The Virtuals protocol has launched a new mechanism for initial offerings called Unicorn. What are the wealth benefits?

Virtuals has launched a new Unicorn Initial Offering mechanism to improve the ecosystem and attract quality AI projects. What opportunities and challenges does this bring for investors? This article is sourced from a piece by BlockBeats, organized, translated, and written by Dongqu. (Background: Virtuals' money-making secret: Can token launches yield hundredfold returns?) (Background Supplement: Backstabbing Ethereum? Virtuals Protocol announces expansion to Solana: Launching Meteora Pool, strategic SOL reserves, and other five major plans) The big dump from October 11th has already passed a week. Not only did it set a record for the largest liquidation in history at $200 billion, but this brutal crash also prompted many KOLs to reflect on a painful fact of this bull run - the absence of faith among Builders, with numerous scams emerging, making the crypto world increasingly resemble a casino. “The problem is that the overall crypto environment has undergone structural changes, and the spirit of crypto punk has been completely abandoned!” —@tmel0211 “Why does the market always crash after every MEME goes viral? Think about it. I hope everyone remembers to use it well in the future.” ——@TingHu888 In this context, Virtuals has introduced new rules for the Unicorn offering, addressing issues such as bot sniping and ensuring fair launches, primarily focusing on attracting and supporting excellent AI projects, which also offers a glimmer of hope and ground for Builders to reclaim the 'crypto punk spirit.' 01 What highlights does the Unicorn offering have? The launch of Unicorn will completely end the previous Genesis offering rules, with the following changes: For investors: 1. The point system has been canceled, and everyone can buy. 2. The offering price will adopt a dynamic price curve based on FDV. The lower the funding raised for the project, the lower the current FDV, and thus the offering price; conversely, when the project is hot and the FDV is high, the price will be adjusted upwards. Investors need to conduct thorough research on the project to accumulate enough chips before the FDV rises too high. 3. A decaying tax mechanism has been introduced to address run issues. For the first 100 minutes of the project launch, a buyer's tax will be charged, which linearly decreases from 99% to 1% (approximately 1% per minute). This means that if you rush in during the first minute, for every $100 you trade, $99 will be used for taxes. This makes it unprofitable for the sniping bots. However, point 3 combined with point 2 creates a problem: if you wait to buy after the tax decay period, the FDV may have already risen high, and prices will also surge. This requires investors to find a suitable buying balance point. 4. Airdrop: Each project will allocate 5% of community airdrops, with 2% allocated to $VIRTUAL stakers and 3% to ecologically active users, with reference dimensions possibly including trading volume, ACP participation, Butler interaction, etc. 5. Support for 3x leverage for going long/short, providing investors with more trading tools while amplifying rewards and penalties for Builder projects and Rug projects. For project parties: 1. 50% of tokens are allocated to the founding team, but 25% will be long-term locked based on FDV (or unlocked when FDV reaches $160 million), followed by a 6-month linear release. 25% is for linear fundraising: this portion of tokens will be gradually sold in the form of on-chain limit orders during the process of FDV growth from $2 million to $160 million to provide the team with a continuous cash flow. 2. Founding teams are allowed to purchase tokens from the public offering pool (45%), with no upper limit and fully on-chain public. This portion of tokens defaults to a 1-month lock-up and 12-month linear release rule, meaning capable founding teams can publicly purchase their tokens to demonstrate official long-term confidence to the community. From Genesis to Unicorn, the ambition of the crypto world is evident. Earlier, Virtuals stated that it 'strictly manages the ecology,' mainly reflected in the user side during the Genesis period: Retail investors wanting to make money on Virtuals had to pass various 'loyalty tests': holding and staking, desperately accumulating points, and could not sell casually, otherwise they would be caught and labeled as jeet, forever missing out on various airdrops and points. However, the drawbacks of 'rolling users' quickly became apparent, and the point system soon led to farming, which brought inflation of points and user fatigue. Therefore, we can clearly see that Virtuals is gradually adjusting its direction and shifting strictness towards project parties: · Last month, Virtuals launched the ALE (Agent Liquidity Engine) as the core indicator to measure Agent performance, focusing on whether the product solves real problems, whether it has sustainable income, and whether the team can continuously reinvest income back into the ecosystem. · The official stipulates that if an AI Agent participating in ACP fails 10 times in a row, the system will automatically 'downgrade' it to ensure that the ACP platform maintains high standards of agent service. The introduction of the Unicorn offering mechanism sets up heavy obstacles for project parties—making it impossible for Rug projects to escape and giving quality projects the opportunity to shine. All of this is to ensure that every project that comes to Virtuals must have a long-term commitment and ultimately leave the best quality AI projects for the ecosystem. Virtuals should not be viewed through the lens of a Launchpad, as the essence of a Launchpad is a coin-issuing machine; further scrutiny reveals it to be a small Dex, with activity and liquidity being its sources of revenue. Typically, Meme sentiment is its foundation, but sentiment is inherently fleeting and elusive; thus, most Launchpads inevitably face the fate of being a flash in the pan. From its inception, Virtuals has cleverly defined its project scope within the AI Agent realm, significantly incubating breakout projects like AIXBT, enhancing the tone and quality of AI Agents within the ecosystem, and striving to shake off the AI Meme label while creating a Builder ecological atmosphere. After accumulating a certain scale of quality projects, Virtuals launched the ACP program, aligning with the current narrative of multi-AI Agent communication and collaboration under the MCP framework—this is also the main idea in the industry regarding how AI Agents work and solve real problems. However, the previously high-profile performance of the AI hedge fund Axelrod under the ACP framework did not meet expectations, so Virtuals' ACP business hasn't made much of a splash. But there's no need to be disappointed, as even traditional AI giants have yet to fully run and mature the multi-Agent system. Therefore, Virtuals can only continue using…