Potion Unlock Auction Going Live

Today is the day! March 14th 2022 will be one that all crypto enthusiasts remember: after months of preparation, the Potion Unlock Auction is going live. That means that interested investors can now purchase Potion NFTs and take part in this ground-breaking DeFi game. This article will explain how the auction will work, and provide participants with all the steps needed to become part of the community.

If you already know about the Potion NFT Unlock Game and want to take part, skip to the important stuff here.

However, if you want a bit of background before you start, keep reading.

Potion Unlock: Objectives

Potion Unlock ’22 is a launch mechanism to release the Potion Protocol into the public domain. By participating in a novel NFT game, players will be able to work together to unlock the encrypted password that is currently guarding the protocol secret. In this way, it is a one-of-a-kind strategy that maximizes community involvement whilst avoiding the legal dangers of a traditional project launch. Anyone can join: unlike seemingly decentralized systems that have a centralized nature, Potion Unlock is innovative in its “aggressive decentralization” approach.

Potion Unlock: Mechanics

Starting on March 14th, the majority of Potion NFTs will be sold to the public via a Dutch-style auction of the Fellowship, Advanced and Legendary Potion NFTs. High profile DeFi and NFT participants are expected to take part, but anybody can potentially participate by whitelisting themselves and registering their MetaMask wallets on the Potion Unlock website.

Buyers of an NFT will acquire a segment of the encrypted password, which has been split into segments of various lengths and distributed across 10,000 unique NFTs. In order for the code to be finally decrypted and made public, participants will have to collaborate to bring enough of the pieces together. The game itself is totally open-ended: players will have to self-coordinate — without the input of Potion Labs — to find their own solution to the problem.

There are 6 NFT types or “rarities” in the game, each with a different “decryption power” (length of the password segment), giving the various players different capabilities and powers. Each NFT rarity will also have a different “redundancy” level (based on the number of duplicates), so no single holder can block the resolution of the game.

Furthermore, the NFTs are digital collectibles, not financial instruments of any kind, and only the original NFT minters can participate in the Unlock game. The Potion NFTs can be transmitted, but their secret key for the Unlock game, linked to the original minters’ Metamask wallets, is not transmissible.

Once the protocol’s file is decrypted and released into the public domain, a community with ‘skin in the game’ will have been formed. This community will then have power and stewardship over the future of the Potion Protocol as a public good. In this way, Potion Labs hopes to have created a new, fully legally compliant paradigm for decentralized software release into the community.

Potion Unlock: Players

The dutch-style auction going live today will open the Potion game to any interested investor. Those who buy NFTs will join a community of players that has been building in strength and quality over the past two months.

In January, two Potion NFT rarities (Kelly Knights and Wise Wizards), were distributed through a $12M private sale. These were bought by prominent DeFi players such as Polychain, Placeholder, Maven 11, Pantera, The LAO, MetaCartel, Parafi, Spartan, Robert Leshner, Fernando Martinelli, Synthetix founders, Crypto Plaza, Roble VC, CULTUR3, Lemniscap, Zee and beToken Capital, among others.

In February, Potion’s early community members (OGs or Original Gangsters) received a generous allocation of Potion OG NFTs at no cost, in recognition for their early community support and inspiration. A significant number of OG NFTs were also made available in the form of airdrops to 1,000 leading members of prominent DAOs.

Potion Unlock: How to participate

1. Get whitelisted. This process has been set up to provide participants with a unique ID, whilst collecting invoicing information and avoiding criminal attacks. You’ll need a vanilla Metamask wallet to do this.
2. Join the auction. From March 14th, whitelisted participants will be able to buy and mint NFTs.
3. Claim your secret messages. You can do this from March 14th if you have purchased NFTs.
4. Choose your gaming strategy. Here is where you can decide how long to guard your piece of the puzzle for. Don’t forget, each NFT has an inbuilt redundancy, which means that there are repeated segments of the password. If you share too late, you might miss out. If you share too early however, you may lose the ability to leverage your decryption power during in-game negotiations.
5. Unlock the Potion Protocol code! The community will reach this step only if enough users share their password fragments.

Further reading

If you’re interested in the mathematics behind the Potion Protocol, then you’ll want to read our article on the Kelly Machine. That’s because the protocol is based on an adaptation of the Kelly Criterion, a systematic allocation strategy used by some of the best risk practitioners in the world. It provides a mathematical framework to make optimal capital allocation decisions under uncertainty and has been shown to work in practice.

If you’re interested in the design process underpinning the unique NFTs, take a look at our Deep Dive on Design.

If you’re a DeFi enthusiast, please join us on the Potion Discord channel where you can access the latest community updates and engage further with the excitement building around Potion Unlock.

Thanks for reading, and good luck!