A: XEN token’s value is pegged to the difference between world’s inflation vs built-in distribution of the tokens. In short, the value of XEN is linked to its difficulty to be minted, which is very similar to Bitcoin. Ultimately, the value is created by the market forces of all participating parties. As more market participants get involved in generating XEN, the total amount of generated XEN drops (disinflation) and is distributed between participants making XEN more scarce and valuable. The only way to mint more XEN in the future will be by extending the time one has to wait to receive the mint.
There are a few different reasons for this. 1. Early adopters need to be incentivized to grow the network. 2. Early adopters are marketing the network and should be rewarded for the work they do. 3. Later adopters will reap the benefits from the early adopters who put in the work to make it happen. 4. XEN will not max cap its supply like Bitcoin. Only big miners with a lot of resources have the option to mine BTC today. In 8 years, we can allow the opportunity for anyone, anywhere, for example, in any developing country, to mine XEN tokens, thus giving that person the opportunity to learn about Crypto 1st principles while teaching themselves how to become self-sovereign. All they need is a cellphone and internet. It should be noted that, for example, in Africa, tens of millions of people do have cellphones already with internet but do not have bank accounts. XEN offers an easy solution to this dilemma and may assist them on a self-sovereign path to financial freedom.
A: XEN strives for maximal adoption. Ethereum was chosen as the main chain for a multitude of reasons. Ethereum has the biggest network, highest engagement, biggest number of wallets, biggest sandbox for developers to develop, biggest developer community. It can also be argued that Ethereum has the highest difficulty due to higher gas costs, which is beneficial since it resists spam. Further XEN shares values with Ethereum such as decentralization and open-source. We are not unaware, however, of the many challenges Ethereum is facing.
A: XEN's goal is maximal adoption. XEN therefore cannot limit its growth to only one chain. XEN aims to be inclusive, so listing to only one chain would be counterintuitive, making the ecosystem exclusive. Choosing one chain means limiting our market. This is also a reason why XEN should not build its own blockchain. This does, however, bring many challenges including topics such as - safety, strategy, technicals, values and community. Values - even though every chain does not align with XEN when it comes to 1st principles of Crypto, we believe XEN can introduce the values of 1st principles to that chain more so than if XEN chose exclusivity. XEN can be the messenger of fairness and Crypto 1st principles to be explored in their respective communities, instead of siloing our message. Safety - if XEN is not represented on a chain, someone could create a copy of XEN, call it XEN but then choose not live up to the same principles as XEN. We’ve seen this happen many times with other projects which has led to high confusion and deceit. Strategy - XEN has to be strategically adopted to other chains in order to maximize adoption in the most optimal way. Technical - the cost of mining XEN on different chains varies. Therefore, the value of XEN on each chain will vary. Since XEN is free (plus gas+time) to mint, then the variation of gas cost will have a huge impact on the cost of mining 1 XEN depending on which chain you are on. One has to factor in utility, size of the network, liquidity and number of participants as well. Community - XEN aims to unite the many siloed communities within blockchain and highlight the shared values and pursuit of common goals over alienation and exclusivity.
A: Never. XEN is a onboarding tool where new people now and in the future can enter blockchain without the barrier of having to transfer any other kind of value, part from gas. Minting XEN will become increasingly more difficult with time and adoption. The supply follows a logarithmic curve.
If you value XEN today and don't want to wait for the maturity date, you might consider buying it instead in a liquidity pool on a DEX. You are then basically buying someone else's work in terms of the time they waited for their maturity date to mint. You are buying their time. XEN is time. Please be aware that the supply of XEN follows a highly inflationary supply emission through minting. The supply velocity becomes disinflationary with time and adoption. This means that one will be able to mint substantially more tokens today than in the future. After 8 years, minting will be very difficult and the inflation will decrease to 0.01-1% for all.
No. The chosen mintterm is locked in and cannot be adjusted.
XEN is using logarithm base 2 to smooth out the rewards based on the difference between global rank and cRank. XEN has already foreseen bot attacks and built in a counter measure. A bot attack is actually healthy for the protocol. If you were to build a bot - how many transactions would you run? Probably not more than 1,000 for example. You will have to pay 5 USD/tx. You will immediately burn 5,000 USD on gas. That's assuming you're not over-driving the Ethereum network and your gas remains relatively constant. What does that do for you and the rest of the users? For the rest of the users, it will amplify everyone's mint.
Let's say there are a million people within the system. Then, another one million people have the chance to mint. So, you as a bot will end up diluting yourself. As a bot, you pay for the gas, let's say $5,000 USD. But you effectively pass on the amplification to the rest of the community. So, the community will always be larger than any bot out there and the bot will always be limited to any number of gas they want to spend.
So the bot will pay for everyone's gas and give everyone free XEN. If you write a bot, you're actually helping the community. The protocol on Ethereum, for example, will take your gas and say thank you. Basically, only a few bad actors will create bots, but it will be the community that benefits.
The diluted pressure will always discourage bots, and come up with some reasonable number and not millions of addresses. Are you really ready to pay 5M USD? Ethereum will not let you. Currently Ethereum is running at 15 tx/s. Anything above that is going to ask you for more money. So are you willing to be the #1 spender of gas? It's not going to be 5 million dollars for 1 million addresses - it will more likely be $50 million very quickly.
A: Yes. After you've claimed your mint of XEN once, you can use the same address to claim another cRank. You won't be able to add the new XEN tokens later to an existing on-going however, so you will have to either for that initial stake, or send the newly minted XEN tokens to another address and stake from there.
A: No. When you claim your cRank at the first step, you also choose your T. Let's say you choose 10 days. These two variables are bundled into the same transaction which you then sign. You now have to wait 10 days and come back to the website. During this time, the mintTerm limits will have increased according to the . However, this doesn't matter for your agreement with the protocol. Even though you may want to extend your T, it is not possible. This is not what you agreed upon. You agreed upon what was possible at the time as you claimed your cRank.
A: Nothing. Each address will have to pay gas to both claim cRank and also mint. Furthermore, each address will have to pay gas in order to later sell their XEN tokens. When you sell XEN tokens, you may want to reimburse the original gas costs of claiming and minting. Likely, one would not sell their XEN for less than the summarized gas costs. This would create positive price pressure which would increase the value of XEN for everyone. The value of XEN at genesis is 0, with 0 supply. If someone is paying for gas it means they make the judgement that XEN has value. You can easily predict gas cost when you claim cRank but not as easily what it will be when it is time for your mint. In fact, the further away you choose your maturity date (which you're incentivized to do), the harder it will get to predict gas costs, unless you intentionally pick a date that falls on a future Sunday, when gas prices are low. Further, since claiming cRank increases mint rewards for everyone by advancing the globalRank, the value of everyone's mint will increase as well. XEN is free. Minting XEN is not free. Time and gas has value. Minting from 1,000 wallets amplifies mints for everyone. Read more on this topic .
A: You will not lose your staked XEN, but you will lose you APY, no matter how long your stake has been.
A: No. Your APY will be generated up until the agreed term. And there is no penalty for unstaking late.
A: No.
A: Yes. You can for example buy XEN and then stake it.
A: Gas cost: single claim is 180,000 gas limit as usual. 100 VMU = 180.000 x 100 = 18M gas limit. Claim mint = 90.000 x 100 = 9M gas limit. It’s same gas cost as for “vanilla” cRank. Same math.
Some exact gas limit numbers:
18,344,502 to generate Rare XENFT with 100 VMU 18,311,424 to generate Limited XENFT with 100 VMU 18,303,735 to generate Ordinary XENFT with 100 VMU
A: No. Amount of contract code only affect gas during the contract deployment. Not for tx execution. Contract code is not stored on chain. It’s the amount of data that you write and read on chain that determines gas. The svg doesn’t consume gas. It’s not written on the blockchain. It's not linked to any claim / mint transaction at all. We generate it from params using contract code. It’s a read function. Our svg generation is basically contract code. It uses data stored on chain. The data that is stored on chain is 64 bytes/nft. (2 slots of unit256). In addition to standard ERC721 data stored. So, lines of code won't affect the resulting data structures, which drives gas higher.
A: Yes. Since they are fungible you only store amounts. With NFTs you need to store more than that. Recording ownership of unique items.