Virtuals introduces a brand new IDO mechanism called Unicorn, how does it benefit participants' wealth?

Original Title: "Iron Fist Launchpad Takes Action, AI Investing Rules Completely Rewritten!"

Original Authors: Anci, Biteye

The 1011 crash happened over a week ago. Not only did it set a record for the largest liquidation in history at $20 billion, this brutal crash also made many Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) reflect on a heartbreaking fact of this bull market — the absence of Builders' faith, ubiquitous meme coins, and the increasing gamification of the crypto market.

"The issue is, the Crypto macro environment has undergone a structural change, and the cypherpunk spirit has been completely abandoned!"

—@tmel0211

"Why is it that every time a MEME goes viral, no matter what comes next, the market will crash hard? Think about it. I hope everyone remembers to use it well in the future."

—@TingHu888

In this context, Virtuals, which has always been "strict on ecosystem governance," has introduced a new fundraising rule called Unicorn. In addition to addressing issues such as sniper bots and fair launches, the main focus is on attracting and supporting excellent AI projects, which can be considered as leaving a glimmer of hope and a battleground for Builders to reclaim the "cypherpunk spirit."

01 What are the Highlights of the Unicorn Fundraising Rules?

This Unicorn launch will completely end the previous Genesis fundraising rules, with the following changes compared to before.

For investors:

1. The point system has been abolished, and everyone can participate in the fundraising.

2. In terms of fundraising prices, a dynamic price curve based on the Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) is adopted.

The lower the funds raised by the project, i.e., the lower the current FDV, the lower the fundraising price; conversely, when the project is hot and the FDV is high, the price will increase. Investors need to conduct sufficient research on the project and accumulate enough chips when the FDV is not too high.

The lower the funds raised by the project, i.e., the lower the current FDV, the lower the fundraising price; conversely, when the project is hot and the FDV is high, the price will increase. Investors need to conduct sufficient research on the project and accumulate enough chips when the FDV is not too high.

3. Introduce a Decaying Tax Mechanism to Address Front-Running

During the first 100 minutes of the project launch, a buyer tax will be applied, with the tax rate linearly decaying from 99% to 1% (decreasing by about 1% per minute). This means that if you rush in within the first minute of the project, $99 out of every $100 you trade will be used for taxes. This discourages frontrunning bots.

However, combining Point 3 with Point 2 has created a new issue: waiting until after the tax decay period to buy may result in the FDV having risen significantly, causing prices to skyrocket. This requires investors to find an optimal entry point.

4. Airdrop: 5% Community Airdrop Allocation for Every Project

Of this allocation, 2% is designated for $VIRTUAL stakers, and 3% is allocated to active ecosystem users, with criteria such as trading volume, ACP participation, Butler interactions, and more.

5. Support for 3x Leveraged Long/Short Positions

This provides investors with more trading tools while also amplifying rewards and penalties for Builder and Rug projects.

For project teams:

1. 50% of Tokens Allocated to the Foundation Team, Based on FDV Unlocking

25% is subject to long-term lockup (or unlocks when FDV reaches $160 million) and will undergo an additional 6-month linear release post-unlock.

25% is allocated for linear fundraising: These tokens will be gradually sold via on-chain limit orders as the project's FDV grows from $2 million to $160 million, providing the team with continuous cash flow.

2. Allow the Foundation Team to Purchase Tokens from the Public Sale Pool (45%), Unrestricted and Fully On-Chain Public

These tokens default to a 1-month lockup and 12-month linear release, allowing strong foundation teams to publicly purchase their own tokens, demonstrating long-term confidence to the community.

02 From Genesis to Unicorn: Ambitions in the Wild West of the Crypto World

Earlier, Virtuals were mentioned as "strictly governing the ecosystem," with this strictness during the Genesis phase mainly manifested on the user side: retail users looking to make money on Virtuals had to undergo various "loyalty tests": enduring various holds and staking, diligently accumulating points, and not being able to sell freely; otherwise, they would be tightly monitored, labeled as a jeet, and henceforth excluded from airdrops and points.

However, the downside of "user rolling" quickly became apparent, as the points system rapidly shifted towards farming, which in turn brought about inflation in points and user fatigue.

Therefore, we can clearly see that Virtuals is gradually adjusting its focus and is redirecting its strictness towards the project side:

· Last month, Virtuals introduced the ALE (Agent Liquidity Engine) as a core metric for measuring Agent performance, focusing on whether the product solves real-world issues, has sustainable revenue, and if the team can consistently reinvest revenue back into the ecosystem.

· It is officially stipulated that AI Agents participating in the ACP, if they fail continuously 10 times, the system will automatically "downgrade" them to ensure that the ACP platform always maintains a high standard of intelligent agent service.

This time, the introduction of the Unicorn whitelist mechanism is even more rigorous for the project side—making it impossible for Rug projects to escape and giving high-quality projects the opportunity to shine. All of this is only to ensure that every project coming to Virtuals must hold a long-term mindset and ultimately leave behind the highest quality AI projects for the ecosystem.

03 Can't View Virtuals with a Launchpad Mentality Anymore

The essence of a Launchpad is a token issuance machine; delving further, it is a small Dex, with activity and liquidity as its sources of income. Typically, meme sentiment is its foundation, but sentiment is inherently fleeting and elusive, so most Launchpads often cannot escape the fate of being short-lived.

Virtuals smartly defined the project scope within the AI Agent realm from the outset, more vigorously incubating hit projects like AIXBT, enhancing the AI Agent's tone and quality within the ecosystem, striving to shake off the AI Meme label and create a Builder ecosystem atmosphere.

After accumulating a certain number of high-quality projects, Virtuals launched the ACP plan, aligning with the current narrative of multiple AI Agents communicating and collaborating under the MCP framework—this is also the industry's current main approach to how AI Agents work and solve real-world problems.

However, the performance of the AI hedge fund Axelrod under the previously high-profile ACP framework did not meet expectations after building up much anticipation. Therefore, Virtuals' ACP business did not create much of a splash either. But there is no need to be discouraged because even the traditional AI giants have not truly succeeded in the multi-agent system path. Therefore, Virtuals had to launch Butler on the user end to provide more public-facing education and communication windows for ACP while continuing to explore various AI Agents within its ecosystem.

Currently, the direction of multi-AI Agent collaboration represented by ACP is still recognized as a future potential that, once breakthrough, rivals the ChatGPT era. However, to truly achieve this goal, besides continuing to optimize the network's design, there needs to be more advancement and breakthroughs in Agent capabilities. Therefore, Virtuals aims to leverage the advantage of Launchpad to attract excellent AI Agent projects to its network.

04 For Retail Investors, How Does Wealth Effectiveness Work?

No matter how grandiose an empire is, it cannot be separated from a mass foundation. For ordinary users, there are still many positives to Unicorn's upgrade:

1. Stimulated by various official policies, the quality of projects on the platform will be somewhat improved.

2. The points system has finally been abolished, so there's no need to roll anymore.

3. Leveraged long and short positions are now available, providing more tools for amplifying gains and setting stop losses.

Of course, on the other hand, the difficulty of timing the market entry has also increased due to the FDV-based dynamic price curve and tax mechanism.

Unfortunately, it is quite a coincidence that in the current turbulent macroeconomic background, the projects launched on Unicorn after its launch have not yet successfully replicated the significant wealth effect of the Genesis period. However, Rome wasn't built in a day; looking ahead, once the market situation turns around, the potential for new projects on Unicore is still huge.

Most importantly, Virtuals' Unicorn upgrade has injected rare cyberpunk faith into Builders during this relatively bleak period and has given us more expectations—expecting more AIXBT moments and looking forward to ACP's ChatGPT moment.