 uTVL options + $5,000 UMA Call Options ( April 15th — April 30th)

Synthetic Mining Competition

Goal: Increase UMA’s liquidity by incentivizing participants to mint and hold synthetic tokens.

In alignment with UMA’s $1 billion TVL goal, today we are announcing the creation of the XIO Yield Dollar.

During this two-week Synthetic Mining Competition, users will be rewarded for the minting of the XIO Yield Dollar. Stay tuned for a more in-depth video overview from Zachary Dash explaining the creation of this!

From April 15th-30th, we’ll be taking a daily snapshot of all whitelisted ETH addresses that mint XIO Yield Dollars. Participants will be rewarded at a rate proportional to their XIO Yield Dollar holdings (reward structure will be explained in more detail during Phase 3’s Medium blog).

As a bonus, the first 56 addresses to mint XIO Yield Dollars will receive 25 uTVL options each.

Closing

We’re excited to get this off the ground and kick off the first-ever DeFi Accelerator program with UMA. Stay tuned next week for the official Medium blog breaking down Phase 1 in further detail.

Anthony In Announcements, Blockzero Blog, Flash

$FLASH v2 | Five Things to Look Forward to in 2021

Important Reminder: Do not buy $FLASH at this time. Any v1 tokens purchased now will not be able to migrate to v2. Wait until v2 is released.

Within the first 75 days of launching, the Flashstake protocol hit some ridiculous numbers.

The protocol reached over $12M in TVL
Over 1000 people Flashstaked for the first time ever
Over 50% of the entire supply has been locked
Over 93 years total Flashstake days were recorded
A person Flashstaked a Tesla Model 3

The market spoke, and the market said it enjoyed Flashstaking.

While we are extremely excited about our past, this post is about our future. Here are five things for Flashers to look forward to in 2021.

1) 150k Liquidity Mining + Staking Program

Last week, we announced Blockzero Labs would be offering 100,000 $FLASH to users who migrate to FLASH v2 through a Flash Liquidity Mining + Staking program.

Today, we are announcing that Blockzero Labs is putting up an additional 50,000 $XIO in celebration of the v2 migration. This means there will be 100,000 $FLASH + 50,000 $XIO up for grabs within the first month of migration. Here is how to participate:

For each day you are staked or adding liquidity, you will earn Flash Credits. The Credits you earn are redeemable for $FLASH + $XIO at the end of the month, proportional to your ownership of the credits. Here’s an example:

If there are 1,000,000 Credits earned by all Flashers and you earned 50,000 Credits, you account for 5% of the total credits. You would receive 5,000 $FLASH (5% of 100,000) + 2,500 $XIO (5% of 50,000) at the end of thirty days.

To earn Flash Credits, you can do one of the three following things.

1.25x Multiplier: Users who have an active stake on v1 and/or users who Flashstake for a minimum of 30 days on v2
2x Multiplier: Users who add ETH/FLASH liquidity to the Flash v2 Uniswap pool
4x Multiplier: Users who add ETH/FLASH liquidity to Flashstake.io

A daily snapshot will be taken of all holders. After one month, users will be able to redeem their earned $FLASH + $XIO from our Claims dApp.

2) The New Look — Sweeter Than Cotton Candy

One month ago, we had a long-term Blockzero Citizen create some awesome mockups for Flashstake.

After we migrate to v2 and secure the protocol, Blockzero Labs will put development resources to see these new UX/UI design concepts come to life.

3) Optimism + L2s

Just last week, the current lead for helping Ethereum Scale (Optimism) made this tweet.

As soon as Optimism is made public, Blockzero Labs plans to put development resources into this and will continue to explore alternative chain options (Avalanche, Fantom, etc).

The cost to Flashstake would be roughly 25–250x cheaper using Optimism.

We just hired the dopest rockstars in town and they've expedited our timeline. Mainnet will be open to the public in March (more details soon). Read about the people who're making this possible⭐https://t.co/IKdf64rTPh
— Optimism (@optimismPBC) February 24, 2021

4) Transferless Payment System

Venmo and PayPal give you a custom link to send to your friends for payment.

FlashstakeMe is a platform that will do exactly this. The difference is, instead of having to send you money, they can simply Flashstake and redirect the yield to your wallet.

They keep their capital. You keep the interest.

Simple as that.

FlashstakeMe would be the world’s first transfer-less invoicing system.

While it is not yet known how people would use this, we believe this platform would create a simple solution for startups to raise risk-mitigated capital.

5) FLASH Zynthetic Upgrade

Imagine being able to Flashstake any token.

Whether it be DAI for LINK or SNX for AAVE, the Flash Zynthetic Upgrade would make this possible.

Since making this video, the community has spoken and decided to move Zynthetic under the Flash protocol umbrella, rather than have it be a stand-alone project.

Flash Forward

We could not be more proud of the community feedback and response we have received over the last week.

Despite a sudden move to v2, our Flashers continue to show how excited you are about the potential impact that Flashstaking can have on the entire crypto industry.

We thank you for your continuous support, patience, and shared enthusiasm during this time.

Let’s make 2021 awesome — the future is at stake after all.

Anthony In Announcements, Blockzero Blog, Blockzero Video, DeFi Accelerator