EDITED TO CLARIFY:
Revenue sharing and emissions changes are NOT effective immediately, this is the beginning of a community discussion about it, not the announcement of a change.
Hey Martians!
It’s been a packed week as always, but I’m going to skip the lists and green check marks this week because there’s a lot of important updates to talk about, and not a whole lot of time.
First, some good news:
We’re delaying the avatar launch!
I’ll admit, that doesn’t sound like good news. Sounds more like Feelsbadman 
>:(
Especially after this tweet, and this tweet, and this tweet (man, somebody really needs to stop me from tweeting).
And of course, last week’s info drop which stated we were “nearly certain” avatars would be dropping right about now.
But martians, we’ll never let you down without it being for the long-term benefit of the Colonies. And in this post, if you make it to the end of all this text, I’m going to prove it to you.
Oh yeah, and let’s not forget this tweet.
Why the delay?
In keeping up with conversations in the Discord, and thinking about the future of the Colonies, we realized we have an opportunity here. With discussions about emissions and inflation, gameplay, cross-chain, etc, it became clear that we can do so much more than we were initially planning. There are too many good reasons to delay launch.
The original plan:
Launch static NFT avatars all at once > Introduce passive missions > Guilds for land rental > build out avatars and active gameplay after cross-chain.
But while you all now know we’ll never leave Harmony behind, there’s more we can do to build this chain up before we add more blockchains.
So, we’ve come up with a new and improved avatar plan, which is heavily interdependent with guilds, missions, the DEX, and MC lore.
The updated launch plan:
| Past: | Now: |
|---|---|
| Attributes: Suit, face, visor, rarity | Suit, face, visor, rarity, rank, headgear, glasses, microphone, mask, patches, roles |
| Not much official lore behind designs | More lore, and clues to future releases |
| All avatars released at once on mint day | On mint day, 7k avatars will be released every 8 hours to help people in different time zones |
| Avatars will be static | Avatars will have a leveling hierarchy with perks like missions per day expanded based on level |
| barebones minting UI (reload mint page to be able to click mint again) | Smooth UI flow that makes minting more convenient and a “mint again” button |
| All avatars only generate the traits of their rank (commons generate only common traits, etc) | Each trait is generated individually, so an avatar with a common mask can still land a legendary suit, if you’re lucky. We are coding in parameters that guarantee some avatars still have a complete matching set, however, for the especially lucky) |
| Passive missions (click once to dispatch, then just wait) | Playable missions (still not immediately at launch, but the framework needed to be built into the avatars) |
| No push notifications | We’ll send push notifications in the browser to remind you of minting 
|
That’s not everything, either. There’s a lot more that goes into the tokenomic design that we decided should be improved sooner than we initially planned.
For example, the Big Squeeze:
The Big Squeeze
We initially designed the avatar launch to be nearly impossible to mint completely right away due to CLNY supply for two reasons:
-
Avatars would be minted more slowly, allowing everyone a chance to mint
-
The hope of a price squeeze would incentivize whales holding loads of CLNY to sell as prices rise to take profits, disincentivizing whales from buying up all avatars and keeping CLNY price relatively stable (big price jump, whales sell, return to baseline). Roughly.
However, as interesting of an idea as this was, it doesn’t fit with the future of the Colonies. We don’t want passive tokenomics and market manipulation to govern the Colonies. We want an engaging, living, dynamic system that can adjust to meet the needs of the players.
You’re all here early in hopes of earning, but read this to understand how players fit in.
We are creating a game with more than just one way to engage: You can be players, earners, owners, or something in between.
Where MC is currently an own-to-earn system where you passively generate CLNY, the plan has always been for MC to be a play-and-earn metaverse game for both earning and entertainment.
Here’s the plan:
Guilds, revenue sharing
Many of you have noted that passive land CLNY generation would lead to excessive inflation if missions had CLNY rewards.
However, it wouldn’t be fair to non-landowners to not earn CLNY in return for missions.
To solve this in a way that benefits everyone, we’ve been designing a new model. We’ll have to discuss it in the next AMA (remember, almost everything is up for discussion), but here’s the general idea:
1. Redirect land passive CLNY generation by a certain % (TBD)
WHAT??? WHY??
Landowners, this is a good thing for you. Unless you are a whale, your daily earnings will most likely not decrease, you’ll just have to play for them. If you are a whale, this will be good for you in other ways. The next steps will explain why.
Besides, MC was never meant to be passively own-to-earn, but play-to-earn. You will always keep SOME universal basic income (until CLNY is fully minted).
2. Allow landowners to form guilds
Players without land but that have avatars can join these guilds, and perform missions on the guild’s lands. The guild starter (landowner) will set a revenue sharing %, according to which the player and the guild starter will split mission rewards.
3. Use the reduced passive CLNY generation portion as mission rewards
This allows players with only avatars to still earn by performing missions on your land, and you as a landowner earn a portion of the rewards. Plus, it controls inflation and more equally distributes wealth.
For non-whales, you can simply use your own avatars on your own lands and get full rewards daily.
4. Because of revenue-sharing, whales will earn somewhat less than they did passively, as they have to share profits with other players.
However, whales are likely familiar with the scaling costs of doing business and having workers. Not to mention, as players without lands save their CLNY to one day own a land of their own, it’s possible land will grow in demand and whales can sell their lands to non-whales, likely making profit while increasing the game’s equality and accessibility.
What happens to guilds when there are no more whales?
In the near future, we’ll be able to update guilds with more functions so that it makes sense for every friend group to start a guild. So, start making friends in the Discord!
I’m going to say it one more time, just in case you missed it: Your earnings, unless you are a whale, will not be reduced.
Missions
Another reason for the delay is certain mission functionality that should be built into the avatars pre-launch. Missions will still come shortly after avatars. Here’s how they’ll work:
You’ll be able to play various plot-related minigames, which will grant CLNY and XP rewards. In the future, as with everything they’ll become more detailed, varied, and complex, and rewards can expand to in-game resources and items in addition to CLNY and XP.
Your avatar will have a limit to how many missions you can do each day, which will increase as you level up.
Lands, also, will have a limit to how many missions can be played on them each day, which will increase as you upgrade your plots.
Another benefit to delaying avatars is to allow everyone more time to upgrade.
Wait but wen avatars?
Despite all the big changes, we only have to delay roughly one week!
So, you can expect avatars some time next week. I won’t specify a day yet, so we don’t have to do this all over again, but I promise to announce it on all channels a few days in advance, so you’ll be prepared.
AMA
I’m sure you’ve got ideas and questions, so we’re going to hold an AMA in Discord this Thursday, March 24 at 2pm UTC.
Topic: Landlord guilds, revenue sharing, play-and-earn model
Please ask your questions in the Discord channel #ama-chat.
DEX
The DEX is in testnet, and is coming soon. The first pairs will be CLNY<>ONE and CLNY<>USDC.
Although, this is how we’re testing it:
Audit
MC is being audited by a third party, and we’ve been responding to their bug reports. A full public audit report should be available in roughly two weeks.
TLDR;
Avatars are delayed by about a week, so we can launch more than just a basic NFT collection.
For players without land, avatars will enable you to play-and-earn.
For players with land, 1 avatar per land is a good number to shoot for (but make your own decisions), except that since missions will need to be played, martians with lots of land will want to use the Guild model instead of hoarding avatars. The more players we have, the better.
By the way, since missions depend on both avatars and plot upgrades, delaying the avatar launch also gives everyone more time to upgrade their plots more fully.
And that’s (definitely not) everything.
There was so much to explain, I’m sure I missed a lot of things. If something above seems confusing or scary, it’s probably because I didn’t explain it correctly.
So, reply with your questions or comments, join us for the AMA, and remember, everything is up for discussion.
Since it’s a hefty and confusing update, I’ll be in the Discord AMA channel for an hour starting at the time this gets posted to answer questions, but most of the team will be on Thursday’s AMA for a more formal discussion.
Forward.
— brother
Forward.
Those are some great news, much better than the previously planned, plain avatar launch!