The first auction of Kusama Parachain Slots will start at 20:00 PM on June 15th, and pre-auctions of multiple projects have already started.
Original Title: “Analysis of the Bidding Strategy of Kusama Parachain Slot Bidding Project”
Written by: Ou Ge, Zi Zai Afei
Kusama Parachain slot auction has entered the countdown, and many projects have been gearing up to participate in the slot auction. A number of projects have successively released Kusama slot bidding strategies, such as Bifrost, Acala’s pioneer network Karura, Phala’s Khala, Moonbeam’s Moonriver, etc. It is expected that more project parties’ bidding strategies will be released in the near future.
This article will compare and summarize the bidding progress, bidding methods, reward strategies, etc., and strive to enable readers to have a more comprehensive grasp of the bidding strategies of multiple projects.
Most of the project bidding strategies involve Kusama crowd lending, auction cycle and auction methods, etc. As the basic knowledge for understanding each project’s participation in slot auction strategies, it is also organized here.
What is Kusama Slot Auction Crowdloan?
Crowdfunding is a fundraising system that helps Parachain win slot auctions. That is, users can lend KSM tokens to parachain projects, and the project parties use these tokens to bid in the parachain auctions. In order to encourage users to lend tokens to themselves, the project party can take some incentive measures. The common method is to distribute project tokens to crowd loan participants.
If the auction is successful, KSM will be locked during the parachain slot leasing period, and KSM will be returned to investors after the leasing period ends.
Unlike crowdfunding, which invests money in projects, crowd loans locks KSM into a smart contract and lends it to the project party, without losing their principal, and can get the project party’s Token as interest on funds. The only risk that users have to consider is the opportunity cost of KSM price fluctuations.
It is worth noting that the lease time of Kusama Parachain Slots is different from Polkadot. Kusama has a maximum of 1 year and Polkadot has a maximum of 2 years.
Slot auction method and duration?
Both the Kusama slot auction and the Polkadot slot auction are improved versions of candle auctions.
The specific rule is an auction method combining two stages of “2+5”.
The first two days are ordinary auctions, which are open bidding periods, that is, the higher the bid, the more dominant. However, after these 2 days, it enters a random end period. The end period will last for 5 days. The system will select a random block height in these 5 days as the real auction end time.
In other words, even if you pay a higher price after the end of the block height, the person with the highest bid at the end wins, even if the person’s bid is actually lower than yours. For example, the random ending time of the system is the height of the 10000th block, the highest bid for this block is A, which is 100 KSM, and the highest bid of B at the 10001th block height is 200 KSM, then the bidding is successful It is still A (the value in the example is for reference only).
How many times will Kusama be auctioned? When does it start?
Currently, the Kusama network is expected to conduct 5 auctions, each with an interval of 7 days. If no major problems are found, further auctions will be carried out thereafter.
On the evening of June 8, Gavin, the founder of Polkadot, officially announced the schedule of the Kusama auction. Assuming that the relay chain logic does not find any major and unexpected problems, the timetable will be arranged as follows:
June 15, 2021, 12:00 GMT time (Beijing time: 20:00 pm on June 15): The first Kusama Parachain slot auction starts. Bidding is possible.
June 17, 2021, 09:00 GMT time (Beijing time: 17:00 on June 17th): The first Kusama Parachain slot auction starts at random ending period. Only bids made before then will definitely be considered in the final result. The probability that bids made after this will be taken into account decreases linearly.
June 22, 2021, 09:00 GMT time (Beijing time: 17:00 on June 22): The first Kusama Parachain slot auction bidding ends. After that, no bids can be made for this auction.
June 22, 2021, 11:00 GMT time (Beijing time: 19:00 on June 22): The first Kusama parachain slot auction winner is selected. The auction winner is determined to be the highest bidder at a random point in time during the past 5 days.
June 22, 2021, 12:00 GMT time (Beijing time: 20:00 pm on June 22): The second Kusama Parachain Slot Auction starts.
June 29, 2021, 12:00 GMT time (Beijing time: 20:00 pm on June 29): The third Kusama Parachain Slot Auction begins.
July 6, 2021, 12:00 GMT time (Beijing time: 20:00 pm on July 6): The fourth Kusama Parachain Slot Auction begins.
July 13, 2021, 12:00 GMT time (Beijing time: 20:00 pm on July 13): The fifth Kusama Parachain Slot Auction begins.
Bifrost
Project brief
Bifrost (Rainbow Bridge) is the basic protocol of Polkadot’s ecological DeFi. It is committed to becoming an infrastructure for pledged assets to provide liquidity. It has launched a derivative vToken for staking and Polkadot’s parallel chain card slot.
Auction progress
Bifrost opened the Kusama slot auction reservation page vsKSM Mint Drop on May 14th. At the same time, the page has integrated the slot auction liquidity protocol, namely SALP. Users can fill in the invitation code of others and complete the 0.01 KSM mint reservation and mint Derivatives vsToken (vsKSM+vsBond), which can subsequently be used for liquidity release and crowd loan mining gameplay. The slot auction reservation phase ended on June 9th. A total of 43,720 Kusama addresses successfully participated in the reservation, accounting for about 30% of the total Kusama addresses.
The official Bifrost Kusama slot auction channel will be opened at 22:00 on June 11th, Beijing time. Pre-registered users can participate in vsKSM casting 24 hours in advance, and now the vsKSM casting channel for reserved users has been opened.
Bidding method and reward strategy
The total number of Bifrost tokens is 80 million, of which 45% are used in the ecosystem, and 5% of the ecosystem is used in Kusama slot auctions.
Users participating in the Bifrost slot auction will receive vsKSM (which can release liquidity) and BNC (as a reward for the slot auction).
First of all, the KSM locked in the slot auction is used to forge derivatives vsKSM to release its liquidity.
In this Bifrost Kusama slot auction, the casting of vsKSM will be launched for the first time, and the KSM participating in the casting of vsKSM will be used for the Bifrost Kusama parachain slot auction.
Secondly, at the official stage, the coin-minting channel is opened, and you can participate in coin-minting through the event page of Bifrost’s official website. The rewards include:
Instant rewards: you can get coins when you mint, regardless of whether the slot auction is successful or not;
Invitation reward: fill in the correct invitation code and get a 5% bonus of the instant reward;
Success rewards: only issued after the slot auction is successful, 50% will be unlocked immediately after success, and the rest will be unlocked linearly during the 48-week slot rental period.
The officially announced rewards are: Kusama bidding total reward is 3,000,000 BNC; reward ceiling is 250,000KSM; reward ratio is 1KSM: 11+BNC, 50% will be unlocked online, and the remaining 50% will be released linearly in 48 weeks; through the Bifrost vsKSM Mint Drop page Participate to get vsKSM and vsBOND 1:1; invite friends through the invitation code to get an extra 5% BNC bonus to the total rewards of friends. At the same time, Bifrost will airdrop a total of 50,000 BNC to all reserved addresses . The airdrop will be issued at 22:00 on June 11th, Beijing time.
One of Bifrost’s special features is that in its development plan, there is no parachain on Kusama. Kusama is just a transition, and its business will eventually be migrated to Polkadot. That is, Bifrost will be deployed on Kusama first, and then transition to Polkadot. This is very different from the practice of many projects issuing parachains on Kusama. Bifrost is using mainnet tokens to motivate users.
In addition, the SALP agreement is another innovation of Bifrost, which solves the opportunity cost problem of KSM’s participation in crowd lending, but due to lock-in. This time vsKSM Mint Drop combines KSM slot auction and SALP, which not only retains Bifrost slot auction rewards, but also releases KSM liquidity through vsKSM.
Karura
Project brief
Karura is Acala’s pioneer network, positioned as a decentralized financial hub and stable currency on Kusama.
Auction progress
At present, Karura has completed all the preparations before going live, and pre-registration will be launched on May 14th, and the bidding page will be launched. Karura has launched a crowd lending campaign in Kusama, and users can already start voting.
Bidding method and reward strategy
The name of the Karura token is KAR, with a total of 100 million. Among them, 60.87% are committed to community, ecological and network operations, including auction rewards and liquidity incentive plans, treasury and reserves, and of course, ecological project funding. According to parachain data, Karura will use 11% of the total tokens for the parachain auction, which is 11 million.
Official documents show that all KSMs locked in the crowd loan module will receive a minimum of 12 KAR rewards. Karura bid for the Kusama Parachain slot for a 48-week lease. When the 48 weeks are over, KSM will be automatically returned. If the auction is successful, 30% of the KAR rewards received by the user will be released immediately, and the remaining 70% will be released linearly until the end of the lease period.
Karura provides a social gameplay. Users fill in the application on the bidding page to get an exclusive invitation link. Users who register through the exclusive link will get 10% more KAR tokens, of which the inviter and the invitee each get 5%.
Shiden Network
Project brief
Shiden Network is the pioneering network of Plasm Network. It aims to become a multi-virtual machine and multi-chain DApps hub on Kusama. It also supports Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and WebAssembly, and will allow these two virtual machines to interact with each other.
Auction progress
Shiden Network has been launched and is ready for Kusama’s parachain slot auction. Like Karura, Shiden has launched a crowd lending campaign in Kusama, and users can start voting for the project.
Bidding method and reward strategy
Shiden uses crowd loans for slot leasing. KSM holders can support Shiden by locking up 11 months of KSM tokens. Shiden provides SDN tokens as a reward.
Shiden will use 22% of the total SDN supply (9,900,000 SDN) to bid for slots of 0-7 cycles (7 days × 6 weeks × 8 periods = 336 days).
The project introduced a new incentive plan, that is, 22% of the total SDN supply, 20% rewards holders of locked KSM, and the remaining 2% is used for bonuses. In order to encourage people to enter crowd lending early, the sooner they join crowd lending, the higher the bonus rate they will receive.
After KSM holders lock KSM tokens, they will automatically obtain SDN tokens. SDN tokens will be locked for one month and will be released linearly in the following ten months. During the linear release period, token holders can pledge SDN tokens to the network to earn staking rewards. SDN tokens will be delivered within 1 month after winning the auction and distributed immediately.
Moonriver
Project brief
Moonriver Network is Moonbeam’s pioneer network and is a smart contract platform compatible with Ethereum, making it easy to build native interoperable applications.
Auction progress
Moonriver has opened the pre-registration for crowd loans.
Bidding method and reward strategy
Moonriver will use crowd loans to participate in the auction, and will allocate 30% (3,000,000) of the total amount of Moonriver network tokens MOVR to users of crowd loans. If the parachain is successfully deployed, 30% of the reward will be distributed directly on the chain, and the remaining 70% will be released in 48 weeks. Moonbeam plans to participate in all eight lease period auctions and will participate in at least two consecutive auctions.
Since Moonriver’s crowd-lending activity does not set a fixed KSM upper limit, the rewards of contributors are distributed according to the proportion of the number of KSMs supported by the individual to the total KSM amount at the end of the auction. For example, if a user supports 100 KSMs and Moonriver is supported by a total of 10,000 KSMs, the user will receive 1% of the 3,000,000 tokens, or 30,000 MOVRs.
Crab
Project brief
Darwinia Crab Network (abbreviation: Crab Network) is the pioneer network of Darwin Network, the first cross-chain NFT chain in Polkadot ecology, and provides smart contract solutions. The Crab network is mainly to provide an advanced simulation environment for Darwinia’s upgrade and application deployment, and conduct various radical experiments. It not only includes a complete software operating environment and network environment, but also includes an economic environment for economic gaming.
Auction progress
As of May 24, the Kuamas card slot auction plan was officially released.
Bidding method and reward strategy
In order to avoid the influence of the instability of the first few slots, Crab plans to start the slot auction again in the 4th round. And plan to shoot 8 cycles of one slot at a time for a period of 48 weeks to ensure that the stability of the network operation is not affected.
Crab uses crowd loans to bid for slots. Participants lock their KSM in Crowdloan for 48 weeks and will receive CRING, RING, NFT, and BTC as rewards.
The rewards are divided into basic prizes, achievement prizes, and BTC lottery prizes.
Basic Award: Every time a user supports 1KSM, it can be won after the auction ends (regardless of whether the round of auction is successful or not). During the period of participating in the crowd loan, you can get a basic reward of 25 CRING (APY: 15%) every day. CRING has no lock-up period and will be issued uniformly at the end of the crowd loan.
Achievement Award: Crab is successfully bid, and when a slot is obtained, the Achievement Award and BTC Lotto Jackpot will be unlocked.
Achievement awards have a total of 240,000,000 CRING and 6,000,000RING prize pools, which are shared by supporters in proportion to their contribution. 30% will be released immediately and 70% will be released linearly within 48 weeks.
In addition, users can get a lottery ticket for every 1 KSM that they support. The lottery ticket can be used to draw the evolutionary planet NFT package, including land, drill, apostle and other rewards.
BTC Lotto Jackpot: In addition to the NFT rewards, there is also a BTC super jackpot hidden in the land parcels in the mainland. Within 20 days after the parachain is auctioned, all players who participate in the lottery and draw the parcels will have a chance to get BTC Lotto jackpot.
SherpaX
Project brief
SherpaX is the pioneer network of ChainX and an independent test network. SherpaX is committed to becoming a cross-chain hub for digital assets. It transfers cross-chain assets in a completely decentralized manner, so that BTC, ETH, etc. can be circulated in other chain systems.
Auction progress
In order to welcome ChainX’s first halving and Kusama slot auction, a 2+1 joint debugging test network was launched. BTC-based cross-chain bridge, ETH-based cross-chain bridge, and AMM mode Dex were deployed to SherpaX for joint debugging. The Kusama slot auction is ready.
Bidding method and reward strategy
SherpaX chose to use the crowd-lending mechanism for slot leasing. Its token is KSX, the initial total is 21 million, and 10% is issued every year thereafter. Among them, part of it will be initially issued to PCX holders in the form of airdrops, and the proportion of this part will depend on the time when Kusama launches the Statemint parachain and the time when the PCX mining reward is halved. Of the remaining 21 million, 20% is used for community autonomy and 80% is used for the Kusama parachain slot auction. It is expected that 5 million KSX will be used as incentives for this slot auction.
Users who support the successful auction of SherpaX slots can get three incentives.
Basic incentives: Users support the successful auction of SherpaX slots and get 10 KSX rewards for every 1 KSM vote.
Slot auction success incentive bonus: According to the user’s lock-up amount, based on the basic incentive, different proportions of incentive bonus will be given. One is the quota bonus: according to different lock-up quotas of users, different percentage bonuses will be obtained. The second is invitation bonus: Invite others to support the SherpaX slot auction, and users can get an additional bonus of 5% of the basic reward.
Auction slot reward: If an auction is not successful, if the user chooses to continue to lock the position to support the next auction, he will get the auction slot incentive. Each auction cycle each KSM gets one more KSX, that is, suppose the user starts to support SherpaX in the Nth slot auction, and the lock-up limit is 100 KSM. If SherpaX actually takes the Mth slot, then the user will get 100 *(MN) KSX free period incentives.
Khala
Project brief
Khala Network is the pioneer network of Phala Network. As a bridge connecting computing power and users, it is committed to building an open and transparent cloud computing network, providing privacy protection for regulated programs, and maintaining the security and decentralization properties of the blockchain.
Auction progress
The Khala Crowdloan DApp is ready and will be launched (the chain has heard that, as of June 14th, the Khala Crowdloan DApp has been launched); the Khala page is officially launched on the official website.
Bidding method and reward strategy
Khala Network will not issue new tokens independent of PHA. Khala Networ will use K-PHA as the network token, and K-PHA can be exchanged 1:1 with ERC20-PHA and mainnet PHA.
Khala Network will participate in the Kusama Parachain slot auction from the second slot, and will auction slots for 8 cycles, that is, the lease period is 6 weeks*8=48 weeks.
For each KSM that supports Khala bidding, Khala will give 100 PHA as a reward, that is, a fixed ratio of PHA:KSM =100:1. The advantage of this design is that regardless of the total amount of KSM that supports Khala, it will not dilute each Rewards for users.
The upper limit of the PHA reward pool is 15 million PHA , that is, after Khala reaches the support of 150,000 KSM, it will no longer continue to reward supporters.
After Khala Network successfully auctions the slot and runs smoothly as a parachain, 34% of the PHA reward will be released immediately and distributed to the supporter’s address; the remaining 66% of the reward will be linearly released to each supporter in 11 months address.
Khala’s crowd lending activities will have additional “invitation rewards”. After user A invites user B to help Khala win the slot auction, both A and B will receive 0.5% of the support reward of user B as an additional invitation reward.
to sum up
Polkadot is actually a Layer 0 blockchain that connects many Layer 1 solutions together. Its vision is to create a multi-chain future. The parachain slot allows the Layer 1 blockchain to access the Polkadot ecology, share the security of the Polkadot system, and achieve cross-chain communication and blockchain interoperability. The auction determines which parachains can obtain these limited slots. The crowd-lending mechanism allows Polkadot holders not only to shape the future of Polkadot, but also to gain benefits from the rapidly developing Polkadot ecosystem. Polkadot’s pioneering network Kusama Parachain slot auction is about to start. It will not only be able to screen out higher-quality projects, but also participate in slot auctions for well-known projects, bringing its own popularity and users into the Polkadot ecology, which is the Polkadot ecology. Bring greater vitality.
