Blvck Genesis: Stake to win
Crypto Staking – What is it?
Many well-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum(before the merge) use Proof-of-Work(PoW) as their means of validating transactions. But what does this mean? For starters, to prevent someone from spending the same money twice and to ensure consensus and synergy throughout the network, people, called miners, use their computers to solve complex mathematical problems in hopes of adding their block of transactions to the blockchain and being rewarded in coins of the respective blockchain.
Some of these miners require special hardware dedicated to mining which consumes large amounts of energy to operate. To circumvent this, Proof-of-Stake(PoS) has become the de-facto consensus mechanism for many projects. Ethereum has completed the merge from PoW to PoS. This resulted in their total energy consumption having dropped drastically by ~ 99.95%! Source
PoS is starkly in contrast with PoW in that there is a drastic reduction in the number of computational resources needed to verify blocks. Without the need for expensive hardware, the barrier for entry to become a validator on the network has lowered. Validators are people who offer their coins as collateral to secure the network and be rewarded in the coin of the native blockchain - ETH for the Ethereum blockchain and Atom for the Cosmos blockchain. Some blockchains have a minimum stake requirement. For instance, Ethereum requires validators to stake 32 ETH. As you can imagine, not many people have that much. There are ways to circumvent this with the use of staking pools in which many people come together and pool their ETH and receive a cut of the distribution with a ratio proportional to their staked amount!
Staking with Blvck
As you are probably aware, Blvck Paris launched their NFT Collection, Blvck Genesis, in May 2022. Following suggestions from the community, Blvck introduced staking for their NFTs. To achieve this, Blvck takes a different approach to the conventional staking method where holders of Blvck Genesis for prolonged periods are rewarded with off-chain points which can then be redeemed for whitelist raffles, Monthly giveaway entries and even physical Blvck Merchandise – all simply by just having your NFT sitting in your wallet and being unlisted. To put it simply, your NFT must be kept in your wallet and not listed for sale on any NFT marketplace such as OpenSea and X2Y2.
Navigating the Site
Blvck unveiled a fully functional and aesthetically pleasing staking website which is both user friendly and filled with utilities and perks!
Using a crypto wallet-compatible browser, such as Google Chrome or Brave Browser, will enable you to take advantage of everything this site has to offer. Begin by connecting your wallet to the staking site as illustrated in the figure below.
You'll be asked to sign a transaction to verify ownership of your wallet. As this signature does not interact with the blockchain, it's completely free!
Safety Tip: Be mindful signing transactions which has gas fees as malicious actors can potentially be able to steal your assets.
Upon successfully connecting your wallet, you may customise your profile by clicking on the top right icon and selecting profile
Here, you'll be able to personalise your account with details such as your burner wallet address and shipping information. Doing so will streamline the process if you've won the monthly giveaway or redeemed a physical product from the staking store! Only the core team at Blvck has access to these sensitive information and is not accessible to anyone else for privacy reasons.
You will also be required to connect your Discord to the staking website under the Profile section.
Staking your Blvck NFTs
To be considered staked and continue to accrue points, you need to hold the NFT in your wallet and remain unlisted in any NFT marketplace. These points are accumulated in intervals of 12 hours.
The current Tokenomics of the points distributed every 12 hours are as follows:
- 25 Points for NFTs with Rank > 9000
- 50 Points for NFTs between Rank 8001 to 9000
- 75 Points for NFTs between Rank 7001 to 8000
- 100 Points for NFTs between Rank 6001 to 7000
- 125 Points for NFTs between Rank 5001 to 6000
- 150 Points for NFTs between Rank 4001 to 5000
- 175 Points for NFTs between Rank 3001 to 4000
- 200 Points for NFTs between Rank 2001 to 3000
- 225 Points for NFTs between Rank 1001 to 2000
- 250 Points for NFTs between Rank 11 to 1000
- 500 Points for NFTs between Rank 10 to 1
To check your NFT rarity, please use RaritySniper, our official rarity ranking partner.
You can easily keep track of how many points you've accumulated and the rate at which you're accumulating them with the status bar under the "Rewards Earned" section. You'll have to collect the points to spend them. To do so, simply click on the "Collect" button as depicted by Arrow 1 in the above figure. Upon signing a transaction similar to the one you did when connecting your wallet to the staking site, the points collected will be reflected on the top right as depicted by arrow 2.
The status bar also shows the number of NFTs being staking and the combined points of all the staked NFTs every 12 Hours in your wallet. You might have noticed that the wallet in the figure above contained 10 NFTs but only shows 9 NFTs currently being staked. This is because NFT #1102 is listed on OpenSea and is thus not considered staked and will not accumulate any points until it is delisted.
You may encounter issues such as being incorrectly identified as listed or even incorrect staking duration. Fret not, You can force a refresh of the metadata by clicking the refresh icon on the NFT that is displaying the incorrect information. This will fetch the most up-to-date data on the respective NFT ID in the blockchain and update accordingly.
Blvck Marketplace
Now that you know how to accumulate and collect your points, let's learn how to spend them! For this, we'll visit the Blvck Marketplace where all the desirable goodies are located.
In this section of the staking site, you'll see items that can be redeemed for Blvck Points. If you have won one of the Whitelist raffles, you'll be prompted to submit your wallet address in the respective project's tab. The Collab team at Blvck will then pass it over to the respective partner project to be added to their contracts allowing you to mint their project.
Safety Tip: Never mint a project with your main wallet - always use a burner wallet. A burner wallet can be interpreted as a throwaway wallet in which it holds no assets of significant value. There have been many instances of scam mint projects being wallet drainers. This means upon interaction with their contract, all other assets in your wallet will be stolen and transferred to the malicious actor. To safeguard against this, always use a burner wallet when minting any project.
On the 1st and 15th of every month, we'll host our giveaways on the staking site! Here, winners can pick any 2 pieces of Blvck Merchandise, excluding collaboration items, in stock, and in their size and have it shipped to them at no cost! The giveaway on the 1st is open to all Blvck Genesis NFT holders while the second giveaway on the 15th is open to sharks and above!
The requirements for the different tiers are as follows:
- Sharks: Hold 5 Blvck Genesis NFTs
- Whale: Hold 10 Blvck Genesis NFTs
- Humpback: Hold 20 Blvck Genesis NFTs
We strongly recommend getting your holder status verified under the "Holder-verification" channel in the discord. Our Discord offers a myriad of benefits like Alpha calls, feedback sessions, and weekly team AMAs that keep you engaged with like-minded community members. It's the best place to keep up-to-date with all the latest information in the WEB3 space for Blvck.
Special Giveaway
You may have noticed a banner on the bottom right of the staking site stating you can claim a set of playing cards. As an incentive, we are offering a set of limited edition Black Genesis-themed playing cards to all Black Genesis NFT holders. Holders whose NFTs have been staked for more than 90 days will be eligible for this giveaway!
The limited edition Blvck Genesis Playing Cards are currently in production and will only available for our genesis holders to claim on the staking platform 🖤 What other limited edition products would you like to see? pic.twitter.com/49p6uiNqLV
— Blvck Paris (@BlvckParis) September 20, 2022
In order to remain staked, you must unlist your NFTs from any NFT marketplace and simply keep them in your wallet. The total time staked for your NFT can be found by hovering over one of your NFTs on the staking page as illustrated below.
By taking the timestamp difference between the last transaction on the respective NFT ID and the present time, we calculate staked time. As a result, any interaction on the blockchain for the NFT will reset the total staked time. Actions like transfers, listing, and selling are some of the examples that will reset this counter.
As with all things in the world, nothing is perfect and there are always kinks to be ironed out. Blvck council members and the team beta-tested the platform before it was pushed live, allowing holders to enjoy all the benefits previously described. Blvck is committed to our community, taking all feedback and suggestions seriously and reviewing them thoroughly - always looking for ways to improve the platform - whether it be through enhancing the features or improving the overall user experience!