After months of soon™... "don't worry we are launching next week"... finally the Polycub launch can be delayed no longer. I actually have a pretty interesting strategy lined up for pCUB. Unfortunately this will be a very competitive atmosphere so I can't really share what I'm specifically doing. I've found out the hard way that talking to whales in discord often leads to me getting frontrun in both directions. Throwing that info into a blog is even worse.
However, there are quite a few things I can talk about.
Been going back and rereading the post from November 1, 2021. Remember that? How Polycub was going to launch in November and we were going to get three IDOs on top of that? lawls. Always bet against soon™. You'll always win.
But now we are in soonest™ territory.
So I was trying to calculate how many pCUB tokens are going to be minted, and the numbers I was coming up with were WAY less than the 26M max supply. I asked Khal about this in Discord an hour ago and found out that the 26M max supply is simply hardcoded into the contract and has nothing to do with how many tokens will actually be minted. Thus, my math is probably correct... way less than 26M coins will be minted. In fact, it might be something more like 10M pCUB total.
First four weeks.
Each week will reduce the emission rate by 1 pCUB per block. However, how often does Polygon even create blocks? I asked Google and it said one second per block, which is grossly incorrect, so my first round of math was completely wrong. Even though it was wrong and vastly overestimated the number of tokens that would be minted, that number was still significantly less than 26M (more like 15M).
https://polygonscan.com/chart/blocktime
In reality blockchain analysis shows that the average time between blocks is actually more like 2.25 seconds. There are 86,400 seconds in a day and 604,800 seconds in a week. Using a 2.25 second average, there will be around 268,800 blocks per week.
| Week | Emissions | pCUB minted |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | 1,344,000 |
| 2 | 4 | 1,075,200 |
| 3 | 3 | 806,400 |
| 4 | 2 | 537,600 |
Thus, the number of pCUB minted in the first four weeks should be around 3,763,200 total. That's pretty low considering the hyper-deflationary nature of the token and the hardcoded cap of 26M. Again, this 26M doesn't really mean anything and is more of a marketing ploy than anything else; a number we can tell noobs who ask about it (because CUB's infinite cap didn't resonate well).
Starting Supply: 1,300,000 POLYCUB
1,000,000 POLYCUB Airdropped Over a 2 Month Period to CUB Stakeholders (Our BSC Platform)
200,000 POLYCUB For Developer Fund (Locked in a 6 Month Drip Smart Contract)
50,000 POLYCUB For Initial POLYCUB-USDC Liquidity Pool
50,000 POLYCUB For Initial POLYCUB-WETH Liquidity Pool
It is actually extremely misleading to claim that the 'starting supply' is 1.3M pCUB when the airdrop to CUB holders happens over a 60 day period. In reality, the starting supply will only be the pCUB in the liquidity pools, which is only 100k pCUB paired to $100k total for a starting price of $1 per coin. This will be pretty significant at launch. Also kudos to Khal for throwing down money on his own project and seeding the LPs with liquidity out of his own pocket.
Checking our work.
Another way to calculate the emission rate during the first month would be to take the average. (5+4+3+2)/4 = 3.5. This implies that the average emission rate during the first month will be 3.5 coins per block. 3.5 x 268,800 blocks/week x 4 weeks = 3,763,200. This matches our math from before. 3,763,200 pCUB will be minted in the first 4 weeks.
After the first four weeks are over there's a new emission schedule.
Rather than decreasing by 1 token per block every week, we will begin cutting it in half every month. Essentially this is just a hyper deflationary version of Bitcoin.
Because there are only around 268,800 blocks per week this implies there will only be around 1,075,200 pCUB minted during the entire second month of the launch. Figuring out how much more pCUB will be minted after that is easy. Bitcoin acts in exactly the same way.
Bitcoin mints 6 blocks per hour, 210,240 blocks per year. During the first four years emission rate was 50 BTC. 50 x 210,240 = 10,512,000. Look familiar? 10,512,000 x 2 = 21,024,000, which is the logarithmic hardcap for Bitcoin.
Thus, using this same logic, the number of pCUB we mint in the first month is the same as the number of pCUB that will ever be minted after that. 1,075,200 pCUB will be minted in the first month, meaning 1,075,200 pCUB will be minted in month 2 through infinity.
After we add up all these numbers we get:
- 100k pCUB in the LPs
- 200k pCUB dev fund (6-month drip)
- 1M pCUB airdropped to CUB holders.
- 3,763,200 pCUB minted in the first month.
- 1,075,200 pCUB minted in the second month.
- 1,075,200 pCUB minted total after that.
For a grand total of 7,213,600 pCUB, total, ever.
Again, this is an estimate that assumes quite a few things.
Like an average block time of 2.25 seconds,
And that a 'month' means 28 days.
However, it is extremely conservative and accurate to say, given this data, that the total number of pCUB ever minted will be less than 10M even though the hardcoded cap is 26M. This will be very relevant to anyone who was using that 26M fake cap in any estimates they were doing.
At the same time numbers like these are largely arbitrary, so take the info with a grain of salt. Doesn't really matter how many arbitrary tokens we decided to mint. It's more about the economics and tokenomics that make DEFI 2.0 sustainable. This will be an enlightening test for sure as to the long-term viability of future clones on other EVM chains.
Speaking of future clones, if everything works out well CUB will be getting many more airdrops from all the DEFI 2.0 clones we copy/paste to other networks. The LEO ecosystem is creating a net that's capturing liquidity from all the EVM chains, and that's got to be the most exciting thing of all. Fun stuff.
Incentive Pendulum
Two days ago I ranted about how the pendulum is putting incentives in the wrong place. Khal assures me that I'm out of my element, and I know that very well could be the case.
Imagine the best case scenario:
- Pendulum swings yield into kingdom.
- Higher yield in kingdom increase the price (we already know it does)
- Increasing price increases yields in the LPs.
- Increasing price reduces competition in the LPs, increasing yield more.
- Pendulum swings back to LPs, increasing yield even more.
- Outsiders buy CUB because yields are so massive.
- Pendulum swings back to kingdom and price goes up again.
Honestly depending on how it actually works, the pendulum could be a win/win that just creates momentum in an upward direction. It will be interesting to see how it actually plays out, for sure.
Conclusion
Whelp, I need to get on a plane soon, so I'll cut this one short. I went out and bought a cheap laptop just so I can participate in pCUB while I'm on the road. When you can buy a laptop with one day's worth of CUB farm, you can't be doing too bad. Abundance is coming. Are you ready for it?